A WI within the TL: Japanese find the Daqing oilfield in "Superpower Empire"

Hendryk

Banned
In OTL, there was never any doubt, once the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, that they would lose; it was merely a question of when. The outcome of the war is even less in doubt in my "Superpower Empire" TL: fighting against a more unified China on the one hand, and against the US on the other (not to mention Britain), Japan crumbles in late 1944.

But... but what if, in the context of my TL, the Japanese had found the Daqing oilfield (which in OTL was discovered in 1958) during their occupation of Manchuria?

Let's say that, in 1938, four years after invading the place, the Japanese, who were looking for oil in Manchuria but got lucky neither in OTL nor in my TL, looked in the right spot. There it was, the answer to their impending fuel crisis--16 billion barrels' worth of crude, enough to power their military machine, and in fact their entire economy, for at least three decades. Self-sufficiency being assured, they no longer needed to rely on imports, and neither feared a US embargo nor had to set up contingency plans for seizing the Dutch East Indies. This meant they could focus their war effort on China itself. Would China in my TL still have been able to defeat Japan given such circumstances?

For those who'd like to speculate on a similar development in OTL, see this thread.

The following map shows the extent of Japanese occupation in 1938 in my TL. Note that the south-east of Yakutia is being occupied as well.
 

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burmafrd

Banned
It was not just oil, but that was the key item. With oil - and then they could sell the surplus to buy other items- they really have no need to go anywhere other then China. NOW whether that is enough for Tojo and company is another story. They had a inferiority complex/racial supremacy split and big ambitions; not exactly a great combo for doing the smart thing.
 
Looking at your Map.
Your Japan has the Sakhalin Oil Fields to hold them in the beginning '30's, and they control Amur,
There are extensive Mineral deposits [iron. coal, titanium etc] and a abundance of hydro power available in the Amur. for aluminium.

it depends at this point what they consider Victory.

They could easy enter into a cease fire, withdraw back to the Great wall, and out of Russia, and proclaim Victory.

?Has your Japan tried to take Hainan?, OTL Japan considered it a a vital part of it's Mahan's control of the Asian coast.

But No Unless there is a lot more Industry in Korea/Amur than OTL, I don't see the oil being enuff to guarantee Victory.
 
According to your map, Japan must have been at war with USSR some time....

What effect it would have on the WWII?
 

Hendryk

Banned
?Has your Japan tried to take Hainan?
Not yet, but by late 1940, with Japan in control of French Indochina, Hainan will be invaded as well, along with a chunk of Guangxi and southern Guangdong.

According to your map, Japan must have been at war with USSR some time...
In TTL, China took advantage of the Russian civil war to take control of eastern Siberia, and by 1922 had turned it into the kingdom of Yakutia, for all intents and purposes a puppet state (think of the relationship between Japan and Manchukuo in OTL for reference). Note, as well, that China also took advantage of the situation to reclaim outer Manchuria.

Here is a more detailed map. The red line delineates the areas under Japanese occupation as of 1938.

Superpower-Empireoccupation.jpg
 
Capturing the oilfield and holding it are two different things, though. Wouldn't a unified China make it their top priority to kick the Japanese out of there ASAP? If I was in charge of the Chinese forces, I'll throw everything I got at them to make sure they never get a foothold there again.
 
Hi Hendryk,

I've just started reading your Alternate history (still reading the first post actually) and one thing that i've noticed is that the Japanese have captured Hong Kong, this would mean that Japan is at war with the UK since Hong Kong was ceded to the British in 1842 in the treaty of Nanking at the end of the first opium war after they captured the Island in 1841. Kowloon peninsula was ceded to the UK in 1860, with a 99 year lease on Lantau Island being made in 1898.

Basicly, if the UK had chosen to, they could still be governing Hong Kong to this day, let alone the early 1930's when you have them capture the colony.
 

Hendryk

Banned
one thing that i've noticed is that the Japanese have captured Hong Kong, this would mean that Japan is at war with the UK
Ah, I suppose it's Version 1.0 you're reading. Yeah, there was a chronological mistake about the Japanese capture of Hong Kong. It actually happened in December 1941, just a few days later than OTL.
 
Ah, I suppose it's Version 1.0 you're reading. Yeah, there was a chronological mistake about the Japanese capture of Hong Kong. It actually happened in December 1941, just a few days later than OTL.

I was reading the version that you linked to further up this thread.

version 2.0 said:
By 1935, the Chinese forces have partially recovered from the onslaught and manage to slow down considerably the Japanese advance to the South and West, without however being able to stop it altogether. Partisan warfare in the occupied areas begins to organize and ties down an increasing share of Japanese troops; whenever retreating from a given area, the Chinese army leaves behind carefully concealed caches of weapons, ammunition and explosives, and plants sleeper agents in the civilian population with the aim of organizing resistance networks behind enemy lines. But the Japanese army is still at this point superiorly trained and equipped, and Japanese mastery of the seas is undisputed. The parts of China and Yakutia under Japanese occupation are subjected to thorough exploitation of both their natural resources and manpower. At the end of that year, apart from the aforementioned Manchurian provinces, the Japanese control Suiyuan, Henan (including Beijing), Shandong and Shanxi (with Taiyuan subjected to a brutal siege) ; further landings enable the seizing of Xiamen, Hong Kong, and the island of Hainan. The frontlines eventually stabilize in northern Henan and Jiangsu after the famous battle of Kaifeng. It rages from September 6 to November 17, 1935, and claims the lives of over 130,000 Chinese and 90,000 Japanese ; yet, despite intensive bombing and shelling of the city by the Japanese, the Chinese forces stand their ground, making the city a symbol of national resistance against the invaders, and earning it the nickname “Verdun of the East”. Neither side manages a significant breakthrough in the course of the following three years, although Japan generally retains the initiative during that period and keeps China on the defensive.

Oh, and in regards to the Australia being in the Chinese sphere of influence, your numbers are wrong, the australian population is roughly 21 million now, an addtional 4 million chinese immigrants, most of whom would be 2nd or 3rd generation would take the population to ~25 million, meaning 16% of the population would be either of chinese decent or immigrants. Those chinese decendents would for the most part be integrated into the larger population of australia, and while 16% is a large minority, it is still a minority group to the larger european population of the country, i don't see Australia falling into the Chinese sphere of influence, but rather more likely to be in the US sphere as historical, or the European sphere of influence.
 
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Hendryk

Banned
I was reading the version that you linked to further up this thread.
So that mistake ended up in there as well. I thought I'd corrected it. BTW, there's another one that nobody spotted: Beijing is in Hebei, not Henan (of course, in OTL, it's an autonomous administrative unit).

Oh, and in regards to the Australia being in the Chinese sphere of influence, your numbers are wrong, the australian population is roughly 21 million now, an addtional 4 million chinese immigrants, most of whom would be 2nd or 3rd generation would take the population to ~25 million, meaning 16% of the population would be either of chinese decent or immigrants. Those chinese decendents would for the most part be integrated into the larger population of australia, and while 16% is a large minority, it is still a minority group to the larger european population of the country, i don't see Australia falling into the Chinese sphere of influence, but rather more likely to be in the US sphere as historical, or the European sphere of influence.
Perhaps "Chinese sphere of influence" is a misleading term. In the case of Australia and other more remote countries, I meant it in the sense of economic ties, not necessarily political or cultural ones.
 
Discovery of the Daqing Oil Fields by the Japanese would not do much difference, am I right? It is just that Japan may go longer.

If I can remember, Siberia has oil fields, and it is under control of Yakutia. Hendryk, did they discovered the Siberian oilfields at that timeline?
 

Hendryk

Banned
If I can remember, Siberia has oil fields, and it is under control of Yakutia.
Indeed, though the larger Siberian oil fields are in Soviet territory: Samotlor in the Urals, Priobskoye on the Ob river, Romashkino in Tatarstan, etc. See this map:

Rusoilba.gif


Hendryk, did they discovered the Siberian oilfields at that timeline?
Not as of 1938. The Yakutian oil fields would only be discovered in the 1960s. Sakhalin, BTW, is Japanese in TTL.
 

Thande

Donor
One thing you could maybe do in this TL is have Yakutia set up with Japanese backing rather than Chinese. The main thing that annoyed me about your original TL was that it seemed really implausible that the Chinese could set up Yakutia only five years after the revolution. They could have kicked the Russians out of their spheres of influence, maybe got back the pre-Unequal Treaties borders, but not set up a massive country based on a set of natives that would be in a tiny minority within it (the Yakuts), with far more Russians. Especially since the Japanese would probably intervene to stop such an expansion of Chinese influence even if the Russians couldn't (they did, after all, temporarily occupy the coastline in OTL). The only way a "Yakutia" that big would make sense is if it was not Yakutia, but a rump Tsarist Russia backed by the Chinese and Japanese (initially aligned for some reason) with the capital in perhaps Krasnoyarsk.
 
Just because they find oil doesn't mean that immediately translates into it being usable. Did they have the expertise and infrastructure on their own to build everything that would be needed to make that oil accessible. They'd need built up infrastructure to the oil fields, the rigs (and experienced oil crews to drill), the pipelines, the refineries, just to get the oil to be usable. Did Japan in your TL have these natively or would they have needed to contract out to either US or European firms to get the oil out?

Not to mention how long would it take to build up the wells to a point where they would become oil independent?

Granted a Japan that knew it was sitting on those resources might have backed off from conquering elsewhere until those sources were developed.
 

Hendryk

Banned
The main thing that annoyed me about your original TL was that it seemed really implausible that the Chinese could set up Yakutia only five years after the revolution. They could have kicked the Russians out of their spheres of influence, maybe got back the pre-Unequal Treaties borders, but not set up a massive country based on a set of natives that would be in a tiny minority within it (the Yakuts), with far more Russians.
Yakutia isn't named that way because it's dominated by the Yakuts--the name is essentially a geographical shorthand. The Yakuts are only one ethnic group among others, and the Russians do constitute a plurality of the population (about a third, and as such the largest single ethnic group). As for how the Chinese managed to grab such a huge territory, I have the strategic explanation worked out, but I'll post it once I tackle that chapter of Version 3.0. It doesn't involve any big surprise: in a nutshell, the Chinese took control of the eastern half of the Transsiberian, and kept it. That railway was the only reliable means of transportation from west to east, and without it the Bolsheviks were simply unable to move the requisite men and equipment to claim eastern Siberia.

Especially since the Japanese would probably intervene to stop such an expansion of Chinese influence even if the Russians couldn't (they did, after all, temporarily occupy the coastline in OTL).
At the time, WW1 was still being fought, and China and Japan were both nominal allies of the Entente. It would have been strategically awkward for Japan to turn against China, especially in the context of Chinese intervention against the Bolsheviks.

Just because they find oil doesn't mean that immediately translates into it being usable. Did they have the expertise and infrastructure on their own to build everything that would be needed to make that oil accessible.
At that point Japan has about the same expertise as in OTL. I suppose they could bring German engineers over, but it would certainly be at least a couple of years until they had the infrastructure in place. That gives China a window of opportunity.
 
At that point Japan has about the same expertise as in OTL. I suppose they could bring German engineers over, but it would certainly be at least a couple of years until they had the infrastructure in place. That gives China a window of opportunity.

Not being familiar with your TL but if it is anywhere close to OTL then the real experts would have either been in the US, UK, or the Netherlands. I'm pretty sure any German oil industry was either owned by the US or in joint operations with US companies during that time period in OTL. I suppose Russia might have some experts too (from the Baku oil fields).
 

Hendryk

Banned
Not being familiar with your TL but if it is anywhere close to OTL then the real experts would have either been in the US, UK, or the Netherlands. I'm pretty sure any German oil industry was either owned by the US or in joint operations with US companies during that time period in OTL. I suppose Russia might have some experts too (from the Baku oil fields).
Since, by 1938, the world is aware of Japanese atrocities in China (while the actual "rape of Nankin" didn't take place, other events just as bad did), American companies are unlikely to want to do business in Japanese-occupied territory, if for no other reason, out of concern for the PR backlash at home. The Russians, I don't know--they may decide that helping the Japanese could serve their own interests, by keeping China busy long enough to reclaim their lost Siberian territories. But would the Japanese take the chance of relying on Soviet expertise?

By default, I think they'd pick Dutch or British experts.
 
Since, by 1938, the world is aware of Japanese atrocities in China (while the actual "rape of Nankin" didn't take place, other events just as bad did), American companies are unlikely to want to do business in Japanese-occupied territory, if for no other reason, out of concern for the PR backlash at home. The Russians, I don't know--they may decide that helping the Japanese could serve their own interests, by keeping China busy long enough to reclaim their lost Siberian territories. But would the Japanese take the chance of relying on Soviet expertise?

By default, I think they'd pick Dutch or British experts.

I guess it would depend on the diplomatic situation abroad. I think it would be more interesting for it to be the Dutch (hey if we help you up there you'd be less likely to invade the DEI). Tie that in with some Soviet aid (not much but no need to sole source when you don't have too).

Cause if the oil field is that big (and if you also take into affect the Sakhalin fields) it could very well be a multinational effort with many different companies getting in on the action.
 
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