So this idea has always been around my head, that Deng was ousted twice during the Cultural Revolution. So what if he didn't survive those ten years? Who would come to power? What would become of China?
AHC have Deng Xiaoping killed during the Cultural Revolution, what would happen to China?
- Thread starter Frank Hart
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A much better place 
In all seriousness, we’d probably see a much internationally weaker China. Idk who’d replace him though
In all seriousness, we’d probably see a much internationally weaker China. Idk who’d replace him though
I think somebody would eventually figure out that they were a rather destructive influence, and try to get rid of them. I believe that even under Mao, the army was being sent around the country to mow down Red Guards, so at the very least the Gang's signature policies aren't gonna have much longevity.
If they can purge the likes of Hua Guofeng, 1990 is probably the furthest the Gang can stay in power before they get killed/overthrown etc.
And by then, it is very likely that China would have lost control of Tibet, Xinjiang and most of Qinghai, plus Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, Fujian and Jiangxi if Taiwan, the UK or Portugal intervenes, or all of Manchuria if the Soviet Union intervenes.
Assuming that North Korea's unique charm is at least partly connected to its ethnic homogeniety and experience of colonization followed by carnage in the Korean War, I don't think you'd have the right ingredients for that to be replicated in China.
As many here are writing, it could be a nightmare scenario of post-Maoist repression and economic stagnation. However, there is another possibility:
- Deng dies in the Cultural Revolution
- Hua Guofeng succeeds Mao as in OTL, but there is no Dengist faction to remove him
- He institutes what he was advocating in OTL(until stopped by Deng): Soviet style central planning with it’s emphasis on heavy industry. Without Deng to stop him, there is initial economic growth but eventually the same inefficiencies, growth of a “nomenklatura” class, lack of consumer goods, bread lines and stagnation occur that occurred in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact occur in China. By the late 90s/early 2000s, there are mass protests throughout China, on a much larger scale than occurred in Tiananmen Square in OTL 1989
- the hardliners attempt to retain control, but eventually the PLA gets tired of the repression of their own people and refuse to fire on civilians (as happened in the Soviet Union during the 1991 coup attempt). The party falls and allows multiparty elections
- Today China is a rapidly developing liberal democratic society with multiple parties, a free press and limited regional autonomy for Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Taiwan is discussing rejoining the mainland with some parties supporting and others opposed
Again, this wa# deliberately written to be an optimistic scenario. The true non-Deng China will probably not be anywhere near as rosy. But I just wanted to offer a counter to the “China as a giant North Korea” scenario.
- Deng dies in the Cultural Revolution
- Hua Guofeng succeeds Mao as in OTL, but there is no Dengist faction to remove him
- He institutes what he was advocating in OTL(until stopped by Deng): Soviet style central planning with it’s emphasis on heavy industry. Without Deng to stop him, there is initial economic growth but eventually the same inefficiencies, growth of a “nomenklatura” class, lack of consumer goods, bread lines and stagnation occur that occurred in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact occur in China. By the late 90s/early 2000s, there are mass protests throughout China, on a much larger scale than occurred in Tiananmen Square in OTL 1989
- the hardliners attempt to retain control, but eventually the PLA gets tired of the repression of their own people and refuse to fire on civilians (as happened in the Soviet Union during the 1991 coup attempt). The party falls and allows multiparty elections
- Today China is a rapidly developing liberal democratic society with multiple parties, a free press and limited regional autonomy for Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Taiwan is discussing rejoining the mainland with some parties supporting and others opposed
Again, this wa# deliberately written to be an optimistic scenario. The true non-Deng China will probably not be anywhere near as rosy. But I just wanted to offer a counter to the “China as a giant North Korea” scenario.
There's also the fact that the Gang of Four and their supporters literally did not like or want to emulate the North Korean system, to the point where they staged demonstrations burning Kim Il Sung in effigy and calling him a "fat revisionist pig" outside the North Korean embassy during the Cultural Revolution. That's not to say the Gang would have been good, but the assumption that "Gang of Four win=North Korea" is a really lazy and borderline orientalist trope.
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Actually, China is quite culturally homogenous, with only Tibet really being a permanent nuisance, also, when you say colonial exploitation, the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion come to mind and they can always point to the warlords and civil war era and the ROC government sheltered in Taiwan under Western defence as examples of instability as a result of a flirting with Western values.
The true reasons why China can't be a Mega North Korea, the nightmare of any nuclear fearmonger, are the fact that Taiwan isn't a Chinese South Korea, but an island which now seeks to gain it's own cultural and political independence, so no one to which the Chinese can look upon as a salvation and also, as narcissistic as Mao was, he didn't groom a Mao dinasty.
Blebea wrote:
China is quite culturally homogenous, with only Tibet really being a permanent nuisance
A small percentage they may be(around 8% according to wiki), but China apparently considers its ethnicities enough of a politcal factor to bestow official recognition and honours upon them.
In North Korea, by contrast, the government preaches a doctrine of one-blood racial purity(also preached in the South under the dictators, and derived from the same crackpot sources as western racism). I don't think that would ever fly in China, at least not while the government recognizes 56 non-Han ethnic groups on the mainland alone.
As for the contrasting forms of colonialism, well, I was assuming that a 35 year period of direct colonial rule over the entire peninsula, with even domestic policy ultimately being decided in Tokyo, is going to have a different impact than even the humiliating concessions imposed upon China by foreign powers. Korea wasn't just "flirting" with Japanese values during that time. But yeah, we certainly should not underestimate the impact that those humiliations would have had on the Chinese psyche.
Agreed that the presence of South Korea almost certainly has had some impact political developments in the North.
China is quite culturally homogenous, with only Tibet really being a permanent nuisance
A small percentage they may be(around 8% according to wiki), but China apparently considers its ethnicities enough of a politcal factor to bestow official recognition and honours upon them.
In North Korea, by contrast, the government preaches a doctrine of one-blood racial purity(also preached in the South under the dictators, and derived from the same crackpot sources as western racism). I don't think that would ever fly in China, at least not while the government recognizes 56 non-Han ethnic groups on the mainland alone.
As for the contrasting forms of colonialism, well, I was assuming that a 35 year period of direct colonial rule over the entire peninsula, with even domestic policy ultimately being decided in Tokyo, is going to have a different impact than even the humiliating concessions imposed upon China by foreign powers. Korea wasn't just "flirting" with Japanese values during that time. But yeah, we certainly should not underestimate the impact that those humiliations would have had on the Chinese psyche.
Agreed that the presence of South Korea almost certainly has had some impact political developments in the North.
RousseauX
Donor
Hua Guofeng was not that important
the important people were the long march cadre and the party old guard who had control over the PLA and what's left of the party apparatus. The gang can't win a knife fight against them post-Mao because Mao specifically made sure the GoF was dependent on him personally for their power. Once Mao is dead the GoF doesn't have a powerbase outside the Shanghai municipal government and the propaganda department.
The only plausible one of those outside maybe tibet/xinjiang is a Soviet invasion and even then brezhnev era ussr didn't have the appetite for lots of casualties, UK/Portugal didn't have the military assets to invade China against a population and military specifically designed to draw the enemy into the chinese countryside and destroy them through "people's war": this is true even if the central government in Beijing is dysfunctional
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RousseauX
Donor
Collective leadership would have being the rule for the 1980sA much better place
In all seriousness, we’d probably see a much internationally weaker China. Idk who’d replace him though
Chen Yun might have being the nominal leader, or Hua gets retained as a weak nominal leader with the real power being wielded by the otl "8 immortals" who formed Deng's inner circle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Elders
RousseauX
Donor
There wouldn't have being a Tienanmen nor 1991 coup without reforms, what destroyed communism was reform in China and the USSR respectively, a 1980s china with soviet style planned economy might have actually being more stable than otl 1980s china
but come the 1991 and the fall of the ussr though (assuming that still happens), and the last of the long march cadres die or become unable to participate in politics since they were in their 80s-90s I think the party would have started doing reforms anyway, just 10 years later.
The initial economic growth could have gone on for at least a coupe of decades: China in the late 1970s was a lot like USSR in the mid 1920s: lots of room for growth before the inefficiencies of the planned economies kicked in.
The creation of a large nomenklatura class would actually have implied that the standards of living rise in China significantly.
