AHC - Home of the winds - Mongols turn North China into pasture lands

Supposedly Ghengis Khan had to tell his generals that they could not turn the entire northern plain region of China into horse and sheep pastures.

What if he had given them their head to attempt this?

I throw the idea (Which does not seem to have been covered by this forum.) open...
 
Supposedly Ghengis Khan had to tell his generals that they could not turn the entire northern plain region of China into horse and sheep pastures.

What if he had given them their head to attempt this?

I throw the idea (Which does not seem to have been covered by this forum.) open...

It's come up a few times. At any rate, it supposedly took around 300 years for the population of (what is today) Iran to return to the population level it had before the Mongols came. It wasn't that the Mongols killed that many people. Rather, the main impact was that the extensive aquaduct system, built up since the Persian Empire over a thousands years before, was allowed to fall into disrepair. This drastically lowered the amount of usable farmland, and thus the carrying capacity of the region.

The same thing would've happened in north China. Aquaducts would be allowed to fall apart, canals would be filled in to allow the easy transit of horses and livestock. The loss of productive farmland would have repercussions further south in China, and not just in the immediate region. Assuimg the Chinese eventually reconquer this area, as in OTL, it would take generations for the region to recover its lost productivity, and for the population to return. I personally doubt we would see much in the way of permanent territorial changes, but I think the population of this China might be lower compared to in OTL.

Who knows what changes that would have down the road?
 
Large numbers of refugees fleeing south, probably resulting in the main Chinese dialects/languages in the southern lands by the modern day having more in common with OTL Han (Mandarin) and less in common with OTL Cantonese?
 
Large numbers of refugees fleeing south, probably resulting in the main Chinese dialects/languages in the southern lands by the modern day having more in common with OTL Han (Mandarin) and less in common with OTL Cantonese?

Add to that the possible consequences for nations further south, how would the Vietnamese state react if large numbers of Chinese started arriving, however unlikely it would be that the refugees would make the full trip.
 
Large numbers of refugees fleeing south, probably resulting in the main Chinese dialects/languages in the southern lands by the modern day having more in common with OTL Han (Mandarin) and less in common with OTL Cantonese?

Thing is - the Mongols were excellent at genocide. They tended to obliterate cities and the countryside methodically. The Volga Bulgars, Tanguts, and Cumans were excellent examples of what happened to people whom the Mongols tried to exterminate. And add to this, the Chinese peasants are less mobile than the nomads whom they tried to exterminate, it is likely that not a large proportion (proportion, not number) of their targets will be able to escape their genocides. If they actually try to turn northern China into a grassland, I can see it turning into an overwhelming humanitarian tragedy, with the prosperity of China possibly ruined forever.

The second part is that the Southern Sung empire has the large number of refugees from farther north to feed (which it may not be able to do), and this will lead to chaos in the south. If the southern Sung can successfully feed them, it will have more bodies to throw at the Mongols when they eventually invade the south. If not, a weakened Sung, with its energies expended in contending with the refugees, may be an easier prey to the Mongols when they finally invade.
 
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