AHC: Prevent the Rise of China

What would it take to retard any potential for "China" to become a significant economic, cultural, military, and political force in the world? Considering that today, China is known as a potential superpower, how drastic would the effects be?

By "China" you can either use the geographic landmass we now know as China today, or use the RoC/PRC

Would an American invasion of Japanese China during World War 2 fulfill this AHC? If not, what are the other ways?
 
What would it take to retard any potential for "China" to become a significant economic, cultural, military, and political force in the world? Considering that today, China is known as a potential superpower, how drastic would the effects be?

By "China" you can either use the geographic landmass we now know as China today, or use the RoC/PRC

Would an American invasion of Japanese China during World War 2 fulfill this AHC? If not, what are the other ways?

China stays extremly antagonistic towards the US,and then the Sino-Soviet split escalates to full scale nuclear war,while the US agree not to interverne
 

WhoMadeWho

Banned
Have the Sino-Soviet border conflict somehow become a full blown war. Soviets destroy the PRC with nuclear weapons and conventional invasion. China falls to bits and possibly warlordism, it will take them a good fifty years to get to where the PRC was in 1980, I think.
 
Make War Lord Era, Civil War and Japanese occupation worse. And try avoid rise of communists/make them weaker. Then China might be very broken nation on end of 1940's and not rise by 2016 so powerful as in OTL.

Another way is Sino-Soviet War on 1960's.

Third way might be that China fall to new civil war after Mao's death.
 
With a POD right around 1900 we could fairly easily see the Qing not be replaced by a single power in China.

Tibet remains independent, perhaps with British 'help.' Uyghurstan becomes and remains independent thanks to the Russians. Far south China falls under French influence and ends up as several states. Manchuria exists, as does a somewhat larger Mongolia. Taiwan and other islands end up Japanese or independent.

All the above have historically been on the outskirts of China, and have considerable difference in culture and language. They should be very easy to break off the Qing and keep off. As independent states they'll be at most regional powers.

The region around the North China Plain is much harder to keep broken up. That area has always ended up under one rule for millennia. It is fairly ethnically, linguistically, and religiously homogenous. If one state exists on the plains natural borders is will keep a large part of China's population and historic prestige. Perhaps with economic exploitation by foreign powers, widespread disease and famine, civil war, and emigration, for the whole 20th century; you might keep that area down. It's population and natural resources alone mean that it will always eventually rise to regional power status, and in the long term I think middle or great power.
 
China prevented it's own rise. Chinese Communism is incompetent. The wealth is extremely unequally distributed, most people are very poor, they restrict mobility which stagnates the market and limits income and employment opportunities, and their GDP per capita sucks. Do not fear China. Fear a democratic, truly free market China. But do not fear the PRC. America is still the major economic superpower, and will remain so. The problem is that most people misread the situation. In no way is China surpassing or even competitive with the United States.
 
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KMT "wins" the Chinese Civil War, but after decades of being bloodied the Japanese and Communists, are not fit to run China. Imagine something like OTL Pakistan, where the government has little control over large sections of the country. Without land reform or effective population movement controls, hundreds of millions of people flee the countryside to live in slums around the major coastal cities. Unable to feed itself, China is dependent on foreign food imports, driving up the national debt. The population itself is spiraling out of control as most of China remains stuck in the second stage of the demographic transition.

But even this China would be culturally influential, due to its sheer size, population, and history. In fact, in the West, it might be more culturally influential, because while Sinophobia will still persist, China won't be associated with scary communism or closed off for decades and will instead be seen more like India is IOTL --- horribly poor and corrupt, but full of mystical wise people with ancient culture etc. etc. Without Cold War CIA backing, Westerners will care as little about Tibet as they do about Kashmir or Xinjiang. The island disputes will be seen as less of an existential threat to democracy or something and more as a silly internal Asian conflict that only graduate IR departments care about. No Western reporters will flock to Hong Kong and talk about imminent Revolution every time some snotty kid picks up an umbrella. In fact the entire genre of "speculate when China will magically become a democracy" won't exist at all.

This China will be popular, because it'll be just the way the West wants it --- poor, weak, and exploitable.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
considering that Rise of China is unique event that India, Indonesia or Brazil not able to duplicate this should be very easy.

delay china market reform for decade or two should be enough. China come at unusual opportunity to supply USA with cheap labor for industry.if its open too fast, it will be failed to compete with Japan and SK. if it too late, India or other country might steal its advantage.
 

thorr97

Banned
I think Little Red Bean's scenario is about the "best" way to prevent the rise of China without also requiring the deaths of millions of Chinese.

Without China having "gone Red" and with Mao's Communists defeated, there'd be no place for the Soviets to advance in Asia. Support for any "wars of national liberation" in South East Asia would be much more difficult for the Soviets to pull off as non-Communist China would now be sitting directly astride the best supply routes as opposed to Communist China actively aiding those supply routes. That would tend to make the whole of Asia a pretty much "lost cause" for Soviet exploitation. At least insofar as compared to OTL.

That, in turn, would take the international focus off of China and leave it, more or less, to its own devices. Development would therefore be stunted. This, especially if the KMT's hold on China was sufficiently weak that it couldn't unify the country the way Mao's Communists did. That "Pakistanian" comparison is especially apt.

China would be one of the "front line" nations in the War Against Communism but it'd be too big for the Soviets to take on and have little to gain for the West to go through either. The focus would remain in Europe across the Iron Curtain and in the other places the Soviets believed they could better exploit. China's becoming a corrupt and divided backwater would be in the Soviet's interest as well.
 
The leadership goes full Maoist in 1979 instead of pushing for reforms.


You have 800 million Chinese workers, there's no civil war and it's not pursuing insane ideological projects destroying the country... what do they do? As soon as they do anything at all you improve the situation. Western aligned means open for Western trade which is a big plus compared to OTL, even if it's highly corrupt you're setting it up for major growth.

The "pakistanisation" of Pakistan itself originates in tribal/familial and religious loyalty being more important than national loyalty with the intelligence agencies encouraging the development for its own gain, both of those things dont really exist in China before or after the war.
 
With a POD right around 1900 we could fairly easily see the Qing not be replaced by a single power in China.

Tibet remains independent, perhaps with British 'help.' Uyghurstan becomes and remains independent thanks to the Russians. Far south China falls under French influence and ends up as several states. Manchuria exists, as does a somewhat larger Mongolia. Taiwan and other islands end up Japanese or independent.

All the above have historically been on the outskirts of China, and have considerable difference in culture and language. They should be very easy to break off the Qing and keep off. As independent states they'll be at most regional powers.

The region around the North China Plain is much harder to keep broken up. That area has always ended up under one rule for millennia. It is fairly ethnically, linguistically, and religiously homogenous. If one state exists on the plains natural borders is will keep a large part of China's population and historic prestige. Perhaps with economic exploitation by foreign powers, widespread disease and famine, civil war, and emigration, for the whole 20th century; you might keep that area down. It's population and natural resources alone mean that it will always eventually rise to regional power status, and in the long term I think middle or great power.

Agreed

The North China Plain has a population of about 400M today (Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Beijing, Tianjin and half of Jiangsu and Anhui gives 390M). So people might not see it as inevitable that such a nation would become a superpower, but everyone would still wonder when they will reach their potential and become the most powerful east-asian country.

To achieve the goal of never becoming a superpower you'd have to either:

• Find a way to split them up in at least two pieces forever. Possibly forced immigration and massive religious conversion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that was kept in place by outside forces long enough. At least a hundred years. But it's very unlikely that it would not get nationalistic and re-merge at some point during that process.

• Make japan stronger than that—long term.
 
KMT "wins" the Chinese Civil War, but after decades of being bloodied the Japanese and Communists, are not fit to run China. Imagine something like OTL Pakistan, where the government has little control over large sections of the country. Without land reform or effective population movement controls, hundreds of millions of people flee the countryside to live in slums around the major coastal cities. Unable to feed itself, China is dependent on foreign food imports, driving up the national debt. The population itself is spiraling out of control as most of China remains stuck in the second stage of the demographic transition.

But even this China would be culturally influential, due to its sheer size, population, and history. In fact, in the West, it might be more culturally influential, because while Sinophobia will still persist, China won't be associated with scary communism or closed off for decades and will instead be seen more like India is IOTL --- horribly poor and corrupt, but full of mystical wise people with ancient culture etc. etc. Without Cold War CIA backing, Westerners will care as little about Tibet as they do about Kashmir or Xinjiang. The island disputes will be seen as less of an existential threat to democracy or something and more as a silly internal Asian conflict that only graduate IR departments care about. No Western reporters will flock to Hong Kong and talk about imminent Revolution every time some snotty kid picks up an umbrella. In fact the entire genre of "speculate when China will magically become a democracy" won't exist at all.

This China will be popular, because it'll be just the way the West wants it --- poor, weak, and exploitable.
This post is correct factually and IMO is the most plausible, but also reeks of totalitarian apologia that I can't help but criticize. The "scary communism" you mention (as if anti-commuism is the domain of evil white Anglo-Saxon) killed 100 million people and is still killing people in significant numbers. Sheesh, it's like the only way to be pro-China is to defend its regime, lest you be an ignorant foreigner at best and exploitation-minded westerner at worst.
 
This post is correct factually and IMO is the most plausible, but also reeks of totalitarian apologia that I can't help but criticize. The "scary communism" you mention (as if anti-commuism is the domain of evil white Anglo-Saxon) killed 100 million people and is still killing people in significant numbers. Sheesh, it's like the only way to be pro-China is to defend its regime, lest you be an ignorant foreigner at best and exploitation-minded westerner at worst.

Do you have a source for the 100 million number? The highest scholarly estimate I know for the death toll of the Great Leap Forward is 45 million. Even when the Cultural Revolution, land reform and all the other campaigns of political repression are included, the total number of deaths is probably not much more than 50 million. Also, 100 million would have been something like 1/6 of China's population in the 1960s. I don't see how the PRC could kill that many people and not collapse.

It is also unlikely that the KMT would be much better than the Communists. Chiang Kai Shek killed at least 500,00 people by deliberately flooding the Yellow River, an event which significantly contributed to the 1942-3 famine in Henan. The KMT also killed thousands in several anti-Communist purges and in the Taiwanese White Terror. If the KMT had won the civil war, the resultant white terror would probably have killed at least hundreds of thousands. Absent any sort of land reform, KMT-ruled China would experience immense poverty and inequality. In OTL India, tens of million people starved between 1947 and 1979, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar number of Chinese would have perished. China also saw significant increases in life expectancy and decreased death rates relative to India. That might not happen if the KMT had won.

This post should not be read as an endorsement of the Communists. The PRC's government has committed, and continues to commit, great crimes against the Chinese people. But that does not mean that the KMT would have been good
 
By purging Deng Xiaoping and other old guards permanently in 1967, there would not be any economic reform. China would be like North Korea in which people are misinformed and isolated.

Famines would be a regular occurrence but there was nothing people can do.
 
Do you have a source for the 100 million number? The highest scholarly estimate I know for the death toll of the Great Leap Forward is 45 million. Even when the Cultural Revolution, land reform and all the other campaigns of political repression are included, the total number of deaths is probably not much more than 50 million. Also, 100 million would have been something like 1/6 of China's population in the 1960s. I don't see how the PRC could kill that many people and not collapse.

It is also unlikely that the KMT would be much better than the Communists. Chiang Kai Shek killed at least 500,00 people by deliberately flooding the Yellow River, an event which significantly contributed to the 1942-3 famine in Henan. The KMT also killed thousands in several anti-Communist purges and in the Taiwanese White Terror. If the KMT had won the civil war, the resultant white terror would probably have killed at least hundreds of thousands. Absent any sort of land reform, KMT-ruled China would experience immense poverty and inequality. In OTL India, tens of million people starved between 1947 and 1979, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar number of Chinese would have perished. China also saw significant increases in life expectancy and decreased death rates relative to India. That might not happen if the KMT had won.

This post should not be read as an endorsement of the Communists. The PRC's government has committed, and continues to commit, great crimes against the Chinese people. But that does not mean that the KMT would have been good
100 million (at least, I should add) for communism worldwide. However note that in Frank Dikotter's book on the Great Leap Forward, he mentions that the 45 million figure is based on incomplete provincial CCP archives, so the real umber could be something like 60 million. Even then, the GLF was not the only destructive political campaign that the CCP has undertaken. The land reform campaign explicitly set out to destroy landlords and rich farmers, and killed millions of them. The anti-rightist and anti-intellectual campaigns of the 50s claimed more lives on top of that. I need not mention the ten-year-long Cultural Revolution.

The crimes of the KMT don't even hold a candle to the bonfire of Mao and his henchmen, and more to the point just looking at the fact that both regimes killed people completely ignores the historical context one would glean from looking at the wealth of research and historical examples that can be used to instantly compare the KMT with the CCP. The KMT for one was a military dictatorship that was always making some sort of progress to either repelling invading or rebel armies, introducing modern state and legislative institutions to reduce warlord interests, and improving the economy. The CCP by contrast was a group that, as it evolved into Mao's personal dictatorship, relied on mass campaigns and political vitriol instead of sound policy to keep itself legitimate. For instance, the Yellow River flood was tragic, probably a bad idea, and killed a lot of people, but it was far more likely to be a desperate measure taken against the raping and plundering Japanese, than a self-serving bid to gain political legitimacy for an embattled leader, like the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution near certainly were.

"Absent any sort of land reform" ignores that one of the first things the KMT did once it got control over Taiwan was to implement highly successful land reform. Chinese freedom of the press, by the way, was far more advanced in the year 1947 than it is in the PRC even today. Democratic processes and institutions were also being introduced at before and after WWII. The CCP has done hardly any of that even by the present day.

I'm not saying that the KMT would turn China into a massive Taiwan, or that it would even be ensured of success. I'm just noting that the behavior and structure of its regime was completely different and far less inclined to systematic mass murder than the CCP.

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Back to the OP's topic, another possibility would be that the Japanese successfully establish a puppet state in eastern China that actually has some agency and gains independence at the end of a much longer World War II. The communists meanwhile splinter into Maoist and pro-Soviet factions setting up camp in the northwest and northeast respectively. The KMT regime in Chongqing or whereabouts is discredited and becomes a mess similar to that of the old Beiyang Clique.

Eventually, the country comes together in a loose federation, with huge regional disparities in wealth, human rights, development, and loyalty to the center. Everyone views China as a sad India-like case, except with a more dramatic history.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Would an American invasion of Japanese China during World War 2 fulfill this AHC? If not, what are the other ways?

Interesting idea, I'd be curious to tease out what you had in mind when you wrote that. I can vaguely imagine some string of knock-ons or butterflies to such an event being bad news for China, but on the surface, it struck me as counter-intuitive- the American invasions of Germany, France, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, the Philippines and Okinawa in WWII don't seemed to have permanently ruined any of those territories.

By purging Deng Xiaoping and other old guards permanently in 1967, there would not be any economic reform. China would be like North Korea in which people are misinformed and isolated.

The China as North Korea analogy is in interesting. It also brings up the potential point that a China that continues to underperform economically for decades might still have disproportionately high military potential. China in OTL has grown immensely economically, and steadily grows more militarily capable. However, it seems whenever there is a direct guns-versus-butter trade-off since the late 70s, the PRC has chosen butter.

A China that is much weaker economically, but that is more militant and focused on military capabilities, could match or or exceed current day China at least in some areas. It could depress the broader East Asian region and its neighboring areas economically by putting a great big scare into markets.
 
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