As all written Chinese is Mandarin, its not that big a problem. Cantonese speakers just pronounce the pictograms differently ( there will be local idioms that can cause issues of course ) , Word of warning, many Chinese get upset by people calling Cantonese a language as they consider it merely a dialect of Chinese.
America Be Watching With The Popcorn: A Sino-Soviet War TL
- Thread starter theflyingmongoose
- Start date
the PRC uses simplified Chinese, and Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional Chinese. this wouldn't affect things much tho as the Mainlanders should readapt to traditional Chinese just fine. If you write out how Cantonese speakers and Mandarin speakers speak, the results would be very different. this is one of the problems Cantonese speakers have when writing 'proper' Chinese, since it follows mandarin grammer while Cantonese at times use words that Mandarin doesn't have.
PS: the situation of Cantonese v Mandarin is like Scottish vs English. If you say Cantonese is just a dialet you lose a lot of nuance. If Cantonese and Mandarin is written with an alphabet, no one would say they're the same. There are grammatical differences between Cantonese and Mandarin, which makes it much more distant than Scottish/English or Bavarian/German.
I didn’t know that Taiwan delayed democracy for so long, wow. Makes me think of Singapore and to a lesser extent South Korea in regards to having an “enlightened despot” build up the country before democratizing (gross oversimplification, I know).
In regards the HK and Macau though, the British hand-off is still a few decades off and may go to the ROC on time. Macau is a weird one though since Portugal tried to integrate the country as a part of Portugal proper but the locals didn’t see things that way. With the current situation in China I wonder if that will shift attitudes to make the Macanese drift toward staying with Portugal.
Eventually they are going to get annexed, if China recover its dignity.
I don't know enough about the cities to say how easily they might be persuaded, but yeah, depends what condition the rest of China is in.
Hey, I think India will be a far greater economic power than OTL TTL. Even if its economic liberalization happens as late as OTL which is questionable given that the Soviet Union is losing more international influence, it should likely end up being the prime "factory of the world."
China will be able to rebuild I am sure, but I just cannot see it be where American firms would line up enthusiastically to invest in after all that happened.
China will be able to rebuild I am sure, but I just cannot see it be where American firms would line up enthusiastically to invest in after all that happened.
Well, yeah, American consumers will probably be pretty anti-nuclear after this and radioactive goods from China obviously won't be in high demand.
China would probably be more service-based than goods-based TTL when they recover due to that stigma.
Even then it probably won’t get a lot of business for a good long while depending on how long the warlord period lasts.
It is more likely modern day China will be like a massive "Cambodia," a country that is recovering and indeed rebuilding from a tragic recent past but cannot be called an "economic hub" even if it is truley improving quite a lot.
India is quite naturally poised for success in this timeline, and with China out will have a far larger sphere of influence.
Undoubtedly for India but to you gotta give some credit to the ROC since they’ll have western backing. Cambodia doesn’t have that kind of support as far as I know
I wonder how will the India - Pakistan relationship develop considering China is destroyed.
Well yes, I more mean it in the sense of "brighter future" not neccesarily meaning "global economic hub"
To add to the talk about India, Pakistan will be in an inherently weaker position without China. Without Chinese help, it is also unlikely their nuclear program will happen the same way. Quite frankly, I could see India "kill off" Pakistan into several divided states in a fast war TTL. I could easily see fully Indian Kashmir for sure.
The feeling when Afghanistan is seen as the more stable country... O_O
Quite frankly I could easily see if the Soviet Afghan war is averted if Pakistan gets military crushed its Pashtun areas opting to join Afghanistan
That's a golden scenario for India.
What do you guys believe would happen to Bangladesh in a scenario where India dismantles Pakistan? Puppet-state? Finlandization? Possible annexation? EU-like agreement?
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