Challenge: "China First" Policy

Germaniac

Donor
Alright, My challenge to you is to make China the main theater of the United States in World War Two. The United States must be at war with Germany/Italy and Japan, as well as the United States entering the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor so there is your earliest POD December 7th.

I'm currently writing an outline for an American China campaign but having trouble coming up with a good POD.
 
Maybe a Japanses invasion of Siberia reaching Bering.

Pretty mad I know but interesting :p
 
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Alright, My challenge to you is to make China the main theater of the United States in World War Two. The United States must be at war with Germany/Italy and Japan, as well as the United States entering the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor so there is your earliest POD December 7th.

I'm currently writing an outline for an American China campaign but having trouble coming up with a good POD.

The trouble is that there isn't much reason for the US to fight Japan in China: you go after the head, not the tail. Bringing the war to the Japanese in Japan is the only way they are going to be knocked out of the war: the only reason to send troops to China is to make sure Chiang isn't going to give up and make a deal with Japan. And Europe is always going to be a top priority since, 1.) Hitler from the Pyrennes to the Urals is worse than Japanese east Asia and 2.) Stalin from Vladivostok to Paris is worse than Japanese East Asia. I really don't think this can work with post-Pearl PODs.

Now, for earlier PODs, Fascist China (the heirs of a more successful Yuan Shi-Kai) as an axis ally...

Bruce
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
If you really want a Japan vs. America war that includes fighting in China, you could have the Panay Incident spill over into all out war.

Granted, this won't fix the overall problem of going for the head rather than the tail (as Munro so aptly put it), but it could possibly make the conflict more Sinocentric, especially if one of the (stated) war aims is to evict Japan from China (and probably Formosa and Korea as well).
 
Wouldn't the USA have a problem even getting land forces to China in the first place? Japan dominated much of the pacific at the time after all.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Wouldn't the USA have a problem even getting land forces to China in the first place? Japan dominated much of the pacific at the time after all.

That's the big issue IMO. Why would the US invade China when they could just invade Japan?
 
A Bit Off-Topic

One possible POD of China First is DoS "Dixie" section arranging for more substantial cooperation and coordination with the Communist guerrillas as the true expression of Chinese nationalism.
Jiang Kai Shek approves of letting the Reds get mowed down as shock troops while he marshals his strength for the coming civil war. Unfortunately, as IOTL, the peasantry takes one look at who's taking the risks against the Eastern Devils and tilts toward the Reds barring some sociopolitical epiphany on the KMT's part, (land redistribution, progressive education policies, credible anti-corruption campaigns, etc.)
I don't know enough about the minor players in both KMT and CP to propose
some strange alliances forming from joint ops against the Japanese, poss moderating the fratricide post-WWII, and coup attempts against Jiang or Mao in the name of national unity.
Oh, and Douglas McArthur's plane gets intercepted and shot down as Yamamoto's was in IOTL, vastly increasing Aliied effectiveness in the Chinese theater. Whaddaya think?:D:D
 

Hendryk

Banned
Wouldn't the USA have a problem even getting land forces to China in the first place? Japan dominated much of the pacific at the time after all.
If the POD is the Panay incident, or anything else before 1940, US forces could get to China via French Indochina.
 

Paul MacQ

Donor
Ok you have US go to war against Japan because of Panay interesting date

The Panay incident was a Japanese attack on the United States Navy gunboat Panay while she was anchored in the Yangtze River outside of Nanjing on December 12, 1937.

Not a time the Japanese navy is really up to taking on US, as mentioned in a cople of posts, The Japanese Hit the US at its Srongest possible strength vs the US navy in Dec 1941

So Japans gets it's taken out by Dec 1941 with the US helping the Chinese. Would have been a rather interesting war.
 
Ok you have US go to war against Japan because of Panay interesting date

The Panay incident was a Japanese attack on the United States Navy gunboat Panay while she was anchored in the Yangtze River outside of Nanjing on December 12, 1937.

Not a time the Japanese navy is really up to taking on US, as mentioned in a cople of posts, The Japanese Hit the US at its Srongest possible strength vs the US navy in Dec 1941

So Japans gets it's taken out by Dec 1941 with the US helping the Chinese. Would have been a rather interesting war.

Would also raise some interesting butterflies. What happens to the war in Europe if the USA doesn't have Pearl Harbour to bring it into it? Of course this USA won't be as isolationist as the OTL one, but still.
 
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