Challenge: Turkey and China have reversed fates

What would it take for the fall of these two empires and subsequent post-imperial regimes to be different? That is, how could a strong modernizing group of non-aligned nationalists have taken power in China, and how could Turkey have suffered through weak democracy, civil war, and communism (or some other revolutionary ideology leading to dictatorship)?
 
What would it take for the fall of these two empires and subsequent post-imperial regimes to be different? That is, how could a strong modernizing group of non-aligned nationalists have taken power in China, and how could Turkey have suffered through weak democracy, civil war, and communism (or some other revolutionary ideology leading to dictatorship)?

For Turkey not having Ataturk around would be a major blow, the Treaty of Severes remains enforced with Wilson's Armenia surviving, Kurdistan breaking away and Greece takes Constantinople, all of Thrace and can hang on to parts of Anatolia. Without Ataturk's military guile and political acumen it's hard to see if anyone else could have held things together.

China is harder as it was such a mess for most of the Century. Maybe if Sun Yat Sen is able to defeat Yuan Shikai and other warlords to confirm ROC control over most of China then it's possible that such a group of moderates may come to the fore in the following years. I think you'd have to prevent the Japanese invasion so that more resources aren't swallowed up by war expenditure.
 

RousseauX

Donor
China is harder as it was such a mess for most of the Century. Maybe if Sun Yat Sen is able to defeat Yuan Shikai and other warlords to confirm ROC control over most of China then it's possible that such a group of moderates may come to the fore in the following years. I think you'd have to prevent the Japanese invasion so that more resources aren't swallowed up by war expenditure.
The first half of your paragraph sort of provides the solution: if China isn't divided then the Japanese probably doesn't invade.
 
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