Chang Kai Sheik Victorious

This is all very well and good being discussed, but the best discussion of it I have seen is the 'China Without Tears' scenario in 'What If?'
Anyone interested should read that, or else how bout someone write a timeline for it and see where it tkaes them, I considered it, but am currently busy with other writing


that's the one I read. though it was intresting, but the way the USSR was portrayed seemed a little off.
 
This is all very well and good being discussed, but the best discussion of it I have seen is the 'China Without Tears' scenario in 'What If?'
Anyone interested should read that, or else how bout someone write a timeline for it and see where it tkaes them, I considered it, but am currently busy with other writing
I read that story. The problem is the author makes the assumption that if Chiang don't attack a Mao ruled Manchuria then everything will be peace and sunshine until ROC out performs Manchuria economically. He also assumes Mao would sit quietly taking orders from Moscow.

What he neglects is the ROC economy was disintegrating rapidly and pro-Communist sympathies were growing in the rest of the country as a result. Chiang wanted to win the war before things get really out of control.

Manchuria had half of China's heavy industry. It was a major industrial center of the Japanese empire. Given a few years Mao's forces would be greatly strengthened and making their move south. There was nothing Stalin could do about it. Therefore it was essential Chiang prevent Mao from gaining control of Manchuria. The idea that peace could last with Manchuria in Mao's hands is most misinformed.
 
I read that story. The problem is the author makes the assumption that if Chiang don't attack a Mao ruled Manchuria then everything will be peace and sunshine until ROC out performs Manchuria economically. He also assumes Mao would sit quietly taking orders from Moscow.

What he neglects is the ROC economy was disintegrating rapidly and pro-Communist sympathies were growing in the rest of the country as a result. Chiang wanted to win the war before things get really out of control.

Manchuria had half of China's heavy industry. It was a major industrial center of the Japanese empire. Given a few years Mao's forces would be greatly strengthened and making their move south. There was nothing Stalin could do about it. Therefore it was essential Chiang prevent Mao from gaining control of Manchuria. The idea that peace could last with Manchuria in Mao's hands is most misinformed.

He does actually postulate that Mosocw would simply get rid of Mao in favour of a more subordinate Red China leader, but yes Chiang and Mao would never maintain peace with each other for long if they both held large sections of China, heck they could hardly keep from fighting each other when the Japanese were close to wiping them out.
 
I read that story. The problem is the author makes the assumption that if Chiang don't attack a Mao ruled Manchuria then everything will be peace and sunshine until ROC out performs Manchuria economically. He also assumes Mao would sit quietly taking orders from Moscow.

What he neglects is the ROC economy was disintegrating rapidly and pro-Communist sympathies were growing in the rest of the country as a result. Chiang wanted to win the war before things get really out of control.

Manchuria had half of China's heavy industry. It was a major industrial center of the Japanese empire. Given a few years Mao's forces would be greatly strengthened and making their move south. There was nothing Stalin could do about it. Therefore it was essential Chiang prevent Mao from gaining control of Manchuria. The idea that peace could last with Manchuria in Mao's hands is most misinformed.

Then what about Korea? South Korea was agricultural while North Korea was more industrial but South Korea is the more powerful of the two. And there is an another possiblitity that the Nationalists could push on to Manchuria all the way to the Soviet border.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
Then what about Korea? South Korea was agricultural while North Korea was more industrial but South Korea is the more powerful of the two. And there is an another possiblitity that the Nationalists could push on to Manchuria all the way to the Soviet border.

Wrong. Wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong-wrongity-wrong-wrong-wrong!

Economically? Yes. Diplomatically? Of course. Militarily? South Korea would have it's ass handed to itself.

Could NK win a long-term war? No. But they would beat SK itself into a bloody pulp before any significant number of allies could arrive.

It's worse with China. Why? Because the US won't go to war over Chiang(or some other mini-tyrant). China is too important a matter to go to war over. That sounds odd, yes, but it's because war in Europe isn't good for anyone. Certainly not for the USA.

America can deal with a Communist China, obviously. It can't deal with an angry Soviet Union.
 
Mao was a monster; Chiang was simply a Fascist thug. Unfortunately, the very monstrosity of Mao and the mundane hohum thuggery of Chiang would probably mean that a Nationalist victory see NOT today's China. But today's India at best, or yesterday's India more probably, or yesterday's Latin America at worst. Deng was able to transform China precisely becasue Mao was such a monster; there were no deadweight landlords or monopolistic industrialists left to misdirect Chinese modernization efforts. It's no accident that the Asian miracles happened under American neo-colonialism. Without the US to moderate domestic elites, rightwing modernization efforts tend to look like 80's Brazil at best, or Mexico at worst. We forget that the KMT Taiwan became an Asian miracle only after severe US pressure forced it to liberalize. Nationalist China would not be an American stoogie. It would be a proud Third World nation like India and liable to follow autarchic model of development like India than an export-driven model that the Asian Tigers followed. The history of large nonWestern countries in modernizing is not a pretty one. To date, only India and China have done well, and it took India a very long time before it would work and great deal of human tragedy in China before it worked there. Elsewhere, it has been a mixed record. The Brazilian experience is probably closer to what Nationalist China would've looked like. It was a rightwing dictatorship, large with numerous natural resources and people, and the corruption was endemic. The result of the Brazilian "miracle" was impressive growth in GDP, but also one of the largest disparity in income distribution in the world. The vast majority of Brazilians never got not a lira out of the so-called "miracle" that enriched only the teeniest numbers of elites. KMT China probably would've been the same: The ultrarich at the top and the endless sea of the destitute poor.
 
Presumably the Soviets aren't inclined to let the PDRC in Manchuria become a nuclear power. But does Jiang go nuclear, and if so when?
 
Mao was a monster; Chiang was simply a Fascist thug. Unfortunately, the very monstrosity of Mao and the mundane hohum thuggery of Chiang would probably mean that a Nationalist victory see NOT today's China. But today's India at best, or yesterday's India more probably, or yesterday's Latin America at worst. Deng was able to transform China precisely becasue Mao was such a monster; there were no deadweight landlords or monopolistic industrialists left to misdirect Chinese modernization efforts. It's no accident that the Asian miracles happened under American neo-colonialism. Without the US to moderate domestic elites, rightwing modernization efforts tend to look like 80's Brazil at best, or Mexico at worst. We forget that the KMT Taiwan became an Asian miracle only after severe US pressure forced it to liberalize. Nationalist China would not be an American stoogie. It would be a proud Third World nation like India and liable to follow autarchic model of development like India than an export-driven model that the Asian Tigers followed. The history of large nonWestern countries in modernizing is not a pretty one. To date, only India and China have done well, and it took India a very long time before it would work and great deal of human tragedy in China before it worked there. Elsewhere, it has been a mixed record. The Brazilian experience is probably closer to what Nationalist China would've looked like. It was a rightwing dictatorship, large with numerous natural resources and people, and the corruption was endemic. The result of the Brazilian "miracle" was impressive growth in GDP, but also one of the largest disparity in income distribution in the world. The vast majority of Brazilians never got not a lira out of the so-called "miracle" that enriched only the teeniest numbers of elites. KMT China probably would've been the same: The ultrarich at the top and the endless sea of the destitute poor.

If the KMT government continues who's to say there won't be a peaceful revolution resulting in reformist KMT members seizing power and having reforms similar to Deng? Besides the US can threaten China by threatening to cut off aid.
 
Manchuria had half of China's heavy industry. It was a major industrial center of the Japanese empire. Given a few years Mao's forces would be greatly strengthened and making their move south. There was nothing Stalin could do about it.

Beg pardon?

The Soviets respond by cutting off aid to Mao, as America gets bogged down in a massive Vietnam.
 
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