China in WW1

Let's say that the Qing Dynasty doesn't collapse in 1912, but manages to successfully hold itself together. While there will be some butterflies from that, World War One will still occur for some reason or another; the underlying causes of the war will all still be there. So what role would China play in WW1? They'd have disputes with some Entene powers--Russia, Japan, and to an extent Britain and France. IOTL many opportunistic nations joined WW1, and China had an intense domestic anti-foreigner feeling against the Western powers. With their internal position a better than OTL but still wobbly, I could see a pragmatic Chinese government joining the war not only to turn back the effects of the unequal treaties but also to gain domestic support.

Does anybody know anything about the Chinese military in the early 20th century? Because even if they are inferior, Russia, France and Britain would have difficulty getting large amounts of troops to the area, especially when compared to the amount of troops China could muster. The question is how good of a fight will Japan put up? Even if China isn't majorly successful, the need for the Entente to send troops to China could tilt the balance to the Central Powers.
 
I think China did join the war, entering the side of the Entente. I don't think this was anything more than symbolic, though.
 

Thande

Donor
I think China did join the war, entering the side of the Entente. I don't think this was anything more than symbolic, though.

Actually they did play a significant role, just not a military one. China sent a LOT of people to France to work behind the lines as support and replace French workers who had been conscripted to fight.
 
But how would the forces sent to fight the Qing effect the rest of the war?

If China joins the Entente, none of the Central Powers are going to send forces to fight them. Even if they could move a force to China and keep it supplied despite a hostile British Navy controlling the seas, the Central Powers won't bother with what they would view as a colonial sideshow when the war is being won and lost in Europe.

If China joins the Central Powers, then things get interesting. Odds are, Japan gets to do most of the fighting; Russia and the other Entente powers already have their hands full, while Japan was mostly sitting out of the war after snapping up the German colonies. That could go badly for China.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
If China joins the Central Powers, then things get interesting. Odds are, Japan gets to do most of the fighting; Russia and the other Entente powers already have their hands full, while Japan was mostly sitting out of the war after snapping up the German colonies. That could go badly for China.

Indeed. We could see the entire Second Sino-Japanese War 20-odd years earlier, without all the bad press for the Japanese it generated in OTL - after all, this time the Chinese are The Enemy (tm).
 
But that was during a warlord period of Chinese history. It couldn't go that badly for the Qing...right?
I guess you haven't heard of the First Sino-Japanese War, have you? For the record, that was between Japan and Qing China ... and was an utter disaster for China. In fact, the crushing defeat China suffered was a big part of why the Qing dynasty collapsed in the first place.
 
I guess you haven't heard of the First Sino-Japanese War, have you? For the record, that was between Japan and Qing China ... and was an utter disaster for China. In fact, the crushing defeat China suffered was a big part of why the Qing dynasty collapsed in the first place.

Oh I see, so every war China fights with Japan will have the same outcome as that one. Thanks for the input.
 
Regarding which side the Qing join in on, maybe they will vacillate back and forth sort of like how they did in the Boxer Rebellion, inevitably ending up on the losing side. However, those decisions would depend heavily on who is ruling in Puyi's stead, since the Dowager Empress Cixi was already dead by this time. That lady was pretty crazy though, what with ruling an entire country with absolutely no idea of how politics worked.
 
Oh I see, so every war China fights with Japan will have the same outcome as that one. Thanks for the input.
The rudeness was quite unnecessary.

The way war between Qing China and Japan went in 1895 does serve as a decent starting point for how a hypothetical war between them would go in 1914. For starters, the fact that the war was an utter disaster for China makes it clear that a lot needs to be changed if China wants a chance to actually win the next war. Completely reworking their entire military in the space of less than two decades is going to be quite a challenge. The fact that Cixi was incredibly anti-reform doesn't help in the slightest.

There's the question of how much the Qing would actually be able to accomplish while also having to deal with European meddling, not to mention the fact that Japan will probably do everything it can to hinder a Chinese modernization effort. The Qing also have some rather crippling internal stability problems that would make any sort of modernization push difficult to pull off.
 
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