China is capitalist during the Cold War

The common problem with these KMT wins the civil war threads is the assumption winning means Communism disappear from the country. That wont happen unless the Communists were totally defeated in the 1920s. After WWII the best the KMT could do is contain the Communists to Manchuria.

Communist China definitely supports North Korea’s war of unification. They can’t afford Korean unification under American allied regime. Mao probably throw in early and invade South Korea along side North Korea. US may not intervene in this scenario given the odds are overwhelming and no domino theory. Korea is united under the Communists. Soviets establish naval and airbases in Korea.

Nationalist China demands the French out of Vietnam and backs a friendly anti-Communist regime. Ho Chi Min fights a war of insurgency, but probably loses cut off from Soviet aid. US designate China as a major ally to supress Communism in Southeast Asia.

The occupation of Japan lasts into the late 1950s like the occupation of Germany. Communist Chinese and Koreans infiltrate to stir up revolution there but this is successfully defeated.

Soviet military support for Communist China results in another civil war the 60s or 70s. It would look a lot like a bigger Vietnam War with Communist guerillas fighting government forces in central China. Soviets deploy combat aircraft in Manchuria and Korea to defend their airspace. US may end up direcly involved with ground troops and eventually withdraws in frustration. However “Vietnamization” of KMT forces probably succeeds as the much larger Nationalist China should be able to handle it with American weapons. The war ends with status quo ante bellum because Soviets threaten war if Manchuria is invaded. An uneasy peace is maintained.

With the end of the Cold War, impoverished Communist China collapses and the right wing dictatorship of Nationalist China liberalizes, resulting in reunification in the 1990s. The economy takes off afterwards. Overall present day ROC is comparable to TTL PRC in development and overall GDP. Economic advantages of capitalism in the south is offset by decades of highly destructive civil war. OTL ROC may not be fully democratic but have some sort of managed democracy like Turkey with some similar Erdogan like strongman questioning the continued value of alliance with Washington.
Communist Korea in a nationalist China timeline? I thought I would be reunited under anti-communist rule with help of China and the USA.
 
I sort of agree with you but also disagree. Taiwan was even as late as the mid 1950s was an economic basket case. South Korea after the Korean war was a mess far bigger in rubble then Red China.

If you look at this graph
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeau..._per_capita_of_north_korea_south_korea_japan/
what you will see is that Red China is the exception. The other governments have also a history of corruption, bad administration and major military expenditure but each of them was producing major economic growth. Red China is an outlier and I suggest that much of it was due to bad economic decisions and controls made by the communist.

So under the KMT, without the one-child policy, China has a bigger population and it has per head a richer population = A much larger GDP then NOW.

Taiwan in the late 1950s was more advanced than all of China. The Japanese built the necessary infrastructures and put everything in place for growth. If Taiwan was a basket case, then it was because of KMT mismanagement. If you cannot manage something given to you on a silver platter, then you cannot manage post 1945 China. All the Taiwan infrastructure and institutions would have to be thoroughly rebuilt on Mainland China. Even if the KMT can get export oriented growth started in the 1950s (I do not believe so but let us assume) and they start racking up trade surpluses, then what makes you think the US will not have a trade war with China in the 70s and 80s...what makes you think KMT China will not have their own Japanese similar bubble burst.

In regards to population, if the KMT start development earlier, then more urbanization will happen in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. A KMT China will likely have a lower population than today's China.
The CCP started reforms in 1980 with a population of 1 billion. If the KMT start development in the 1950s around 500 million and this development goes well with earlier urbanization, then I could see China's population be lower than it is today.
 
Taiwan in the late 1950s was more advanced than all of China. The Japanese built the necessary infrastructures and put everything in place for growth. If Taiwan was a basket case, then it was because of KMT mismanagement. If you cannot manage something given to you on a silver platter, then you cannot manage post 1945 China. All the Taiwan infrastructure and institutions would have to be thoroughly rebuilt on Mainland China. Even if the KMT can get export oriented growth started in the 1950s (I do not believe so but let us assume) and they start racking up trade surpluses

,.

Do you really need to be an economic brilliant to produce better economic figures then Red Chinese did? If you have less taxes, less collective farms, more private companies, fewer government enterprises, less time spent on propaganda and you will see an instant improvement.



then what makes you think the US will not have a trade war with China in the 70s and 80s...what makes you think KMT China will not have their own Japanese similar bubble burst..

It probably will, the Japanese bubble happened only after Japan achieved a level comparable to the US, so China has a long way to go? As well as that China is in the front line of the Cold War.



In regards to population, if the KMT start development earlier, then more urbanization will happen in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. A KMT China will likely have a lower population than today's China.
The CCP started reforms in 1980 with a population of 1 billion. If the KMT start development in the 1950s around 500 million and this development goes well with earlier urbanization, then I could see China's population be lower than it is today.

Why the baby boom took place in the US at that time?

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/taiwan-population/
In 1950 Taiwan had about 8 million people in 2000 about 22.6 million

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/china-population/
In 1950 China had about 600 million in 2000 1,283 million

Taiwan population growth is just over 30% faster in that period. Put that extra into China and we have just under half a billion more Chinese.
 
Communist Korea in a nationalist China timeline? I thought I would be reunited under anti-communist rule with help of China and the USA.
North Korea (if it is established at all in a TL where the USSR doesn't help establish the PRC in Manchuria) was established by the Soviets, and without a Korean War to plant the ideological impetus for Juche and a Communist China to play off of, North Korea likely remains a Soviet satellite state, like an Asiatic extension of the Warsaw Pact.

So it'd probably untouchable despite being sandwiched between two anti-Communist states, but also likely reunites with South Korea when the USSR loses its western satellites (and is also a bit less of an economic basket case, making unification easier).
 
Do you really need to be an economic brilliant to produce better economic figures then Red Chinese did? If you have less taxes, less collective farms, more private companies, fewer government enterprises, less time spent on propaganda and you will see an instant improvement.





It probably will, the Japanese bubble happened only after Japan achieved a level comparable to the US, so China has a long way to go? As well as that China is in the front line of the Cold War.





Why the baby boom took place in the US at that time?

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/taiwan-population/
In 1950 Taiwan had about 8 million people in 2000 about 22.6 million

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/china-population/
In 1950 China had about 600 million in 2000 1,283 million

Taiwan population growth is just over 30% faster in that period. Put that extra into China and we have just under half a billion more Chinese.



KMT China will have fewer government enterprises...I laughed at this claim. It will not be true because https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v07/d997

Any industry requiring heavy capital expenditure will have KMT state owned enterprises. Expect state owned enterprises in the machinery, shipbuilding, auto, etc. KMT will have state monopolies in the telecom, defense, etc...similar to the CCP today. KMT, as the chinese government, will enter any industry it likes and the line between state owned and private will not always be clear in China...like the CCP today. Of course, you will also have private entrepreneurs. The KMT will have legions of state owned enterprises, hopefully they are more friendly to the private sector. The KMT intended to treat their state owned enterprises like private companies but hey...what is to say that cronyism cannot prevail here. Instead of Communist bosses, you have right wing patronage.


KMT cannot turn China into a big Taiwan. Best case scenario (not most likely) will result in a Poland level of development. Furthermore, the assumption that a KMT China will be the largest economy assumes that the KMT will have huge growth from 1950 to today. If the KMT creates an export boom in the 1950s, expect a trade tension with the US in the 70s or 80s. Japan got flack from the US OTL with their trade surplus, so expect the same with a large, most noticeable, KMT China. KMT China may even max out and stagnate from the 80s onwards and may even see GDP fall. Heck, they may even get hit with a recession of the 1997 Asian financial crises. Expecting KMT China to be like Taiwan or South Korea is not reasonable. I expect it to be a few years ahead of OTL China.

The US baby boom was created by soldiers returning home. KMT China may not have the Taiwan population growth levels. We can only assume. Earlier growth and development may create a similar but much less drastic effect as the CCPs one child policy.
 
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In my opinion, nationalist didn't have to win the civil for china to implement capitalism during cold war era.

If Stalin had a gut feeling that Mao would be an issue for Soviet Union in next 10 years and decided to kill Mao during Mao's visit to Moscow in early 1950, the chinese communist leadership would definitely abandon Soviet style economic system and started economic reform right after Stalin's death.

I recall an article stated that Liu Shaoqing met business leaders in Tianjin in earlier 1949 and promised them that China would not implement Soviet economic system. Liu was criticized by Mao soon after. With Mao and Stalin's death, there would be nothing to prevent central leadership to implement capitalism in a different name.

However, American and western would still be hostile to China due to Korean war. Vietnamese Communist had to choose chinese style if they wanted any helps.
 
How would China's automotive industry likely develop under capitalism compared to OTL China (and Taiwan)?

Would shanzhai be butterflied away under a capitalist China?

Taiwan has Luxgen and from the 1950s, the KMT decided to heavily protect their infant auto industry. A KMT auto industry in China will not have the auto expertise of the Japanese. They will try to protect the industry as well. shanzhai would still exist. Even Japan copied in the 60s, 70s...South Korea also copied western technology during their development period. KMT China will copy, reverse engineer, and even pirate. Taiwan in OTL was infamous for piracy and bootlegging until they tackled the problem effectively in the mid 80s (around 1986).

KMT China will develop with weak intellectual property protection. Look at the history of industrialization...you will find that many countries had weak IP protections during that phase. US 19th century, Meiji and post war Japan, post war South Korea, post war Taiwan, 19th century Germany....any country that industrialized engaged in some level of unfair trade practice (protection, subsidies, piracy, copying other products, reverse engineering, and in some cases, IP theft and industrial espionage).
 
Taiwan has Luxgen and from the 1950s, the KMT decided to heavily protect their infant auto industry. A KMT auto industry in China will not have the auto expertise of the Japanese. They will try to protect the industry as well. shanzhai would still exist. Even Japan copied in the 60s, 70s...South Korea also copied western technology during their development period. KMT China will copy, reverse engineer, and even pirate. Taiwan in OTL was infamous for piracy and bootlegging until they tackled the problem effectively in the mid 80s (around 1986).

KMT China will develop with weak intellectual property protection. Look at the history of industrialization...you will find that many countries had weak IP protections during that phase. US 19th century, Meiji and post war Japan, post war South Korea, post war Taiwan, 19th century Germany....any country that industrialized engaged in some level of unfair trade practice (protection, subsidies, piracy, copying other products, reverse engineering, and in some cases, IP theft and industrial espionage).

Shanzhai issue aside could see ATL Chinese initially building licensed built cars from Western carmakers (akin to Hino Motors with Renault, Isuzu with Rootes, etc), with GM establishing a better (possibly near OTL Volkswagen in China type) foothold in the country and capitalizing on the high esteem the Chinese apparently held for the Buick marque.
 
Shanzhai issue aside could see ATL Chinese initially building licensed built cars from Western carmakers (akin to Hino Motors with Renault, Isuzu with Rootes, etc), with GM establishing a better (possibly near OTL Volkswagen in China type) foothold in the country and capitalizing on the high esteem the Chinese apparently held for the Buick marque.

Possibly. I could definitely see Japan enter the market as well. KMT China can make Japan transfer technology as a means of war reparations. KMT China will serve as an important market for Japan and the Asian tigers, reducing their reliance on the US. The KMT government will also set up state owned auto companies too.
 

Marc

Donor
Meanwhile the People's Republic of China (North) makes the KMT's existence miserable.

And, anyone up to trying to figure out what happens to Tibet?
 
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Meanwhile the People's Republic of China (North) makes the KMT's existence miserable.

And, anyone up to trying to figure out what happens to Tibet?
Assuming the rest of the world is still broadly the same, China still annexes it. Perhaps a bit later as Chiang struggles to centralize his rule over the warlords.
 
KMT China will have fewer government enterprises...I laughed at this claim. It will not be true because https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v07/d997.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v07/d997

As late as 1999, when I was in China most people worked for government-owned companies, this was certainly not true of Tawain.


Any industry requiring heavy capital expenditure will have KMT state owned enterprises.

I doubt this, patronage is likely but this is something else.

Expect state owned enterprises in the machinery, shipbuilding, auto, etc. KMT will have state monopolies in the telecom, defense, etc...similar to the CCP today. KMT, as the chinese government, will enter any industry it likes and the line between state owned and private will not always be clear in China...like the CCP today. Of course, you will also have private entrepreneurs. The KMT will have legions of state owned enterprises, hopefully they are more friendly to the private sector. The KMT intended to treat their state owned enterprises like private companies but hey...what is to say that cronyism cannot prevail here. Instead of Communist bosses, you have right wing patronage. .

There will certainly be much of this, it still will be much more efficient than under Red China.

KMT cannot turn China into a big Taiwan. Best case scenario (not most likely) will result in a Poland level of development. Furthermore, the assumption that a KMT China will be the largest economy assumes that the KMT will have huge growth from 1950 to today. If the KMT creates an export boom in the 1950s, expect a trade tension with the US in the 70s or 80s. Japan got flack from the US OTL with their trade surplus, so expect the same with a large, most noticeable, KMT China. KMT China may even max out and stagnate from the 80s onwards and may even see GDP fall. Heck, they may even get hit with a recession of the 1997 Asian financial crises. Expecting KMT China to be like Taiwan or South Korea is not reasonable. I expect it to be a few years ahead of OTL China. .

Certainly, something like this will happen too. It is still a much richer China

The US baby boom was created by soldiers returning home. KMT China may not have the Taiwan population growth levels. We can only assume. Earlier growth and development may create a similar but much less drastic effect as the CCPs one child policy.

This baby boom was worldwide, Taiwan's was starting before the economic boom hit without the controls the communist had, it will happen.
 
As late as 1999, when I was in China most people worked for government-owned companies, this was certainly not true of Tawain.




I doubt this, patronage is likely but this is something else.



There will certainly be much of this, it still will be much more efficient than under Red China.



Certainly, something like this will happen too. It is still a much richer China



This baby boom was worldwide, Taiwan's was starting before the economic boom hit without the controls the communist had, it will happen.

The KMT ruled Taiwan under martial law as a one party dictatorship. Before coming to Taiwan, the KMT introduced a democratic constitution in 1946, meant for all of China (including Taiwan) and held elections in 1948 (though opposition parties were curtailed). The KMT in Taiwan always intended to return to the Mainland so the martial law was intended to be temporary. Furthermore, the dictatorship the KMT ran on Taiwan was driven by a siege mentality. The KMT winning the Civil war by completely destroying the CCP will feel very different. Chiang and the KMT will run China MORE OPENLY than what they did in Taiwan, a mix of authoritarianism and democracy.

In Taiwan, the KMT were surrounded by Taiwanese natives who had business clout. They chose to run an economy focused on small and medium sized businesses instead of huge corporations, who they deemed as a threat to their rule. A KMT victory in China will still create lots of bigger state owned enterprises. KMT China economically will be different from KMT Taiwan in that there will be a larger state owned enterprise presence. KMT China will see lots of employment in state owned enterprises but they will liberalize those enterprises a lot sooner and earlier than CCP China. Land reform will turn landowners into shareholders of state owned enterprises.

Also let us assume that KMT China follows the Taiwanese baby boom trend. What if KMT China encounters economic stagnation in the 1970s and 1980s...would GDP growth eventually get eaten away by the extra population growth without controls...this can impact the GDP per capita.
 
Soviet military support for Communist China results in another civil war the 60s or 70s.

Why would the Soviets support the Communists?

Sure, the Soviets flipped from their prior support of the Nationalists during WW2, leading them to support Mao during the last phase of OTL's civil war, but even then the Soviets weren't exactly whole-hearted in it. In this scenario, supporting the Communists would be committing themselves to start a war with a major regional power that is bound to pull the US in to some degree. Also, the odds are that at least some special privileges will remain to the Soviets (if not all of them) from the treaties China negotiated during the days of the Sino-Japanese war when the Soviets prised many economic and political concessions from the Chinese, starting a war would very much undermine those concessions (interestingly, while looking up the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance of August 1945, I found out that the Nationalists recognized Mongolian independence in exchange for the Soviets stopping aid to the ChiComs - so in this scenario, not only is Mongolia less a point of friction than I had assumed, by the 60s or the 70s the Soviets may have yet another reason to not aid the ChiComs as you posit as that would mean they'd increase the vulnerability of Mongolia).

As such, I would say that the Soviets would only be supporting the ChiComs only in a situation where relations with Nationalist China were extremely dire. There's absolutely no need or benefit to trying to help the ChiComs militarily otherwise. The Soviets need every ounce of their strength to face off against the US and whatever allies the US has in this scenario.

fasquardon
 

Marc

Donor
Assuming the rest of the world is still broadly the same, China still annexes it. Perhaps a bit later as Chiang struggles to centralize his rule over the warlords.

Technically, reconquest is more accurate. And, not sure if history would recapitulate. Especially if Qinghai and Xinjiang are part of the likely Peoples Republic (unless you want hand-wave away the role of the Soviet Union) - Tibet could easily be a buffer state between the major players in the region, which would include India.
 
Why would the Soviets support the Communists?

Sure, the Soviets flipped from their prior support of the Nationalists during WW2, leading them to support Mao during the last phase of OTL's civil war, but even then the Soviets weren't exactly whole-hearted in it. In this scenario, supporting the Communists would be committing themselves to start a war with a major regional power that is bound to pull the US in to some degree. Also, the odds are that at least some special privileges will remain to the Soviets (if not all of them) from the treaties China negotiated during the days of the Sino-Japanese war when the Soviets prised many economic and political concessions from the Chinese, starting a war would very much undermine those concessions (interestingly, while looking up the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance of August 1945, I found out that the Nationalists recognized Mongolian independence in exchange for the Soviets stopping aid to the ChiComs - so in this scenario, not only is Mongolia less a point of friction than I had assumed, by the 60s or the 70s the Soviets may have yet another reason to not aid the ChiComs as you posit as that would mean they'd increase the vulnerability of Mongolia).

As such, I would say that the Soviets would only be supporting the ChiComs only in a situation where relations with Nationalist China were extremely dire. There's absolutely no need or benefit to trying to help the ChiComs militarily otherwise. The Soviets need every ounce of their strength to face off against the US and whatever allies the US has in this scenario.

fasquardon

You are correct the Soviets didn’t back the Communists until after Chiang attcked Manchuria after WWII. Had he not started the civil war then it’s possible the Soviets would maintain relations with him. I’m assuming Chiang would be the same Chiang. He had a large American trained army, the economy was collapsing, the Communists were establishing themselves in Manchuria, home to half of the country’s heavy industry. He had to attack before the economy force him to demobilize his army. I’m also assuming Chiang does better in this scenario, perhaps the American brokered peace deal holds and the war ends in stalemate with the Communists contained in Manchuria.
 
You are correct the Soviets didn’t back the Communists until after Chiang attcked Manchuria after WWII. Had he not started the civil war then it’s possible the Soviets would maintain relations with him. I’m assuming Chiang would be the same Chiang. He had a large American trained army, the economy was collapsing, the Communists were establishing themselves in Manchuria, home to half of the country’s heavy industry. He had to attack before the economy force him to demobilize his army. I’m also assuming Chiang does better in this scenario, perhaps the American brokered peace deal holds and the war ends in stalemate with the Communists contained in Manchuria.

Chiang should not have went into Manchuria. Holding the rest of China was more critical. The KMT troops got overstretched and their logistics strained.
 
You are correct the Soviets didn’t back the Communists until after Chiang attcked Manchuria after WWII. Had he not started the civil war then it’s possible the Soviets would maintain relations with him. I’m assuming Chiang would be the same Chiang. He had a large American trained army, the economy was collapsing, the Communists were establishing themselves in Manchuria, home to half of the country’s heavy industry. He had to attack before the economy force him to demobilize his army. I’m also assuming Chiang does better in this scenario, perhaps the American brokered peace deal holds and the war ends in stalemate with the Communists contained in Manchuria.

Sure, but assume that Chiang attacks Manchuria and wins. What do the Soviets do? I very much doubt they'd want to intervene. So they have to find some modus vivendi with KMT China. And while they might accept ChiCom refugees to support their fraternal cred with other Communist Parties and to have them as an unspoken threat against China, after 15-25 years of settling into a new relationship with China, I can't see the Soviets being eager to help the exiled ChiComs launch civil war mk2 on China.

One point is that the KMT proved in Taiwan that they are very good economically. Taiwan/GDP per capita is today 25,534.00 USD a little under half the US. China's population is now is about 1.4 billion, almost 4 times bigger then the US and without Mao one child policy her population would be much higher. Based on this simple analysis, China today would have at least double the US GDP.

Interestingly too, Russian /GDP per capita is about 10,000 USD and Russia population is about 140 million in 1980 before it split. so based on this simple analysis, China would have 20 times this GDP.

China may very well be the greatest superpower in the world today.

The 1 child policy likely made no real change to China's demographic shift. China with the 1 child policy has experienced demographic shift at about the same as India, which had no such law.

And due to Mao's ideas about "people's war" (basically, win a nuclear war by having so many people that China can win by attrition) the early PRC was pretty pro-natalist. Would KMT China be so pro-natalist? Maybe. But maybe not.

So KMT China could very well have a lower population than OTL China.

And China isn't Taiwan. So while China can emerge as the no. 1 power in the 20th Century, I don't think it's likely. The US has a big, big lead that China needs to make up.

Would a KMT-ruled China attempt to develop its' own (thermo-)nuclear warheads and launch vehicles for them the way the PRC did?

The KMT definitely thought of China as a great power and being a great power does require nukes in the modern era. They definitely develop both.

I wonder if Qian Xuesen would still be exiled to China by the US absent China being Red? And could China woo him over if the US didn't expel him? The guy was absolutely key to the US being where it is in nuclear technology and key to OTL's China being where it is in rocketry and nuclear technology...

KMT cannot turn China into a big Taiwan. Best case scenario (not most likely) will result in a Poland level of development.

Poland has a GDP per capita of around $13000 while china has a GDP per capita of around $8000, so "only" a poland level of development is still a pretty huge upgrade. (Neither of those are PPP numbers, Poland is even richer than China by that measure.)

fasquardon
 
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