BTW, even calling a GMD China "capitalist" may be an oversimplification. Even after breaking with the Communists in 1927, the GMD in theory retained Sun Yat-sen's ideology, which while rejecting Marxism was hardly pro-capitalist. In practice, of course, this did not lead Chiang to socialism--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_ideology_of_the_Kuomintang exaggerates the "socialist" nature of the post-1927 GMD--but the capitalists did not hold any real political power and were basically milked by the government. See Parks M. Coble,
The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927-1937:
"...Scholars, journalists, diplomats, and political writers alike, from the 1930s to the 1970s, have often held this generalization about the Kuomintang regime: that Nanking was closely allied with the new urban capitalists who, together with the rural landlords, formed the social class basis for Chiang's government. The alliance thesis clearly implies that the Nanking regime significantly represented the interests of the capitalists and that the latter were able to exercise considerable political influence on the government. This generalization is not tenable. The thesis of this study is that, in fact, relations between the two groups were characterized by government efforts to emasculate politically the urban capitalists and to milk the modern sector of the economy. Concern with revenue, not the welfare of the capitalists or the possibility of economic development, dominated Nanking's policies. The government's actions exacerbated the weaknesses of Chinese capitalism and tended to serve the economic interests of foreign powers. Politically, Nanking freely ignored the views of the capitalists as expressed through such organizations as the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and Shanghai Bankers Association and, in fact, attempted to bring these business groups under government control. The capitalists were stymied as a political force and, by 1937, had become an adjunct of the government. Nanking did not represent the interests of the capitalists, nor was that group able to exercise significant influence on government decision-making..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=9nJF_19fnZ4C&pg=PA3
"After 1927, the party deleted or overlooked the pro-Communist elements in Sun's teachings and suppressed the worker and peasant movements. It retained, however, the anti-capitalist flavor of his pronouncements and persisted in characterizing the capitalists as a selfish, exploitive class. Journals connected with the Kuomintang were filled with articles that denounced capitalism and called for a system of state-controlled industry as specified under the principle of livelihood. This anti-capitalist rhetoric had almost no impact on governmental actions. Nanking evidenced neither systematic hostility toward the capitalists as a social group nor real interest in developing a socialist economy. Major government officials, in fact, made heavy private investments. Nanking found this anti-capitalist ideology useful as a tool for political control, however, because it prevented the capitalists from claiming legitimacy within the party or the society. Anti-capitalist ideology, thus, was not a determinant of Chiang 's policy so much as a tool to achieve his ends, the control of the capitalists and their wealth.
"In sum, the capitalists were denied a political role in the Nanking Government. What, then, accounts for the persistence of the thesis that the Shanghai capitalists formed the social class basis for the Kuomintang regime? Perhaps the fundamental reason why the relationship between the Nanking regime and the Shanghai capitalists has been so often misinterpreted is that many writers have begun with the Marxist assumption that all political regimes must represent the interests of one or more social classes. This premise, in turn, forces the conclusion that, as least in terms of the urban sector, the capitalists were the social base for the Kuomintang Government. Other important urban classes, such as the industrial proletariat, were even more repressed by the regime than the capitalists. Leftist writers have thus turned to the capitalists as the logical social base for the Nanking Government.
"There were factors that would seem to support their conclusion. The focus of so many commentators on the actual alliance between Chiang Kai-shek and the capitalists in March-April 1927 has obscured later relations between the two groups. The April 1927 coup was a pivotal event and has been vividly reported by such writers as Harold Isaacs. It has, therefore, loomed large in subsequent accounts of the Nanking period. The Shanghai capitalists did, in fact, give Chiang Kai-shek crucial support for his break with the Communists in April 1927. Both they and Chiang were frightened by the growth of the Communist-dominated labor unions, and both strongly opposed social revolution. Despite this agreement, however, the alliance broke down when Chiang turned his "reign of terror" against the capitalists themselves. By utilizing the Green Gang, Chiang was able to penetrate the sanctity of the International Settlement and compel the capitalists to continue their financial backing for his military organization..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=9nJF_19fnZ4C&pg=PA263
I would prefer to phrase the subject of this thread as "what if Ching (or the GMD) had defeated the Communists." To describe a GMD China as "capitalist" is a bit too oversimplified. (Not that other formulations like Joseph Fewsmith's characterization of the Nanking government as an "authoritarian-corporatist regime" don't have their own problems. "Kuomintang China, in Eastman's view, simply lacked the corporatist structures associated with such regimes as Franco's Spain or Mussolini's Italy. In Eastman's view, Fewsmith is 'straining the facts to fit his preconceived model.'"
https://books.google.com/books?id=9nJF_19fnZ4C&pg=PR13)