China, other areas in Rumsfeldia

Rumsfeldia's China is, well, the most wretched nation on Earth there, along with India, due to wars leading to the destruction of much of their economies and people.

I've read them (well only Kiang Liu's account and the maps), and I want to hear your opinion about it, and what I may have missed.

Also, will China and India ever recover, as well as the USA?

And what about SE Asia there? All I know Marcos crushed the protests Tiananmen-style with Rumsfeld's help, and they've all become independent of Rumsfeldian USA.
 
Ok, I read all of them now, sorry. Well, now, I just thought that the posts weren't enough (they're absolutely good and they clearly showed how bad a Gang of Four-Lesser Mao clique rises to power in China, initiating Pol Pot-style policies). It really deserves its own TL that covers Lesser Mao's China and the aftermath in more detail.

It's a grim fictional mystery, I must say.
 
In China, remember that much of the surviving population is young or old. The Lesser Mao, evil and destructive as he was, is proportionately on par with the more wicked of late-dynasty Chinese despots of earlier times. So China will survive in a weakened form, and will attempt to reunify. This goal probably won't be reached by TTL's year 2000 or even 2020.

Internal Actors to consider:

Communist stragglers: These people are intent on recreating the CCP bureaucracy, probably not because they believe in Marxism or god forbid Maoism, but because they see it as the closest thing China has left to a functioning state. IMO they are likely to be superseded.

Former PLA warlords: More pragmatic than the communists, they may still make use of surviving Chinese institutions or the shells of institutions in hopes of securing their power bases for the eventual reconquest of the nation under their personal rule. Similar in function the OTL military factions of the 1920s.

Local security communities: Basically village-level militias, not directly associated with the communist or the PLA factions. Not a player at the national or even provincial level.

Regional Han separatists: Large non-Mandarin-speaking groups may not develop a new national identity outright, but they may rally around local ideas with an implicit regional flavor, like the Taiping "Christians" did with the restive Hakka populace.

Non-Han separatists: The only major ones would be Tibetans and Uighurs. They will clash with the resident Han groups (this is already implied with the Chinese Muslim terrorists ITTL). The Inner Mongolians, though historically no separatists, may look to their Soviet-backed brethren to the north...

External Actors to Consider:

Mongolia: Will probably want to look after the ethnic Mongols in Inner Mongolia, but not want to deal with the Han majority living there. Either they decide it's too much work to integrate Inner Mongolia (despite nationalist wishes), or they do some serious ethnic cleansing. Things could get very ugly, so the Soviets might keep the Mongols on a short leash here.

Soviet Union: As documented ITTL, the Soviets are doing their best to stay out of a major deployment in China. They may maintain limited spheres of influence in the northern bits, particularly Manchuria, to secure their borders. This may have the inadvertent effect of supporting Manchurian warlords.

North Korea: Same goals as the Russians, but the Korean will be interested in gaining some of the border territories in Manchuria. They have more weapons and people to do it with than the Mongols, so ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide of the local Chinese is likely here. The Changbaishan will be Korean.

South Korea: Likely to implicitly support North Korea's expansions on nationalist grounds; elsewhere, they will have an economic interest in cooperating with the Taiwanese and Japanese in restabilizing the Chinese coastal areas.

Taiwan: The Taiwanese are still ideologically in favor of reunification with the mainland, but they're in for a huge shock. Likely they will make very good efforts in the coastal regions with Japanese and ROK help, but full reunification on their own terms in unlikely.

Vietnam: Likely to do whatever it takes to stabilize the border. If that means helping Zhuang separatists in Guangxi or Cantonese nationalism in Guangdong, so be it. To them, this would indeed be preferable to a strong reunited China on their doorstep.

Japan: Likely to take a less direct approach, but given their economic power, the Japanese may put in a lot of investment into developing the Chinese coast while the Koreans and Taiwanese do the military and administrative heavy lifting.

Hong Kong/UK: Similar to Vietnam, perhaps carving out a Cantonese buffer would be in their interests.

America: Rumsfeldian policies favor splitting possible rival states, so they might support things like Cantonese regionalism. This could have a big effect during the time the US is still relevant in East Asia.
 
Well, I went ahead and made a map imaging what China might look like by TTL's new millennium.

As labeled, red and blue are the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China, respectively. Darker portions indicate regions under stable and permanent administration from Beijing and Nanjing, lighter shades are areas where the central governments have limited or incomplete authority.

The pink color roughly covering Inner Mongolia is a Soviet and Mongolian control zone. Major cities (i.e. the Han population) are under PRC administration, but the Chinese military by treaty operates in a restricted capacity. Military exercises and deployments take place with the explicit approval of the Soviet Army, and the entire region is a no-fly zone.

The "Sichuan Cliques" are a quartet of loosely-affiliated warlords and gangs with the common goal of staving off the central governments for as long as possible. The region is responsible for most of the world's drug production and the local's lot hasn't improved much since the final days of the Lesser Mao.

The teal zones in Guangdong and Guangxi indicate de facto independent separatist movements supported by various anti-KMT forces. In Guangdong, this manifests itself as a dominant junta that neither denies nor confirms its political status to the endless annoyance of Nanjing. The Guangxi Zhuang ethnic authorities, on the other hand, openly aim for independence from China in any form, though this goal is hampered by the fact that half the population are well-armed if not well-organized Han Chinese.

The medium grey color covering Tibet, most of Xinjiang, and the strip of land between North Korea and China are not under the control of any Chinese authority. Tibet is an independent state with a mind to expand its boundaries into the traditionally Tibetan areas of Qinghai and western Sichuan. A restive Chinese population exists around Lhasa and is backed by underground support from Beijing.

The red rings on the map are underground or partisan operations run in part or entirely by the PLA.

Beige regions are under the control of minor unaffiliated Chinese authorities, or completely lawless.

The political details of Xinjiang are not depicted in my map, but it should be noted that the various ethnicities have not been able to unify the region. The Soviet Union maintains some military presence in Tihwa (Urumqi) and conducts bombing runs on the Muslim extremists that have frightening influence in the region.

With the understanding that China's cities were decimated by the Lesser Mao's policies, I picked a few that might still be important by the year 2000 and included them in the map. For instance, Hohhot and Tsingtao are important negotiation sites between the Soviet Union, Mongolia, and the two Chinas.

The names of Chinese cities and regions are not in Pinyin, since that never became popular in Drew's timeline.

Rumsfeldia%20China%20year%202000_zpssgnycj67.png


A summary of the history between 1985 and 2000 will be posted soon.
 
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A Second Three Kingdoms Era?

People's Army, People's Republic


The People's Republic of China survived the collapse of the Lesser Mao's regime, but communism did not. When the People's Liberation Army formations watching the Sino-Soviet border in Manchuria turned their guns and tanks toward Peking, they passed through and seized the industrial complexes, oil fields, and field acres of China's great Northeast. Once in the Great Hall of the People, they publicly disowned the Marxism-Leninism-Maoism that had reduced the Chinese population by over one quarter, and it was sworn that from then on, the People's Army was forever to be the army of the people.

While the replacement of a one-party state by a military junta meant that little had changed in political terms, the people's gratitude in being rid of the Years of the Skull seemed endless. The populations of Manchuria, Hopeh, and beyond received the new PLA enthusiastically and followed its orders in establishing a "wartime economy for the Great Reunification."

But the relatively simply conquest of Manchuria, with its robust infrastructure and productive base, was not easily duplicated in China Proper. Other former PLA formations had, it turned out, already established their authority locally and refused to accept the new authorities in Peking. Moreover, the abject poverty the PLA encountered as it marched south and west drained its supplies. The need to care for and govern tens of millions of starving peasants in Hopeh alone made the advertised campaign for the "Great Reunification" impossible.

By the 1990s, the People's Army could only claim full administrative control over Manchuria, Hopeh Province and the two cities of Peking and Tientsin. Former officers and bureaucrats in the inland provinces of Shansi, Shensi, and the city of Lanchow eventually deigned to join the reformed People's Republic; even then, they often questioned, willingly misinterpreted, or outright ignored orders from the capital.

While the Soviet Union gave the People's Army its word that imperialist adventures were out of the question, the collapse of Maoism encouraged the nationalist urges of Moscow's client states, North Korea and Mongolia. The years after Mao saw the sudden occupation of the Changpai mountain range on the Manchurian border, ordered by Pyongyang ostensibly for the purpose of protecting the Korean boundaries. What actually happened was nothing short of borderline genocidal ethnic cleansing, freezing PRC-DPRK relations to the present day.

The Mongolians, while not nearly as bloody as the Koreans, also moved to take advantage of China's misfortunes. Mongol forces entered the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region and effectively imposed their administration upon the steppe regions. PLA garrisons, outgunned and severely in want of supply, were ready to offer battle were it not for the timely intervention of Soviet military staff airlifted to Hohhot to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis. Mongolian advances would stop, cities would remain Chinese, and the tragedy on the Yalu would be avoided before it had a chance to begin. Both sides' forces were limited to garrisons, and Soviet aircraft enforced a no-fly zone.

In contrast to the days of Mao, Soviet-PRC relations in the new era were peaceable and even cordial by some measures. Soviet engineers introduced valuable technical know-how to their counterparts tasked with rebuilding China. Chinese students began to study in the Soviet Union, and PLA administrators opened their eyes to the strides made by Soviet economists. While modest in comparison with the massive Japanese-funded investment projects along the eastern Chinese coast, the benefits of "learning from our Russian comrades" were apparent well before the year 2000.

Meanwhile, war still raged on. The reformed PLA, apart from having to face hordes of uncooperative stragglers, was confronted by the northward advances of Nationalist forces from Taiwan as well as the nascent southwestern warlord armies that would form the infamous Szechwan cliques.
 
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This is a map of China at the time of Rummyfall. The Americans have withdrawn, having used the Taiwanese and the South Koreans as surrogates while they were arming both sides in their war.

The map represents how things settled down after peace negotiations.

The Japanese will play-off the South Koreans against the Taiwanese while they (the Japanese) build-up their military. They want access to mainland resources, but they do not want South Korea and Taiwan making common cause against them. (For historic reasons the ROK and ROC might find they hate the Japanese more than each other).

Japan is playing a long game by developing a closer relationship with the USSR.

The USSR is using the North Koreans, Mongolians and rump PRC as a buffer to prevent the chaos in China from coming across its Asian borders. The rump PRC is a state in name only, it only functions because of Soviet patronage.

The joint Vietnam zone in the south (including Hainan Island) is part of the slow Nord-politick reproachment between North and South Vietnam.

Mongolia was nearly destroyed by the 1973 border war with the old PRC. It has some vengeful feelings where the PRC is concerned.

The UK/Australia/NZ/Canada multi-national force has taken territory along the Pearl River and occupied the ruins of Macau (which the Lesser Mao destroyed after the DPRP gave it back to the PRC). This secures Hong Kong and gives it a protected hinterland which stretches almost to Canton.

Taiwan is trying to recreate a pre-1949 Nationalist state in Southeastern China, and building-up resources to move further inland.

The Warlords are doing what Warlords do (including growing opium). The ROC, ROK and some of the others are cultivating Warlord proxies and playing them off against one another to prevent them from uniting, and to create buffer zones outside of the areas they directly control.


The Caliphate is trying to move further East and is only restrained where it encounters an equally strong force holding it back. The Warlords are losing ground. Pakistan is helping the "Caliphate" (much as they helped the Taliban OTL).

India's former control area in Tibet collapsed with the outbreak of Civil War in India.

I mentioned that there were Chinese "successor states" in FLG'72. You can see where some of the borders are slowly forming.

I do not forsee the neighbours allowing China to re-unite - which in itself could give rise to a new anti-foreign movement.

Keep in mind that all borders are approximate, depending upon who can defend what at any given time.

China_map1987-3.PNG
 
Now I understand why Cambodia survived intact while your China did not. Cambodia was small and manageable by Vietnam. And no one could mount a successful opposition to Vietnam's forces when they invaded, unlike in China where the Soviets, Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, etc. competed for supremacy.

Even so, OTL Vietnam still experienced logistical problems running the small state.

Thank God the Gang of Four + Lesser Mao never rose in our TL.
 
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