China SSR

Does the chinese soviet republic count for OTL?

Also I'd actually expect the Han SSRs to split apart very quickly in this situation. E.g. A Siuchanese SSR, a Cantonese SSR, etc etc. Han Chinese are not a unified ethnic or linguistic group they just tend to act as such or pretend to do so. Kind've like white Americans.

Even mandarin dialects are mutually unintelligible in this time period were typing in now - siuchanese vs beijing dialect is an example. Back then when the standardization was weaker it will be damn weaker and more different in dialects.
But the sense of cultural and political unity had been established for two thousand years prior to that. There are plenty of regional variations in culture, but every large civilization (including Russia) has them. A standardized spoken language had already been established long before the rise of the PRC - even during the Ming Dynasty it was decided that bureaucrats should speak a standard spoken language based upon the Beijing dialect.

Things like ethnicity are an entirely human construct. They exist because the people believe they exist, and it's very arrogant to tell a people who have held a belief for two millennia and displayed it repeatedly that they've been acting or pretending it. It's like telling modern day Christians that Christianity isn't a real religion and they've been acting and pretending it's been one for two millennia.

China as a unified political entity has been sacred for thousands of years. Any Chinese politician cannot touch this. It would be like the President of the United States ripping up the Constitution, or the British Prime Minister ripping up the Magna Carta. Or the French President denouncing Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité as nonsense.

Didn't that happen when shicai basically gave up stalin and affiliated closer to the KMT thinking that the soviets would splice WWII?
During Barbarossa, Sheng believed the USSR was about to collapse and aligned himself with the KMT while purging Xinjiang of Communists, even killing Mao's brother in the process. When the Soviets gained the upper hand he decided to come back to the Soviets and wrote a letter to Stalin asking him to annex Xinjiang as an SSR. In the late 1940s the Soviets supported a separatist movement which used Islamist rhetoric; when the CPC won the Civil War, the leaders of the movement flew to Beijing to participate in the new government, and the plane mysteriously crashed near Irkutsk.

Decades later retired KGB officers confirmed what was blindingly obvious, that Stalin colluded with Mao to order the NKVD to rid them off.

You should do some more research before making comments or posts.
 
Manchuria seems to be a good candidate, though it'd still have a massive population. I've always entertained the idea of a "Soviet China" as opposed to "People's Republic of China", with the former being a post-WW2, Russian-friendly, non-Maoist state, led by Moscow's lackeys (there were quite a few to choose from).

How about this? Make China be an alternate Soviet Union, with a Han FSSR in addition to Tibetan, Manchuria, Mongolian, Uighur, and Korean SSRs.

There were, of course, plenty of Soviet lackeys, but a Sino-Soviet Split was going to happen as long as China (the nation) saw itself as exceptional. It could well have happened if Deng was not purged and engaged in better relations with the west in the early 1960s. Sooner or later one generation of Party leaders would start using rhetoric about Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.

Trouble with an alt-USSR is that the USSR was built as an ideology-based state (i.e. the name USSR doesn't hark back to the Russian Empire). And if China is rebuilt as an explicitly ideology-based state (i.e. the name doesn't mention "China"), Moscow will view it as a challenge to its right to be the ideological vanguard of Communism. Three of the SSRs are already overwhelmingly Han and are already a sad joke. The other two border the USSR and aren't safe to be granted SSR status.
 

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But the sense of cultural and political unity had been established for two thousand years prior to that.

Yes. China as a civilization with many things in common, a long lasting civilization is a bit different than saying that ethere are not substantial ethnic/linguistic/etc divisions which could prompt separate SSRs being created for them.

There are plenty of regional variations in culture, but every large civilization (including Russia) has them. A standardized spoken language had already been established long before the rise of the PRC - even during the Ming Dynasty it was decided that bureaucrats should speak a standard spoken language based upon the Beijing dialect.

Yes I know of the mandarin speech concept used by......the mandarins.

The example of Russia also is a good example as to what i am going for. There were historical actions that resulted in belarusians and Ukrainians identifying as a separate nation and not as Russians. Depending on how you mess with history you can do the same thing in 'core' Russian territories due to dialect changes and hard to understand intelligibility of Russian dialects until the late Russian empire.

Things like ethnicity are an entirely human construct. They exist because the people believe they exist, and it's very arrogant to tell a people who have held a belief for two millennia and displayed it repeatedly that they've been acting or pretending it. It's like telling modern day Christians that Christianity isn't a real religion and they've been acting and pretending it's been one for two millennia.

.....so it is arrogant to point out that Han chinese is an bit of an unnatural construct, something that Han Chinese themselves admit when they and their academics argue over who is Han or who is not? I guess those people who argue about Cantonese national identity (chinese people themselves who get into discussions of cantonese having more genetically in common with viets or whatnot) would be thrilled to hear this from you.

I wouldn't call the manchurians who identified as Han chinese partly out of not wanting to get lynched by han nationalists part of the thousands year old practice of Han sentiment, that is one thing that is relatively recent. Would you say that is 'genuine' for example? especially given there is a resurrection of Manchurian identity currently in PRChina?

What about those clan or regional wars even between han chinese to the point that the qing government resettled them to other valleys in southern china?. I might be wrong about them being Han

China as a unified political entity has been sacred for thousands of years. Any Chinese politician cannot touch this. It would be like the President of the United States ripping up the Constitution, or the British Prime Minister ripping up the Magna Carta. Or the French President denouncing Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité as nonsense.

So how is setting up SSRs for Cantonese, siuchanese et all destroying Chinese culture? And remember the thread we are arguing about - world communist revolution.

During Barbarossa, Sheng believed the USSR was about to collapse and aligned himself with the KMT while purging Xinjiang of Communists, even killing Mao's brother in the process. When the Soviets gained the upper hand he decided to come back to the Soviets and wrote a letter to Stalin asking him to annex Xinjiang as an SSR. In the late 1940s the Soviets supported a separatist movement which used Islamist rhetoric; when the CPC won the Civil War, the leaders of the movement flew to Beijing to participate in the new government, and the plane mysteriously crashed near Irkutsk.

Decades later retired KGB officers confirmed what was blindingly obvious, that Stalin colluded with Mao to order the NKVD to rid them off.

Thank you for the clear up

You should do some more research before making comments or posts.

heh.
 
Yes. China as a civilization with many things in common, a long lasting civilization is a bit different than saying that ethere are not substantial ethnic/linguistic/etc divisions which could prompt separate SSRs being created for them.
But these divisions have never been used to justify political separation. China has in the past been politically divided, yet each king proclaims himself as the legitimate ruler of *all China* rather than merely his little kingdom. It may take decades, but the end result is always reunification under one dynasty.

The example of Russia also is a good example as to what i am going for. There were historical actions that resulted in belarusians and Ukrainians identifying as a separate nation and not as Russians. Depending on how you mess with history you can do the same thing in 'core' Russian territories due to dialect changes and hard to understand intelligibility of Russian dialects until the late Russian empire.
Belarus and Ukraine emerged as separate nations within the past five hundred years, before Rus emerged as a stable and sedentary civilization with complex institutions. By contrast China has had a single identity under complex institutions for two thousand years. Once you get that deep rooted, it's almost impossible to uproot. There's one aberration of Vietnam which did "break off" after the Tang Dynasty, yet even that was over a thousand years ago before the Vietnamese language became merely another Chinese dialect.

.....so it is arrogant to point out that Han chinese is an bit of an unnatural construct, something that Han Chinese themselves admit when they and their academics argue over who is Han or who is not? I guess those people who argue about Cantonese national identity (chinese people themselves who get into discussions of cantonese having more genetically in common with viets or whatnot) would be thrilled to hear this from you.
All ethnic groups are to various extents artificial. Who defined French or German or Jewish or Italian? There's no such thing as Cantonese *national* identity; in fact throughout history the most ardent Chinese nationalists *are* Cantonese. It's possible and considered normal to have layers of identities and still be proudly "Chinese". Finally, the genetic studies have shown that Han Chinese are too diverse to group together, proving that being Chinese is about adhering to certain customs and values rather than racial descent.

I wouldn't call the manchurians who identified as Han chinese partly out of not wanting to get lynched by han nationalists part of the thousands year old practice of Han sentiment, that is one thing that is relatively recent. Would you say that is 'genuine' for example? especially given there is a resurrection of Manchurian identity currently in PRChina?
In present day China, those who are registered as ethnic minorities have lots of freebies (e.g. affirmative action for university and civil service, exempt from One Child Policy, even easier sentencing for criminals). There certainly was anti-Manchu sentiment in the early 20th century, but today over 10 million Chinese identify themselves as Manchu (though many of them are merely doing so for government handouts). Manchus as a whole consider themselves more Chinese than other Chinese. And besides, do you think a language with almost no native speakers will be anything other than a curiosity today?

Here's another thing to think about: wherever Jews have lived anywhere in the world, they stand out and suffer from persecution and discrimination, which perpetuates their distinctiveness and prevents them from assimilating into the host population. Yet for almost a thousand years Chinese Jews have lived as full citizens. The resulting process of assimilation is so complete and unprecedented anywhere in the world that the hundreds who are still aware of their background today aren't accepted by Israel's Law of Return. Could this occur if "Han sentiment" was exclusionary and xenophobic?

What about those clan or regional wars even between han chinese to the point that the qing government resettled them to other valleys in southern china?. I might be wrong about them being Han
So what? There have been clan wars in all cultures, all civilizations, in all periods in history. They fight over land, water, or anything else. Doesn't mean they're any less Chinese.

So how is setting up SSRs for Cantonese, siuchanese et all destroying Chinese culture? And remember the thread we are arguing about - world communist revolution.
Because setting up SSRs for Sichuanese, Shandong, Fujian, etc would be equivalent to the US President declaring the Constitution and the Founding Fathers to be a pack of lies, or the British Prime Minister declaring that the Magna Carta is false, or the French President declaring that the Revolution is false. Having a single Chinese political entity is an untouchable principle in the culture. Which, by the way, explains why Taiwan is a political issue.

Unless the USSR somehow rids itself of the perception that the USSR is Russia, and Russia is the USSR, the Communist Revolution won't come through a global superstate. Which will be difficult given that Russian is its language, the capital is in Moscow, and its borders largely follow those of the Romanov Dynasty.
 
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But either of them will be more populous than the entirety of the non-Chinese Soviet Union. The Soviet Union will have to adopt Chinese as its "language of interethnic communication", move its capital to Beijing or Nanjing, and appoint Chinese people to its Politburo. The Soviet Union will become a Chinese empire and will accomplish what Hitler couldn't do.

Well this idea is ASB to start with, but even so that is pretty damned unlikely, the Russians/East Slavs would still be in charge and now having to rule over a more numerious ethnic group.

A joke in Soviet Russia is that in the future, there will be calm on the "Sino-Finnish Border".

Well that would justreflect Russian paranoia about China's demographic growth.

A "Manchu SSR" will be a danger spot for the Soviets, since whoever is in power in the rest of China (be it Chiang or a somewhat independent Communist Party) will have a huge incentive to promote unrest in an integral part of the Soviet Union.

Meh, I doubt whatever Chinese ''government'' exists ITTL willl be able to stir up trouble. If the Soviets have simply ripped away hunks of China chances are it’s because the remainder is a totally non-threatening basket-case.
 
The USSR never loses sight of what it is meant to be: just a vehicle for global communism. It will aggregate as many countries as possible until it conquers the world. The USSR will never ever be seen as "Russia".

Mind you, Lenin was the man really pushing for that. A lot of Boslheviks wanted the whole thing to be the RSFSR, with Ukraine, Belarus, and the Transcaucasus as big ASSRs like the 'stans were at that point. This wasn't Russian nationalism: it was in fact the reverse: the 'stans were nativised just the same and so would the Ukrainian ASSR have been, but they feared that a Russia within the union would be a vehicle for Russian national sentiment that could destroy the union, which it, ah, was. But it does show that since the state was only supposed to wither away gradually, there was no staunch ideological opposition from the Bolshies to being in 'Russia', a geographically defined and limited place. All other Marxist regimes would be so.
 
Well this idea is ASB to start with, but even so that is pretty damned unlikely, the Russians/East Slavs would still be in charge and now having to rule over a more numerious ethnic group.
Even though this idea is ASB, I'm not sure it will be politically justifiable for East Slavs to rule over a USSR which advocates a classless and egalitarian society, which is now 75% Chinese. The Russians will merely become another in a long list of small groups which have ruled over China only to be assimilated.

Well that would just reflect Russian paranoia about China's demographic growth.
Such paranoia would now be true. After all what happened to the Manchus?

Meh, I doubt whatever Chinese ''government'' exists ITTL willl be able to stir up trouble. If the Soviets have simply ripped away hunks of China chances are it’s because the remainder is a totally non-threatening basket-case.
In OTL,the main source for the anti-Japanese resistance were the Manchukuo security forces themselves, indicating how demoralized they were even when the rest of China had no credible government. When the Red Army invaded in August 1945, entire divisions of the Manchukuo Army defected and even revolted against their commanders before a shot was fired. Even if China was a basket case post-WW2, annexing any part of China would be unsafe. Forming puppet regimes in the style of Poland or Hungary is safer, but is still a weak spot just as East Germany was a weak spot. The Manchurian leadership will also quite likely decide to go independent, if not like Tito then more like Ceausescu. If I were Stalin I'd support any unified government over all of China, and work so that it has friendly relations with both myself and the west, but is an ally of neither.

The Soviets also can't guarantee that a single unified government that isn't a lackey of Moscow won't emerge over the next decades. Once that happens Manchuria will make Afghanistan look like a hide-and-seek game.
 
Even though this idea is ASB, I'm not sure it will be politically justifiable for East Slavs to rule over a USSR which advocates a classless and egalitarian society, which is now 75% Chinese. The Russians will merely become another in a long list of small groups which have ruled over China only to be assimilated.
Except for the small fact that those groups that ruled over China tended to be nomadic steppe horsemen with a small nomadic population.

Russia would remain Russia and would still be full of Russians. A country with its own ancient culture and large nationlist-minded population in it's own right would not be assimilated. The Han Chinese are not the bloody Borg Collective.:rolleyes:


Such paranoia would now be true. After all what happened to the Manchus?
As for the Manchu they ruled over China whilst maintaining a form of apartheid. To prevent the sort of assimilation you describe.


In OTL,the main source for the anti-Japanese resistance were the Manchukuo security forces themselves, indicating how demoralized they were even when the rest of China had no credible government. When the Red Army invaded in August 1945, entire divisions of the Manchukuo Army defected and even revolted against their commanders before a shot was fired. Even if China was a basket case post-WW2, annexing any part of China would be unsafe. Forming puppet regimes in the style of Poland or Hungary is safer, but is still a weak spot just as East Germany was a weak spot. The Manchurian leadership will also quite likely decide to go independent, if not like Tito then more like Ceausescu. If I were Stalin I'd support any unified government over all of China, and work so that it has friendly relations with both myself and the west, but is an ally of neither.

The Soviets also can't guarantee that a single unified government that isn't a lackey of Moscow won't emerge over the next decades. Once that happens Manchuria will make Afghanistan look like a hide-and-seek game.
Depends of the puppets the Soviets put in place, China had been a basket case for over 100 years by 1945. It could stay that way for decades even withou the Soviets ripping hunks out of China and setting up puppet states/annexing areas outright.

As to the last point Manchuria isnt great partisan country.
 
Except for the small fact that those groups that ruled over China tended to be nomadic steppe horsemen with a small nomadic population.

Russia would remain Russia and would still be full of Russians. A country with its own ancient culture and large nationlist-minded population in it's own right would not be assimilated. The Han Chinese are not the bloody Borg Collective.:rolleyes:
It's rather implausible for a people with an even more ancient culture and much, much larger nationalist-minded population to consent to an Apartheid-like regime by a state which professes complete equality. Nor will the Russians consent to being reduced to a small minority overnight in their own country. At the very least you can expect the Russian Far East to become predominately Chinese within a few decades. After the Soviet Union collapses the Russian Federation will be dealing with an insurgency in Vladivostok which makes Chechnya look like a tutorial.

As for the Manchu they ruled over China whilst maintaining a form of apartheid. To prevent the sort of assimilation you describe.


Depends of the puppets the Soviets put in place, China had been a basket case for over 100 years by 1945. It could stay that way for decades even withou the Soviets ripping hunks out of China and setting up puppet states/annexing areas outright.

As to the last point Manchuria isnt great partisan country.
In the end the Manchus *were* assimilated despite their apartheid-style policies. And still Stalin in 1945 can't guarantee that China will remain a basket case for several more decades. Better to hedge against the risk that a unified, unfriendly-to-Moscow government will emerge in the rest of China.

The Japanese had installed an array of puppets across the areas of China they had controlled, and were willing to kill tens of millions using tactics which even the Nazis abhorred to get their way. And that still didn't work.

Even pancake-flat terrain won't help in pacifying an area if the population resents the occupying force's presence. Just look at Barbarossa.

My main point is that unless the USSR ceases to be Russia and Russia ceases to be the USSR (either that or a nuclear holocaust which doesn't involve the USSR), it's frankly ASB to formally annex China or carve puppet regimes out of the densely populated areas. Far better to turn China into a giant Finland (e.g. through backing the KMT) which has too much at stake in relations with Moscow to cause trouble with it.
 
If the USSR were to have a Chinese SSR it'd be in the Manchuria region where Tsarism had a sphere of influence and where the USSR was trying to get one IOTL but Mao and the end of WWII interfered with it. The USSR's leaders would be too rational to try to annex all of China wholesale, given that big annexations weren't really a Soviet thing, more an Axis thing.
 
There were, of course, plenty of Soviet lackeys, but a Sino-Soviet Split was going to happen as long as China (the nation) saw itself as exceptional. It could well have happened if Deng was not purged and engaged in better relations with the west in the early 1960s. Sooner or later one generation of Party leaders would start using rhetoric about Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.
Well I was thinking the "Soviet China" would exist in Manchuria and the "PR China" would own China proper, or a part of it. The whole thing would fit in well with a more heated Sino-Soviet rivalry.

Trouble with an alt-USSR is that the USSR was built as an ideology-based state (i.e. the name USSR doesn't hark back to the Russian Empire). And if China is rebuilt as an explicitly ideology-based state (i.e. the name doesn't mention "China"), Moscow will view it as a challenge to its right to be the ideological vanguard of Communism. Three of the SSRs are already overwhelmingly Han and are already a sad joke. The other two border the USSR and aren't safe to be granted SSR status.
I was kind of joking about this idea actually; the only way it would work is if the original USSR didn't exist anymore (and its name was taken by the CCP) or if the USSR was a more internationally-minded entity and somehow got all of China to join it, in which case you'd have both "Han" and "Russian" SFSRs along with a bunch of SSRs. This scenario is however unlikely.
 
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