Communists win in Malaya

How? The communists were mostly Chinese, had little support in the villages, etc. While I'm not saying the Brits didn't fight a lot smarter in Malaya than the US did in Vietnam, they had a MUCH easier task.

How would they win? That's the first thing. What would they win? that's the second. Would Britain keep sizable chunks of OTL's Malaysia? Or what?
 
How? The communists were mostly Chinese, had little support in the villages, etc. While I'm not saying the Brits didn't fight a lot smarter in Malaya than the US did in Vietnam, they had a MUCH easier task.

How would they win? That's the first thing. What would they win? that's the second. Would Britain keep sizable chunks of OTL's Malaysia? Or what?

How would they win is definitely a huge issue here. The Malayan Emergency was a low-level long-lasting conflict in which maybe 10,000 people died total, as opposed to wars like the First Indochina War, which was only two-thirds as long but killed forty times as many people.

Your best hope here is to go for a combination of truly horrific British mismanagement and more determined international Communist support (try earlier Maoist victory in China).

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
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Cook

Banned
How would they win is definitely a huge issue here. The Malayan Emergency was a low-level long-lasting conflict in which maybe 100,000 people died total...
Where on Earth did you pull a number like that from?
The death toll for British security forces, Communist insurgents and civilians combined ws in the order of 10,000.
 
How would they win is definitely a huge issue here. The Malayan Emergency was a low-level long-lasting conflict in which maybe 100,000 people died total, as opposed to wars like the First Indochina War, which was only two-thirds as long but killed four times as many people.

Your best hope here is to go for a combination of truly horrific British mismanagement and more determined international Communist support (try earlier Maoist victory in China).

Cheers,
Ganesha

I don't see it.

The communists derived their support from ethnic Chinese Malays, if Beijing ever substantially increase its involvement, the communists would lose support not the other way around. A well-funded force will fail without any popular support, Moscow and Beijing figured that out just as well as Washington did on many occasions.

Logistics also don't look as pleasant for the Malays as they did for the NVA, ever, they're separated from each other by the Pacific Ocean, and the water is where the British are strong.
 
Where on Earth did you pull a number like that from?
The death toll for British security forces, Communist insurgents and civilians combined ws in the order of 10,000.

You're completely correct, my apologies.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
I don't see it.

The communists derived their support from ethnic Chinese Malays, if Beijing ever substantially increase its involvement, the communists would lose support not the other way around. A well-funded force will fail without any popular support, Moscow and Beijing figured that out just as well as Washington did on many occasions.

Logistics also don't look as pleasant for the Malays as they did for the NVA, ever, they're separated from each other by the Pacific Ocean, and the water is where the British are strong.

Ethnic Chinese, not Malays. Malays are an ethnicity, Malayan is the non-ethnic identifier for citizens of British Malaya.

And the Ethnic Chinese themselves were split- most of the urban Malayan Chinese were very much a capitalist mercantile class who had been strong supporters of the KMT. Only a tiny minority of the Malayan Chinese actually supported the insurgents.
 
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I agree it wouldn't happen, but if it did Sir Robert Thompson wouldn't gain his richly deserved Genius rep as the embodiment of counterinsurgency.
 
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