Could A Nationalist Victory In China's CW Lead To China Being As Powerful Economicaly

Why would that be the case; Chiang Kai-shek would have long term concerns with Stalin as a neighbour even if he defeated Mao wouldn’t he?

Stalin was one of his primary supporters before and during WWII.

The Soviets tended to support Communist movements in developed states and Nationalist ones in developing ones. All part of being non-Imperialist. The Nationalists fit Stalin's bill exactly.

Admittedly this changed later in the Cold War - Africa became a target for Communism. But that was the same period when the Soviets were less expansionistic in dealing with major powers - they're not about to throw away a friendship with China then. They only did so OTL because they were communists and Communists had to follow the Russian lead, not run off and steal their satellites like Mao did.
 
The big problem is that it's all a matter of variables. A CCP-ruled China might have avoided the excesses of OTL if different things had happened. A KMT would have avoided those excesses too, but depending on their politics and policies they could end up with worse excesses (i.e. acting more horribly towards minorities than the CCP did), could do better during periods where the CCP screwed up but be unable to match OTL's achievements regardless, or it could be brilliantly successful.

So, basically, since there are so many variables, so many possible good, bad and ugly KMT Chinas, arguing like this is only going to divide us between those who think that the disasters caused by Mao have kept China back, from those who have no faith in the KMT to do any better or even as well as the CCP.
 
So dude, like how did China do worse than say, India, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean or Latin America? I mean since Mao was the worst case scenario the other places must have had done far far better right?

Let's not compare apples and oranges. All of the nations you listed have innumerable differences with China besides its' governing system---most notably their size. As I said before, China is going to become an enormous economic power by virtue of its' size and population. The question is only how fast.
 
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Isn't this what China is right now? There is fairly high corruption, incompetence, and a few political shifts (albeit by the same party). Also, the Falun Gong are barely a factor by themselves in OTL; they only began an anti-CCP campaign after being outlawed. That action (the outlawing) strikes me as something unique to the CCP, so in a KMT-ruled China such a religious group would remain politically inert.

On all those counts the KMT was much, much worse and Chaing never had full central control over his domain until he was exiled to a smallish island. Before that KMT was a loose coalition of rival warlords. The CCP by comparison was far more coherent, unified and better led. On their worst days the Maoists were better than the KMT on their best.

Even if you somehow remove the CCP as a factor. The KMT still has vast internal problems, that they showed limited capacity to combat and a major Japanese threat to boot.

I actually want a source for that, but interestingly enough, that's around the amount of economical growth under the CCP.

Indeed. Anyone who looks at how the KMT really ran things would take those claims with vast dunes of salt.
 
On all those counts the KMT was much, much worse and Chaing never had full central control over his domain until he was exiled to a smallish island. Before that KMT was a loose coalition of rival warlords. The CCP by comparison was far more coherent, unified and better led. On their worst days the Maoists were better than the KMT on their best.

Even if you somehow remove the CCP as a factor. The KMT still has vast internal problems, that they showed limited capacity to combat and a major Japanese threat to boot.



Indeed. Anyone who looks at how the KMT really ran things would take those claims with vast dunes of salt.

All of this is true, but China might have come to be more unified if the KMT had defeated the Communists. Of course, another problem here seems to be that we are assuming that it's Chiang Kai-shek who would have to rule a Nationalist state on the mainland.
 

Typo

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Let's not compare apples and oranges. All of the nations you listed have innumerable differences with China besides its' governing system---most notably their size. As I said before, China is going to become an enormous economic power by virtue of its' size and population. The question is only how fast.
Ok, so what about India, or the comparison of income per capita for those countries?
 

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I'm out of time and a quick search didn't do it, but I'll back him up. China actually did startlingly well during the warlord period, with huge levels of development by normal Western standards, much less those of the Depression. Basically, China has a good climate, can feed itself except when laughably mismanaged (see Mao), and combines nigh incomprehensible quantities of human and material resources, up to and including millions skilled and educated citizens. Sooner or later any regime running the place would successfully reach what we tend to call "China Growth." The groundwork was being laid from the shock of the Opium Wars, and a century later it started to pay off.

World War Two shut that down, but it was inevitably temporary.
Probably, what I"m arguing is that the whole KMT CHINA=MEGATAIWAN because COMMUNISM IS BAD train of thought is unrealistic
 
Nationalist China would not be free market Hong Kong. There would be state owned enterprises and an activist government. But there would also be lots of private enterprises, and it would be open to foreign, especially US, investment. Taiwan was considered one of the original Asian Tigers even when Chiang Kai Shek was still ruling the country. A unified Nationalist China would not be as economically well off as Taiwan. There would be far more entrenched poverty, a vast peasantry, and less infrastructure. But it would better than the PRC, and its economic growth would reflect real wealth creation, not dubious Communist economic statistics.

Nationalist China would not be neutral in the Cold War, but side with the United States. Chiang would be less concerned about ideological issues, and more with power politic ones. The fact is that the Soviet Union is a threat. The US is a source of aide that has strong ties to China (through Christian missionaries, international trade, the WWII alliance, the China Lobby, and the Chinese diaspora.) Chiang would rely on American strength to protect China from the Soviet Union until China was able to stand for itself. Nationalist China might be a troublesome ally at times, but no more than France was. Nationalist China would likely have lots of problems with the European colonial empires, but that doesn't mean much conflict with the US. Instead, the US would cooperate with China so that the newly independent nations in East Asia would be part of the new postwar international system.

The Soviet Union backed the KMT because the KMT was the only force capable to holding China together against the Japanese who were virulently anti-Communist. It was not because Stalin liked the KMT. Likewise, Chiang accepted help from the Soviet Union because he would have accepted help from anyone at the time. Saying Chiang wouldn't support the Americans because of past Soviet aide is like saying Chiang would never have declared war on Germany because of the earlier help Germany gave China.

Nationalist China would have lots of issues to overcome. Chiang would eventually need to turn on the remaining warlords and clear out corruption. This was something he always intended to do, but never got around to it before being exiled to Taiwan. But he knew of it and always intended to do something about it. He misjudged its importance and delayed too long. Most of the things he needed to do was quite simple (like institute a centralized payroll for the military or install independent auditors in the provinces). Chiang himself was not personally corrupt, so he had no reason to perpetuate that. Some of his in-laws were pretty bad, but while I don't think they'd ever be prosecuted, they'd likely be stopped once everyone else was.

There was the issue of land reform. This would be more tricky than in Taiwan as Chiang would have a lot more peasants and a lot less money (relatively) to distribute land among them.

Likewise, a Nationalist China would deal with the same kind of issues the pRC is dealing with now in terms of uneven development of the coastal regions versus the interior provinces.

In terms of democratization, I don't see Chiang giving up power. But I do see a fairly liberal press and local elections. He didn't think China was ready for democracy now, but he seemed fairly sincere that he intended to prepare China for it.

There are many myths surrounding Chiang and the KMT. While they have a semblance of truth, most of the ones Americans learned after the war were simply false. Nationalist China would not collectively be as developed as Taiwan today, but I think an extra 10-15 years of growth would be about right with about the same level of democratization.
 
Ok, so what about India, or the comparison of income per capita for those countries?

After Independence India followed a doctrine of trade isolationism in order to protect their local industries from competition. This meant the industries had far less incentive to improve and they stayed at the same technological level as they did several centuries ago. Between 1950-1970 the Purchasing Power Parity of India actually dropped and it was only after they opened up their nation to large scale trade that their economy began to improve.

Your other examples also have some severe problems economically, though I know less about them. The Middle East was and still is plagued by rather strict usury laws that prohibit taking interest on loans (A religious doctrine that was once also the case in Europe). It keeps people from legally making money available for loans which hurts growth significantly. As for Latin America... I know they regularly flirt with command economies and that we Americans keep screwing them over, but I really don't have the data on them.
 
Nationalist China would not be free market Hong Kong. There would be state owned enterprises and an activist government. But there would also be lots of private enterprises, and it would be open to foreign, especially US, investment. Taiwan was considered one of the original Asian Tigers even when Chiang Kai Shek was still ruling the country. A unified Nationalist China would not be as economically well off as Taiwan. There would be far more entrenched poverty, a vast peasantry, and less infrastructure. But it would better than the PRC, and its economic growth would reflect real wealth creation, not dubious Communist economic statistics.

Nationalist China would not be neutral in the Cold War, but side with the United States. Chiang would be less concerned about ideological issues, and more with power politic ones. The fact is that the Soviet Union is a threat. The US is a source of aide that has strong ties to China (through Christian missionaries, international trade, the WWII alliance, the China Lobby, and the Chinese diaspora.) Chiang would rely on American strength to protect China from the Soviet Union until China was able to stand for itself. Nationalist China might be a troublesome ally at times, but no more than France was. Nationalist China would likely have lots of problems with the European colonial empires, but that doesn't mean much conflict with the US. Instead, the US would cooperate with China so that the newly independent nations in East Asia would be part of the new postwar international system.

The Soviet Union backed the KMT because the KMT was the only force capable to holding China together against the Japanese who were virulently anti-Communist. It was not because Stalin liked the KMT. Likewise, Chiang accepted help from the Soviet Union because he would have accepted help from anyone at the time. Saying Chiang wouldn't support the Americans because of past Soviet aide is like saying Chiang would never have declared war on Germany because of the earlier help Germany gave China.

Nationalist China would have lots of issues to overcome. Chiang would eventually need to turn on the remaining warlords and clear out corruption. This was something he always intended to do, but never got around to it before being exiled to Taiwan. But he knew of it and always intended to do something about it. He misjudged its importance and delayed too long. Most of the things he needed to do was quite simple (like institute a centralized payroll for the military or install independent auditors in the provinces). Chiang himself was not personally corrupt, so he had no reason to perpetuate that. Some of his in-laws were pretty bad, but while I don't think they'd ever be prosecuted, they'd likely be stopped once everyone else was.

There was the issue of land reform. This would be more tricky than in Taiwan as Chiang would have a lot more peasants and a lot less money (relatively) to distribute land among them.

Likewise, a Nationalist China would deal with the same kind of issues the pRC is dealing with now in terms of uneven development of the coastal regions versus the interior provinces.

In terms of democratization, I don't see Chiang giving up power. But I do see a fairly liberal press and local elections. He didn't think China was ready for democracy now, but he seemed fairly sincere that he intended to prepare China for it.

There are many myths surrounding Chiang and the KMT. While they have a semblance of truth, most of the ones Americans learned after the war were simply false. Nationalist China would not collectively be as developed as Taiwan today, but I think an extra 10-15 years of growth would be about right with about the same level of democratization.

Fair enough and well put.
 
Check out my Flaming Dragons TL (sorry for the plug :D), but I'll be heading towards this direction for the post-war China, and also take note, the POD for my TL is Chiang's death in 1926, soany problems/things he would be against are not so much of an issue
 
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