China is the 2nd largest economy in the world and will soon be the world's largest. This is a world away from where it was one century ago. If the communist party did not succeed as the ruling party of China, perhaps it was the KMT or some other party or form of government, would China have arrived at the place it is now?
Could China have been as successful as it is today if the Communists did not win?
- Thread starter Malone
- Start date
Maybe. It's not certain, since the KMT was a fragmented, corrupt clique back in the Interwar and WWII years and no other party had ever emerged to become a political force as the KMT and CCP did. At the same time, Deng Xiaoping had to work from square one after Mao tore the country inside out. Few others would have attempted such nightmares as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution as Mao did.
That entirely depends on the global economic outlook, the regime's determination to pursue economic growth strategies, and their willingness to allow for foreign investments. The Guomindang (GMD/KMT) demonstrated similar growth rates to the post-1979 CPC during the Nanjing Decade, with industrialization and foreign trade mirroring what took place over the last forty years. Without a Second Sino-Japanese War, or with a more pro-free trade GMD in the driver's seat after 1945, China potentially could have grown to its current position by the early-mid 1980s. That'd be a very interesting situation since the GMD had a semi-friendly relationship with the Soviet Union during the Nanjing Decade, but also maintained decent relations with both the US and the larger Western political world.
A GMD controlled China in 2nd place behind the US in 1984 with similar political liberalization trends that the Taiwan-based GMD regime underwent after the death of Chiang could prove an interesting and potentially revolutionary power. It's an ostensibly democratic regime with a liberalizing government, likely holding some level of transparent elections, with a developed industrial economy and strong trade ties with Japan, Korea, the US, and Western Europe. If they swing more pro-West and align with the US-lead East Asian political world, I could easily see them supplanting the US by the time of the Soviet collapse.
A GMD controlled China in 2nd place behind the US in 1984 with similar political liberalization trends that the Taiwan-based GMD regime underwent after the death of Chiang could prove an interesting and potentially revolutionary power. It's an ostensibly democratic regime with a liberalizing government, likely holding some level of transparent elections, with a developed industrial economy and strong trade ties with Japan, Korea, the US, and Western Europe. If they swing more pro-West and align with the US-lead East Asian political world, I could easily see them supplanting the US by the time of the Soviet collapse.
Why would it be _that_ different than OTL's PRC except in terms of politically-related death tolls. China's a democracy OTL but look at how it treats various minorities. a KMT China would probably be a singleparty democracy on the model of OTL's PRC, with the main difference being starting off as authoritarian as opposed to totalitarian so less authoritarian than OTL's China.
Really don't buy Taiwan = surviving mainland KMT analogies. The economic/political sizes strike me as too different to really be comparable. Nevermind Taiwan's island status as opposed to a KMT bordering the USSR, along with an India that it has border disputes with it to make it more paranoid.
Really don't buy Taiwan = surviving mainland KMT analogies. The economic/political sizes strike me as too different to really be comparable. Nevermind Taiwan's island status as opposed to a KMT bordering the USSR, along with an India that it has border disputes with it to make it more paranoid.
Well you can say there would be a massive difference between one absolutely unified polity like the PRC vs battling warlords in the KMT running things?
Are you saying only democracies are succesful? India is a demacracy and is not on the level of China currently.
firstly, I'm saying that you calling the prc a democracy is factually wrong. Secondly, democracies are the least worst form of government available to us since communism is a post scarcity utopia that is impossible, which means communism only results in inefficiencies that harm the populace by encouraging corruption.
I would hope that over the course of 70-some years, the "Warlord Era" would be a thing of the past in a modern KMT-led China... though now you might would simply replace "warlords" with "oligarchs"
It could have been better than it is now, but it also could have been much worse. There are many vastly different scenarios involving a KMT victory, and each one would lead to a different outcome.
It was possible.
First you had to get rid of Chiang Kai-shek in middle of 1940s.
Then you would have a chance to defeat CCP in the civil war.
Without Chiang Kai-Shek or CCP, China would look like today's Hong Kong or Singapore. I don't think the GDP per capital would be as high as these two areas. That would be impossible for a country this size.
First you had to get rid of Chiang Kai-shek in middle of 1940s.
Then you would have a chance to defeat CCP in the civil war.
Without Chiang Kai-Shek or CCP, China would look like today's Hong Kong or Singapore. I don't think the GDP per capital would be as high as these two areas. That would be impossible for a country this size.
Alternative, it would follow the same path as Taiwan which was not truly democratic until the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975. Needs to have massive Napoleonic change of KMT corruption and incompetence.
marktaha
Banned
Believe it or not I expressed the view in the late 70s that Red China would evolve into a gigantic Singapore. I wish I'd put it in writing !
That entirely depends on what sort of potential modernization you're discussing; the GMD-lead Nanjing Decade had similar growth rates to post-1979 Dengist China and was showing significant economic growth potential before the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Seeing Mao killed off during the war seems somewhat easy, either via a Japanese bombing raid or a disgruntled party member shooting the erstwhile Chairman during a strategy meeting, or have Dai Li order Mao's assassination during one of the strategic lulls in '42 or '43.
The trick with the GMD is to avoid a second civil war after Chiang dies, which I'd argue would be in the mid-1960s from stress or a "heart attack." The warlords were never fully purged out by Chiang during the war, and that did weigh them down considerably during the Civil War. Quite a few warlord troops jumped ship on the GMD the moment that the PLA showed it had the strategic advantage. Once Chiang is gone, Republican China could end up back where it started after the death of Yuan Shikai and the collapse of the Beiyang Government.
It could be harder to return to the full-blown warlord era with two decades of stability after 1945 to grow the economy and build public trust in local institutions. But, I could see a transitory period of maybe 3-5 years where the GMD undergoes a period of rapid government changes and potentially a military coup d'etat lead by one of the wartime generals, maybe Sun Li-jen. Depending on who it was, there could be a slow easing of censorship and media controls before the government transitioned into a model looking more akin to Singapore or pre-2020 Hong Kong.
The major problem with any GMD-lead government is corruption: Chiang was well known to be in the back pocket of the Shanghai Green Gang and other prewar organized crime syndicates operating in Chinese-controlled Shanghai (Triads, etc.) Many of the local and provincial police forces in the larger eastern cities were paid off by Green Gang and Triad affiliates to look the other way while they openly ran opium dens, heroin rings, and grew opium poppies. Yunnan Province under Long Yun was the largest opium cultivation area on Earth prior to the Japanese-organized opium cultivation scheme in Manchukuo and Inner Mongolia starting in 1939. Yun had his own strong ties to the Green Gang and Hong Kong-affiliated Triads to smuggle Yunnan and Burmese opium out to French Indochina and onward to Marseilles and the major Mediterranean ports for sale to European addicts. That money piled up in Yun's accounts and was used to buy off GMD officials and bribe port security up and down the eastern Chinese seaboard to not inspect outgoing shipments to Saigon and the French Mediterranean.
So, to get to HK or Singapore levels of development, you've got to purge out or quietly eliminate most of that extreme high-level corruption. China has always had some level of bureaucratic corruption and double-dealing, so that is just status quo for the most part. Lower level provincial bureaucrats are going to take bribes (we used to regularly joke when I was living in the PRC seven years ago that someone didn't bribe the right official when our work visas took too long to process). Getting rid of the high level corruption and decoupling Chiang from his checkered past with the Green Gang and Triads is going to be step one towards a GMD-lead prosperous 20th Century China.
So, guys like Long Yun have to be killed off or marginalized to the point where their involvement with opium processing is gone. Then you've got to marginalize the power of the old warlords, either through old age, through increasing amounts of public transparency, or through growth of public trust in institutions. Twenty years of prosperity could give the public ample reason to trust in, or at the very least not distrust, the intentions of the GMD to let them cash in on the growing postwar prosperity.
In September 1945, China was about at the same place that it was in 1979; shattered after decades of disastrous policy, millions were dead, the economy in shambles, and the country in desperate need of a change in direction and leadership. If the GMD took out the Chairman and the ability of the CPC to do anything other than to sit in Yan'an and preach the virtues of Marxist-Leninism, it's a wide open field for Chiang to let the Chinese people become prosperous.
Anderman
Donor
Valid points @General_Paul but to have a none communist China as sucessful the current PRC this problems have only to be solved to 1980.
Before that the PRC had to deal with the grat leap the cultural revolution, the etc. After 1989 the tiananmen square masaker and western sanction after that.
So i think the chances are very high.
Before that the PRC had to deal with the grat leap the cultural revolution, the etc. After 1989 the tiananmen square masaker and western sanction after that.
So i think the chances are very high.
Probably, if not better. I doubt the KMT, corrupt and autocratic as it was, would enact stuff like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
I'm no expert in China or Chinese geopolitics, don't know where to start, but could China theoretically become like Yugoslavia with UDIs, and now, unrecognized states (IIRC, modern-day Taiwan operates as a separate country from ROC in practise, and only has de facto embassies but no official ones); but that may be for another WI question on here.
You have provided a pretty detailed picture of the past and present bureaucratic issues in China.
I think the fundamental causes were/are poverty and lack of social safety net. Once you retire, you are on your own. You have to save a bunch of money during you still have political power to gather as much wealth as possible.
For example, medical cost for seniors are astronomical even after the government has covered 80% of the costs.
To stamp out the corruption, government has to provide social welfare and to improve standard of living.