Could China Win?

KGBeast

Banned
Let's take a factual scenario and take out it's core, how would the Sino-Japanese War been affected by no Pearl Harbor? By 1941 China had been involved in a 5 year death struggle against Japan and half the country was under occupation. China had no effective navy of any sort, an antiquated air force made up mostly of american volunteers, no heavy arms or tanks, and limited small arms, most of their best troops had been wiped out at Shanghai so what kind of strategy can they undertake to win the war or was just trading time for space and hoping the bleed Japan white the only way?
 
China can't win a military victory. It's a stalemate, and will be for a very long time. Chiang's strategy was to wait until the Allies were in a war with Japan, which is what happened IOTL. Unfortunately, he never planned on them doing so bad in 1942 and letting Burma be occupied and cut Japan off from aide, which is what really hurt the Chinese war effort.

In this case, he never gets what he wants, but that may actually be a good thing for Chiang Kai Shek. However, we are still looking at many more years of stalemate.

No Pearl Harbor means the following will happen.

The first American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) will be supplemented with a second group of bombers by start of 1942, and will be joined by a third group - this one of fighters again - by mid 1942.

China will start receiving very basic supplies - rifles, ammunition, uniforms, etc. - and equipment to improve China's logistics and transportation network. But it will be a very long time before this leads to any substantial improvement of the Nationalist Chinese Army.

Because Burma will never be conquered, China will benefit from not having to have forces defending Yunnan from Burma, and Chiang will never lose the services of some of his best divisions in Burma, which happened due to a combination of heavy losses and "X Force" being cut off in India.

The open supply route with Burma will allow any additional economic aide to be used to buy needed materials instead of fueling inflation.

The Burma-Yunnan Railway will be completed sometime in 1943 and increase the supplies able to be sent to the Nationalists.

With these improvements, the performance of the Nationalist armies will not degrade like they did from 1942-1944. This is probably enough to maintain the stalemate which they did in 1942-1943. It's probably also enough to prevent a disaster like the Ichi-Go Operation in 1944.

Despite this, the Nationalist Army is still a long way away from conducting a successful offensive operation. If they do, it'll be centered in the south towards the port of Canton. This is where Li Zongren wanted to attack in 1943, and where the Chinese did attack in 1945 after a substantial upgrade of forces after the Ledo Road was opened. Since the Chinese are likely to remain a low priority, they won't receive all the Lend Lease they lack, but they might be able to take Canton on their own sometime between 1945-1947. It'll be bloody though.

By this time, the war in Europe is over. Japan's aggression will seem very out of place in the world the Allies/United Nations intend to build. They can dump all sorts of excess war supplies and Lend Lease to China now. The US and British navies can concentrate on the Pacific. France will be very adamant that Japan return Indochina to it and withdraw all troops.

At this point, it's likely the Allies will force Japan into a negotiated peace. At the very lease, Japan will need to leave Indochina to avoid war. The most likely scenario is that Japan pulls back its forces from China, but keeps Manchukuo and its direct colonial empire. Japan seethes in at the humiliation and plans revenge. Of course, depending on how crazy the Japanese are, it might explode into a war, in which case Japan is quickly bootstomped.

The war is over before China is able to push Japan out by itself, but it's possible China might be able to score a few noticeable victories in the south and liberate Canton. If for some strange reason, the war isn't over by then, it'll take many more years before China is able to push on and retake Nanking and Shanghai. Even more before it crosses the Yellow River and retakes the North China Plain. All of this is only possible if the US continues to supply Chiang massively. But I honestly can't see this happening without some kind of diplomatic solution, or an expansion of the war occuring first.
 
If japan attacks the dei, theyre at war with britain at minimum. Almost certainly the us eventually. But the us is more prepared and may be ab,e to start island hopping from the philippines. War is over in 1944.

If japan does NOT attack the dei, they run out of hard currency to buy oil sometime in 1942/43 and the war is over six months later.
 
If japan attacks the dei, theyre at war with britain at minimum. Almost certainly the us eventually. But the us is more prepared and may be ab,e to start island hopping from the philippines. War is over in 1944.

If japan does NOT attack the dei, they run out of hard currency to buy oil sometime in 1942/43 and the war is over six months later.

Well, their industries ran on coal, not oil, so this will not hurt the economy too badly, but their ability to use aircraft and internal combustion vehicles, being limited to whatever synthetic fuels they can manufacture, will be severely impacted. I dunno about the war being over, but expansion of the war into new areas will become impossible: a withdrawal to more defensible areas seems likely.

It's not like the war is winnable at this point, and the situation will only decay with time, but the military are likely to dig in their heels and hold their breath until they turn blue if the Japanese government does not try - and keep on trying, for a long time - to get a negotiated peace that leaves Japan with an improved status on 1937: and with guns, machine guns, cannon, and perhaps chemical and biological weapons they can still kill an awful lot of Chinese.

Where is the Kuomintang getting fuel for it's airplanes, anyway? All over the Burma hump? I wonder if they can get enough to achieve air superiority, with continued US help...

Bruce
 
I assumed no Pearl Harbor meant Japan did not attack the DEI or Britain. If they did, China is compeltely screwed because the Burma Road will be overrun.

If the Burma Road is open, China will get the oil for its airplanes the same place as its airplanes (and pilots): the United States.

I don't think China will ever get air superiority, but they should do well enough to deny it to the Japanese.

The entire planned AVG was only going to be 500 planes. Not enough for air superiority. But probably enough to keep Chungking safe from bombardment, and to assist in ground support during land battles.

China asked that eventually the air force be expanded to 1000 planes, but there were no plans to achieve that in the initial phase. However, it could conceivably be enlarged to do that.
 
I think that whether or not the KMT can win depends on one very important thing: Foreign aid. By 1941 Chinese were a veritable ally of the US and had already been getting support from the USSR.

If the aid and advisers are plentiful, the NRA can probably get enough well-armed crack troops to beat back the Japanese, albeit at a slower pace. If there is little aid then they just hole up in Sichuan and stay there until the war finally ends.
 
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