Could the ROC win the Chinese Civil War?

Possible?

  • Not at all

    Votes: 4 5.2%
  • Maybe

    Votes: 30 39.0%
  • Yes

    Votes: 43 55.8%

  • Total voters
    77
Could the Republic of China under Chang Kai-shek, have won the civil war against Mao with increased NATO involvement or was their effort all for nothing? And if they did would they put Puyi back on the throne?
 
I was more for the idea that Beiyang could crush the "Reds" in the south, which included both the Nationalist and Communists, so that the communist party never had the chance to rise or grow to national significance.
 
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I don't know, but I have heard that Communists had popular support as well as Soviet support. The Communists also captured most of Japanese equipment in Manchuria after WW2. I think it is possible, before the Japanese invasion.
 

nbcman

Donor
Zero chance of Puyi going on the throne as he was a Soviet captive in Siberia during the Chinese Civil War. Also, NATO wasn't formed until the Chinese Civil War was well along the path of being lost by the Nationalists.
 
I don't know, but I have heard that Communists had popular support as well as Soviet support. The Communists also captured most of Japanese equipment in Manchuria after WW2. I think it is possible, before the Japanese invasion.

I agree- Chiang could have crushed the Communists in the 30s before Japan invaded. After that the Soviets handing over Manchuria and the Japanese equipment was a huge boost for Mao, though as you say the Communists also gained popularity in the countryside when it became clear they were the only ones who could credibly deliver land reform. Post-WWII best case scenario for the ROC is a divided mainland.

And yeah there is absolutely no chance of Puyi being restored- even before he collaborated with the Japanese it would be extremely unlikely, after that completely impossible.
 
Basically, the time to beat the Communists was any time up to the Japanese invasion. After WWII was over, conditions for the KMT had arguably eroded too far and the CCP was surging.

That said, I'm no expert on the post-WWII Chinese Civil War. Perhaps there was a point in '47 where the KMT could've stemmed the Red Tide in a decisive battle? Most seem to agree that all was lost by '48.
 
Basically, the time to beat the Communists was any time up to the Japanese invasion. After WWII was over, conditions for the KMT had arguably eroded too far and the CCP was surging.

That said, I'm no expert on the post-WWII Chinese Civil War. Perhaps there was a point in '47 where the KMT could've stemmed the Red Tide in a decisive battle? Most seem to agree that all was lost by '48.
Until sometime in 47 the Nationalists still had the advantage in pure firepower so that mean they still have a shot in my book, especially if they can convince the Americans to keep sending material. They where also non-insignificant divisions inside the CCP back then so while I can't really gave a precise POD in that regard its definitely possible they could manage to loose the war by themselves if said differences became too accute.

I agree with you and others, however, that pre-Japanese invasion would most likely be better. In fact, just delaying their invasion for a few years might do the trick: the KMT had just forced the CCP to do its long march and the latter has suffered massive looses during it.

As for Puyi I believe no way in hell wouldn't even cut it. The KMT was anti-monarchists at his core. Hell, its founder was Sun Yat Sen! Of course, whatever revolutionary fervor it might have had in his first years had considerably died down by the 30's but even so, restoring Puyi would be a few thousands steeps too far.
 
Could the Republic of China under Chang Kai-shek, have won the civil war against Mao with increased NATO involvement or was their effort all for nothing? And if they did would they put Puyi back on the throne?
Why would they put Puyi back on the throne? The KMT was founded by the anti-monarchy revolutionaries who overthrew him in the first place, and after his collaboration with Japan they wanted to have him executed and the only reason Puyi survived was because he was in communist captivity and the communists wanted to show off how they could reform anyone.
 
What killed the KMT was committing their best divisions to Manchuria, having a ceasefire in Manchuria that gave the CCP ample opportunity to organize a defense, and then losing said divisions there. Otherwise the CCP had lots of presence chiefly in the areas formerly occupied (actually most of it was left lawless) by Japan, but they didn't possess huge amounts of heavy weaponry until the Soviets let them set up shop in the northeast.

There seems to be some debate about whether Chiang could have feasibly taken Manchuria. The argument in favor says that the U.S.-supported ceasefire threw a wrench in the KMT's emerging mop-up operations, while the opposing view says that the CCP was more resilient and better-placed to begin with in terms of logistics and deployment.

I don't really know enough of the details to pick a side yet, but it seems a safe bet to say that if Chiang had not bothered with Manchuria in the first place, or had he been content to limit himself to say, the area from Jinzhou to Shenyang, then he could have held the CCP off instead of getting caught in the trap that allowed Lin Biao et al to pile defeat after defeat upon him. I think that Chiang's eagerness to take Manchuria was more a point of national pride than geopolitical necessity, since Manchuria was a large factor, if not the main factor, in why China ended up fighting Japan for 8 years. To just let it fall into communist hands would have been humiliating indeed.

Without the tremendous CCP victories in Manchuria, the communist base areas in North China and elsewhere become harder to hold onto and are probably in danger of straying from the Party line as the KMT government informs everyone the war against Japan is over and that they need to follow the laws and rebuild. Granted this might be a tough process but some peasant rebels in the countryside are not going to be much of a military threat.

Corruption is an oft-mentioned topic used by the KMT's detractors (PRC narrative, US historians, pro-independence Taiwanese) to negatively access its performance, but I have not done enough reading to make an opinion on how critical it was as a factor in the ROC's defeat.
 
I think it'd help if the reasons the Nationalists lost are listed, since we could then focus on how Chiang could have solved each of these problems (disclaimer, I know very little intuitively about the Chinese Civil War)

Some reasons for Nationalist loss/Communist victory:
  1. Immediately after WWII the Nationalists had exhausted a lot of resources fighting the Japanese, whereas the Communists mostly stuck to surviving in preparation for the postwar era with occasional guerrilla raids on the Japanese to at least look like they're fighting the invaders. The Communists came out of the war a lot fresher than the Nationalists.
  2. Chiang managed to make too many enemies, fighting the Japanese while also fighting the Communists (at least until his generals kidnapped him and forced a truce). His alliance with the warlords alienated much of the peasantry, which the Communists eagerly gobbled up with their land reform policies and the like.
  3. The oft-quoted corruption (including conscription which often resulted in corrupt officers taking extra pay and thus not leaving any for the lower ranks) and mismanagement, while their effect on their own is debatable, managed to persuade the US to withdraw aid
  4. The Nationalists decisively lost the public opinion war, failing to punish Japanese collaborators, brutally torturing and executing Communists publicly (thus making them martyrs), giving the countryside and thus the peasant population to the Communists
  5. Economic failure caused by hyperinflation, price control failures, corruption, etc, which alienated the middle class.
  6. Relative incompetence (in general, but special note goes to) in the military command structure compared to the Communists, who at least allowed their generals to make their own decisions and exercised impressive amounts of cohesion
  7. (although the source for this one was somewhat dubious) apparently Chiang discharged a large number of soldiers after solidifying alliances with the warlords, and with nowhere else to turn, most of them joined the Communists
Of course, there are probably a lot more reasons, but these are some of the more concrete ones IMO.
 
The single greatest factor that could have improved the KMT's image would be a successful rural land reform - the Party was heavily associated with the tyrannical and corrupt rural landlords (who the KMT ruled through in the countryside), and the Communists won massive support with their promises to kick them out and give land to the peasants.
 
Depends on the PoD. The later you get, the less likely a total KMT victory is unlikely for the reasons outlines in @All Hail Enterprise 's post.
I think it'd help if the reasons the Nationalists lost are listed, since we could then focus on how Chiang could have solved each of these problems (disclaimer, I know very little intuitively about the Chinese Civil War)

Some reasons for Nationalist loss/Communist victory:
  1. Immediately after WWII the Nationalists had exhausted a lot of resources fighting the Japanese, whereas the Communists mostly stuck to surviving in preparation for the postwar era with occasional guerrilla raids on the Japanese to at least look like they're fighting the invaders. The Communists came out of the war a lot fresher than the Nationalists.
  2. Chiang managed to make too many enemies, fighting the Japanese while also fighting the Communists (at least until his generals kidnapped him and forced a truce). His alliance with the warlords alienated much of the peasantry, which the Communists eagerly gobbled up with their land reform policies and the like.
  3. The oft-quoted corruption (including conscription which often resulted in corrupt officers taking extra pay and thus not leaving any for the lower ranks) and mismanagement, while their effect on their own is debatable, managed to persuade the US to withdraw aid.
  4. The Nationalists decisively lost the public opinion war, failing to punish Japanese collaborators, brutally torturing and executing Communists publicly (thus making them martyrs), giving the countryside and thus the peasant population to the Communists
  5. Economic failure caused by hyperinflation, price control failures, corruption, etc, which alienated the middle class.
  6. Relative incompetence (in general, but special note goes to) in the military command structure compared to the Communists, who at least allowed their generals to make their own decisions and exercised impressive amounts of cohesion
  7. (although the source for this one was somewhat dubious) apparently Chiang discharged a large number of soldiers after solidifying alliances with the warlords, and with nowhere else to turn, most of them joined the Communists
Of course, there are probably a lot more reasons, but these are some of the more concrete ones IMO.

Solve all of these, the KMT has a chance of winning outright.
Solve some of these, and the chances are you're looking at a negotiated peace and a divided China, the more you solve, the longer this lasts.

One of my timelines (the Mers El Kebir Resolution) has the Burma Road reopened open a year early, giving the Nationalists time to resuply and reinforce before operation Ichi Go, meaning the nationalists are in a stronger position militarily post WWII. Afterwards they turn to liberating the major ports to ensure seaborne supply. With the Nationalists winning several major victories in the final years, Nationalist forces are better off in terms of numbers, eequipment, experience, and morale. It also gives Chiang the political clout to deal with his Warlord allies more effectively, and there are some leaders who fought in Burma who start taking corruption as a threat more seriously.
 
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