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Cutting The Deck
A Chinese Role Reversal TLIAD (Sort of)

What is this?
A TLIAD of course. No, wait a TLIAM. Hmm on second thoughts maybe I better go with TLIAY. I’m not that fast on writing. Happy to post comment updates but TLIAD is way too fast for me to finish.

Uh-huh. I agree, you can’t write that fast (mumbles)-let alone finish your last Chinese timeline, cough, Flaming Dragons, cough. But aren’t you a little behind the times? This fad happened like a year or two ago.

Well, I kinda missed the whole TLIAD/Shuffling craze when it started up during a bit of a break from the forums. Besides they’re incredibly popular on the forums, haven’t you heard of Sea Lion press?

Fine, fine, whatever. Copy a fad if you want, see if I care. What is your TL about exactly?

China. To be precise, a different version of the Chinese Civil War.

So the whole Cutting the Deck thing, you can’t even make an original title, not off to a good start.

It’s an homage to great TLs. And besides its twist on the Shuffling the Deck theme. Instead of ‘shuffling’ different heads of state/government I’m going to be cutting the entire deck of a nation.

So what does that mean exactly? Obviously it can’t be literal.

Well no obviously. It means that I’m taking two nations and swapping their roles in history around, or in this case two governments of one nation.

I’m still confused. This sounds overly complicated. Can’t you just make a normal TL like usual?

Uh! Ok look. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you picked the USA and Germany as your two nations and you chose the 1920s-1940s time period.

Ok, I’m with you so far.

Then you would use PODs that reverse the roles of the two nations. So the USA would become a fascist dictatorship in the early 1930s and start a major whereas Germany would grow to be a large and stable democracy that enters the war late on the winning side.

Hmm I see. Well I understand the role reversal idea now. Even if you are oversimplifying US and German history somewhat. So you reversed the Communists and Nationalists in China?

Yes. I gave myself two rules. One, the communists start out as the main mass movement and dominate China for most of the early 20th century, while the nationalists start out with them but remain mostly a guerilla movement until they surge in the late 1940s.
Two Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong will be still be the heads of state for most of the time, though not exactly for the same dates and time as they were in OTL.

I think you’re trying too hard to add in a deck theme to the title of this thing but whatever, let’s see what you have. What’s the POD?

It should be obvious to even a casual observer of Chinese history.

Oh, please don’t play this game. I hate guessing PODs, especially when it isn’t obvious in the first post.

Fine, fine. Sun Yat-Sen is never born. Gone, erased, removed, deleted, expunged. I hadn’t really decided on how, but let’s say a disease hit Cuiheng in the 1860s and both of his parents died before he could be conceived.
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