DBAHC: Unite China

Let's face it, the map of East Asia in its current state is simply hideous. And I know people here have said holding a significant minority of the world's population in a single modern state is implausible, but hey, they did it a few times before, didn't they?

So with a POD no earlier than the fall of the Ming, unite China, and keep it that way until 2017. And it has to be Chinese or sort-of Chinese, no Britwanks please.
 
Harry Turtledove wrote a book starting with the Chinese Quantum Satellite, with a long backstory about the Second Mongol conquest after the Ming (Or Jurchens? They gave themselves a funny name relating to some Buddhist jargon). Anyway, in that TL, China was unified by the Mongols, who were in turn overthrown by some Republicans, and, after a long period of civil and foreign wars, some communards with a red flag took over. Quite a rip-off isn’t it? He clearly borrowed from the French history heavily.

In that book, a Ming general decided to invite the Mongols in to drive out the rebels, who then defeated all the factions we knew iotl.
 
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What about he Korean-Jurchen Guem Dynasty (ie the polity more commonly as Cathay)? They did come very close to dominating the North China plain before their phyrric victory in the 3rd Guem-Dzungar War.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Personally, I think all you have to do is wait. China has a history of periodically falling apart into contending states, and just as much of a history when it comes to 'falling back together again'. Granted, the current period of division has been going on for quite some time... but who knows? A hundred years from now, we might well be looking at a new period of Chinese unification!

Anyway, to prevent the current period of division the best POD would be late-Ming reforms, but the OP rules that out. Second best option: somehow unite the so-called 'Ming Remnants' that held on in the south. In certain historiographical traditions, they are even called the "Southern Ming", but that's mostly just a name without a concrete entity to back it up. The successors to the Ming were mostly warlords who squabbled over legitimacy and only presented something of a united front to keep Li Zicheng from invading the south. End result: multiple states in what used to be South China.

And then there's the Xi Dynasty, established by Zhang Xianzhong in Sichuan...

If the Ming Remnants could have united under one leader, thry may have been able to wrest control of the north back from Li Zicheng, before deposing Zhang Xianzhong and thus re-establishing order.
 
Li Zicheng from invading the south
And maybe in Li Zicheng's southern campaigns is the answer. Have Zhang Xianzhong stay allied to the Shun Dynasty following Li's death at the siege of Hangzhou, allowing the Shun to conquer the South swiftly before turning it's gaze north and finally defeating the last obstacle to its rule: Zhang Xianzhong.
 
I know it's before the PoD but if the mandate of heaven was never created, or I should say reinvented to prevent the the legitimization of revolts The various ming successor states would have had a much easier time reasserting hegemony without revolts back home
 
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