DBWI: Qing China fell?

CECBC

Banned
It might sound crazy nowadays but the mighty Qing Empire was on the verge of collapse in the early 1900s. If it did fall what would be the likely fallout? Without the glorious Qing spreading benevolent influence across Asia and beyond would we have a more dangerous world with more war, violence, etc?

Do you think, as some have speculated that democracy would be more popular in Asia without Qing influence or would the people naturally abandon such silly beliefs?
 
Silly belief it's not. The Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia has been relatively stable despite stretching from Aceh to West Papua, and Sabah to Timor.

But to answer your question, with the Qing size there's no doubt there will be another civil war like the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Monarchist, republican, theocracy, and fascist warlords will no doubt profiliate in China.
 
China would not be a good place to live in. While I like the idea of a democracy as much as benevolent, enlightened rule under the Emperor and the many Lords of the Imperial Council, those who advocated a Republic at the time were simply far too disorganized and idealistic to succeed. While I'd say their rebellion would at very most reach similar results as the Taiping--at the cusp of success but failing due to disunity, if they did succeed, I can't see their regime lasting for too long, or actually being democratic given their weak leadership that lacked the pragmatism of the Qing and the strong power of the individual province that the Republicans still have to tackle after a long, grueling civil war.
But of course, ten thousand years to the Emperor (or to be precise, Duke Zhou Enlai and his reforms) for allowing us the freedom of speech that would most likely have failed to materialize under the corrupt, undemocratic and decentralized state that would most likely emerge if the Qing had been destroyed.
 
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Plus, I really can't see and regime but the Qing managing to stand up to the advance of Communism. The Soviets might have committed brutal atrocities in their advance through China, such as the Rape of Peking, but the Qing's unified leadership was able to push them out and retake Iuter Manchuria along with our noble Japanese allies. Now, Asia is free from the Stalinist menace.
 
glorious Qing spreading benevolent influence across Asia

Yeah, rite. Such as in Malayan peninsula where indigenous Malays live in a state of perpetual fear because their land is basically Qing's vassal with the peranakan Chinese there becoming Qing's henchmen policing "subversive" Malays..

Jeez, if not for them Qings, we'll surely had them liberated already and the Malays in Malayan peninsula will finally rejoined their brethren in this Unitary State!
 
Yeah, rite. Such as in Malayan peninsula where indigenous Malays live in a state of perpetual fear because their land is basically Qing's vassal with the peranakan Chinese there becoming Qing's henchmen policing "subversive" Malays..

Jeez, if not for them Qings, we'll surely had them liberated already and the Malays in Malayan peninsula will finally rejoined their brethren in this Unitary State!
I mean...it's better than being Stalinist. Despite its heavy handed rule, the Celestial Empire's really the only thing standing between Asia and those Stalinists in Europe from streaming past the Urals.
 
What about the Hong Kong crisis? Remember, the terms of British aid to the Qing during the Soviet invasion included the cession of mainland Hong Kong to the United Kingdom in perpetuity. China and Britain almost had a war over the city in 1997, and it was only diplomatic support from the Empire of Japan that allowed Britain to maintain control. Perhaps a Qing collapse would make Britain less likely to bother making such an assistance deal with an alternative China ITTL? Perhaps Hong Kong is conquered by this other China?
 
What about the Hong Kong crisis? Remember, the terms of British aid to the Qing during the Soviet invasion included the cession of mainland Hong Kong to the United Kingdom in perpetuity. China and Britain almost had a war over the city in 1997, and it was only diplomatic support from the Empire of Japan that allowed Britain to maintain control. Perhaps a Qing collapse would make Britain less likely to bother making such an assistance deal with an alternative China ITTL? Perhaps Hong Kong is conquered by this other China?
I really don't see that happening. China has always seen Hong Kong as a place to rile up the nationalists and garner support for the government, and that's not changing even if China's going Republican. If a united China isn't storming into Hong Kong, an opportunist post-Qing warlord isn't.
 
All Chinese dynasties fall eventually, the Qing being no exception. They had a hard time adjusting to the confrontation with the industrialized European powers, especially China, and many historians think they wouldn't have made it to the twentieth century without the coup that removed the downwager Empress Cixi from the scene. And even then they needed some really competent Emperors, and ministers of the caliber of Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping to just draw even with the rest of the world by most metrics.

Also, I don't understand the comments on democracy, since democratically elected assemblies and increasingly influential in county and provincial government in China.

By the way, by getting rid of the Qing, given the chaos that would likely come afterwards, you have just butterflied away the Chinese victory in the 1931-36 Sino-Japanese War. And that has major butterflies.
 
Yeah, rite. Such as in Malayan peninsula where indigenous Malays live in a state of perpetual fear because their land is basically Qing's vassal with the peranakan Chinese there becoming Qing's henchmen policing "subversive" Malays..

Jeez, if not for them Qings, we'll surely had them liberated already and the Malays in Malayan peninsula will finally rejoined their brethren in this Unitary State!

Give a Malay and a Chinaman a horse and cart each and in a weak the Malayan will have a cart but no horse and the Chinaman will have two horses and a cart.
In two weeks the Malayan will have no horse or cart and the Chinaman will have two horses and two carts.
In three weeks the Malayan will be working for the Chinaman.

The Malay are too lazy to govern themselves, if it wasn't the Qing then the British would still be running the place.
 

CalBear

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Give a Malay and a Chinaman a horse and cart each and in a weak the Malayan will have a cart but no horse and the Chinaman will have two horses and a cart.
In two weeks the Malayan will have no horse or cart and the Chinaman will have two horses and two carts.
In three weeks the Malayan will be working for the Chinaman.

The Malay are too lazy to govern themselves, if it wasn't the Qing then the British would still be running the place.
I'm going to go all in on benefit of the doubt here and assume this is a really bad attempt at humor.

It isn't funny to use racial slurs.
 
All Chinese dynasties fall eventually, the Qing being no exception. They had a hard time adjusting to the confrontation with the industrialized European powers, especially China, and many historians think they wouldn't have made it to the twentieth century without the coup that removed the downwager Empress Cixi from the scene. And even then they needed some really competent Emperors, and ministers of the caliber of Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping to just draw even with the rest of the world by most metrics.

So you think the Qing are doomed to fall? Sometime in the 21st century?

OOC: How do Japanese-Chinese relations look like in this reality? I'm guessing no Nanking here to sour up stuff...
 
It's hard to imagine how Asia would look. China and Japan have been the effective leaders of Asia since the end of the Soviet War, and between the two of them they've made the Pan-Asian League into a world power on a par with the US or the British Commonwealth. And they were the vanguard of independence movements across Asia, from the Philippines to Vietnam.

On the other hand, they did both lead to the propagation of extremely traditional forms of government and culture within East Asia - one could argue that their joint cultural initiatives are the reason why Christianity is 'officially not encouraged' by the governments of majority-Buddhist or Muslim nations.
 
So you think the Qing are doomed to fall?

Yes.

Sometime in the 21st century?

Chinese dynasties tend to go into really long declines and then just fall apart, but the long lived ones get second, or even third in the case of the T'ang, winds.

OOC: The Qing never got their second wind, things just went downhill from the last decades of the Qianlong Emperor until 1912-16. Though arguably the Qing were what would have been the Ming second wind. However, there was a strong reform movement in the nineteenth century that Cixi blocked. Get rid of her, and they could have rallied, and though its a stretch, arguably even after 1912 it wasn't too late if one of the warlords had taken charge and restored central control, and then handed things over to Puyi (who would have developed a different personality in this environment) as Franco did with Juan Carlos. One issue is that after too many defeats by Cixi and her faction, the reformers threw in the tool and went for a republic based on western ideas, so I think getting rid of her is really the key.
 
So you think the Qing are doomed to fall?

Yes.

Sometime in the 21st century?

Chinese dynasties tend to go into really long declines and then just fall apart, but the long lived ones get second, or even third in the case of the T'ang, winds.

OOC: The Qing never got their second wind, things just went downhill from the last decades of the Qianlong Emperor until 1912-16. Though arguably the Qing were what would have been the Ming second wind. However, there was a strong reform movement in the nineteenth century that Cixi blocked. Get rid of her, and they could have rallied, and though its a stretch, arguably even after 1912 it wasn't too late if one of the warlords had taken charge and restored central control, and then handed things over to Puyi (who would have developed a different personality in this environment) as Franco did with Juan Carlos. One issue is that after too many defeats by Cixi and her faction, the reformers threw in the tool and went for a republic based on western ideas, so I think getting rid of her is really the key.
It's really impossible to say. I agree that no state lasts forever, but the Qing have as of late been moving to try to reject the idea of the Mandate of Heaven, focusing more on legitimacy from human law than godly law. I like it myself, it's led to some good liberal reforms like Gay Marriage just this year, but it certainly seems to me like a long game to move away from a system where one dumbass for a few years means your entire family is discredited.
 
The fall of the dynasty would have led to more problems for Asia. Japan would have probably gone to war with China at some point during the 20th century. Thanks to the dynasty; the two nations were able to unify against Stalin and equalize the resources of the Far East.
Now if we could only find a way to fix Europe....
 
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