DBWI: The Communists win the Chinese civil war?

As we all know, the Nationalist party of China was successful in defeating the Communists on the mainland, with Taiwan being the only surviving outpost of the Chinese Communist Party, a situation that lasts to this day. So my question is, what if this had been reversed, with the Mainland going Communist, and Taiwan going Nationalist? How would this effect the course of Asian, and world history?
 

Kongzilla

Banned
You probably wouldn't have had anything as bad as the 2 million people killed after the end of the civil war for being branded as traitors or politically unreliable.
 
Only way this can happen is if the Nationalists would have just stopped advancing on the Communists in 1945. Maybe if the Soviet Union supplied more weapons and supplies the Communists could have turned it around.

I don't think the Communists would have allowed the Nationalists to keep Taiwan. The Nationalists where very generous to do that, even though they had support from the USA to attack Taiwan at any time. The Soviet Union put pressure on them though, threathing to attack from the North.

If the Communists won they would probably have gotten Manchuria back from the USSR, unlike the Nationalists who tried to attack it in the 50's and failed miserably. This would make a Communist China much stronger then the weak economic bottomless pit that is China today.

The Communists under Mao wouldn't have been stupid enough to threathen Japan with revenge for the war either and get disciplined by the Americans, thus halting their own economic growth.

OOC: I'm just throwing random ideas out there, as i always do with DBWI's
 
I wonder how the famines of the 1950s would have gone with the communists in charge? Better, worse? Many folks blame US policies for aggravating the famine, tho its roots seem to be in the traditional Chinese problems of weather, poor harvest, market manipulations, government incompetence.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Would certainly be better for Taiwan if the Nationalists ended up running the place. With the Communists in charge, central planning and lack of trade have made it an economic disaster. Only emergency food aid from the international community prevents mass starvation.
 
If the Communists won they would probably have gotten Manchuria back from the USSR, unlike the Nationalists who tried to attack it in the 50's and failed miserably. This would make a Communist China much stronger then the weak economic bottomless pit that is China today.

I absolutely agree, and more than that - I think Communism could well have achieved the impossible and kept China together as one state, avoiding the bloody serial partitions of the 60s and the Shaanxi War.

Imagine if Manchuria, Huabei, Jiangnan, Szechwan, Uyghurstan, the eastern half of Tibet (which everyone forgets was still part of China as Qinghai Province until Ma Bufang orchestrated the 1966 union), and even those bits of Vietnam and Burma that used to be Yunnan Province, imagine they were all still one country under a single government. It would have the biggest population of any country on the planet. China the country would be an economic and political powerhouse at least on a par with the USSR and USA, rather than the squabbling mess that China the region is today.
 
I wonder if a communist China would have affected the outcome of the Korean conflict in the 50's. I would imagine that with both the Soviets and a communist China supporting Kim Il-sung the conflict could easily have escalated beyond the glorified police action of OTL.
 
I absolutely agree, and more than that - I think Communism could well have achieved the impossible and kept China together as one state, avoiding the bloody serial partitions of the 60s and the Shaanxi War.

Imagine if Manchuria, Huabei, Jiangnan, Szechwan, Uyghurstan, the eastern half of Tibet (which everyone forgets was still part of China as Qinghai Province until Ma Bufang orchestrated the 1966 union), and even those bits of Vietnam and Burma that used to be Yunnan Province, imagine they were all still one country under a single government. It would have the biggest population of any country on the planet. China the country would be an economic and political powerhouse at least on a par with the USSR and USA, rather than the squabbling mess that China the region is today.


Your assuming that Mao doesn't screw it up. I think we can safely look at Taiwan and apply that to a larger scale for mainalnd China. It would be a mess.
 
Wasn't Korea originally divided between Communist and Non Communist regimes ?

With a Communist China might the North have remained Communist ?
 
I think a lot of China's issue come from the U.S's economic exploitation during the 50s-60s. I know it sounds odd but I think a Communist government would be free of U.S influence and be at least someone stronger economically.
 
If you want a PoD, a general named Chang ki-shek(sp?) Tried taking over the KMT at one point. I read an article about that a couple of decades ago, and the guy sounds like he would have been a total disaster. Dont remember many specifics, it was a while back.
 
I absolutely agree, and more than that - I think Communism could well have achieved the impossible and kept China together as one state, avoiding the bloody serial partitions of the 60s and the Shaanxi War.

Imagine if Manchuria, Huabei, Jiangnan, Szechwan, Uyghurstan, the eastern half of Tibet (which everyone forgets was still part of China as Qinghai Province until Ma Bufang orchestrated the 1966 union), and even those bits of Vietnam and Burma that used to be Yunnan Province, imagine they were all still one country under a single government. It would have the biggest population of any country on the planet. China the country would be an economic and political powerhouse at least on a par with the USSR and USA, rather than the squabbling mess that China the region is today.

OOC: yeah, let's take random Han regions of China and split them off just because they have separate names for their regions. The OP also said that the Nationalist government won.
I'm going to ignore that bit but go with the proposition that the USSR survived.

IC: A major question for the OP is how could the Communists could have won. I think it's possible but not without a LOT of luck and unforeseen occurrences (i.e. also luck). In any case looking at the present USSR China probably would have unified itself, built itself up, stagnated, and possibly reformed to a degree, but it would be somewhat behind due to ideological constraints in the early stages, or possibly even in the gutter if it doesn't reform. We see this latter scenario as a looming possibility when we consider today's Taiwan*. IMO the USSR is only what it is today because of the right men being in the Politburo at the right time doing the right things when Stalin died.

*=Given the ferocity with which the Chinese (Taiwanese?) Communists thoroughly eradicated the aboriginal and original Han Taiwanese culture and persecuted their populations, I don't know if they would be much nicer to the mainland's minorities.
 
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OOC: yeah, let's take random Han regions of China and split them off just because they have separate names for their regions. The OP also said that the Nationalist government won.
I'm going to ignore that bit but go with the proposition that the USSR survived.

IC: A major question for the OP is how could the Communists could have won. I think it's possible but not without a LOT of luck and unforeseen occurrences (i.e. also luck). In any case looking at the present USSR China probably would have unified itself, built itself up, stagnated, and possibly reformed to a degree, but it would be somewhat behind due to ideological constraints in the early stages, or possibly even in the gutter if it doesn't reform. We see this latter scenario as a looming possibility when we consider today's Taiwan*. IMO the USSR is only what it is today because of the right men being in the Politburo at the right time doing the right things when Stalin died.

*=Given the ferocity with which the Chinese (Taiwanese?) Communists thoroughly eradicated the aboriginal and original Han Taiwanese culture and persecuted their populations.
Yeah, Taiwan's basically "North Korea on an Island" these days. Hell even worse! At least North Korea has electricity outside the Capital!
 
OOC: yeah, let's take random Han regions of China and split them off just because they have separate names for their regions. The OP also said that the Nationalist government won.
I'm going to ignore that bit but go with the proposition that the USSR survived.

OOC: he just felt it highly unlikely, as do i that Chiang could hold the country together. Certainly with the USSR breathing down their neck, occupying Manchuria and all the economic devastation from the war. Thus, a split. I don't know the regions he mentioned but Shanxi, Yunnan, Guangxi and Sinkiang where ruled by seperate warlords before so its not unlikely they would split from the main body if the Chiang regime falls.
 
Well, for one, the region might be a LOT more politically stable. After the USSR dissolved in 1992(though Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan remained Communist, and the former two are considering a union in a few years), nearly all of their Chinese puppet states started to fall apart internally, and it took both the U.S. and Siberia 7 whole years to rectify the situation.

And you certainly wouldn't have seen anything like the 66 million people who died in the Katorga system(yes, named after the Russian imperial prison complex, though it's the Western name.)for various thought and expressive "crimes" against the state nor would massive amounts of ethnic cleansing have occurred between the '50s and the Great Collapse Backwards in '66.

Simply put, the Communists may not have been the best thing for Taiwan, but the Nationalists would have been far worse.

OOC: Sorry fellas, but I don't see the Soviet Union being able to survive to the present day. And I seriously doubt the Communists would have gone full Jim Crow on minorities, either.
 
OOC: yeah, let's take random Han regions of China and split them off just because they have separate names for their regions. The OP also said that the Nationalist government won.

OOC: Manchuria was already split-off by someone else as being part of the USSR, and the other splits are along lines that seemed logical to me (there are cultural and socio-economic splits in China, especially between North and South - Huabei is a thing according to Wikipedia, and Jiangnan seemed to work as a contrasting name for the South). The KMT was a unification of various different groups and some extremely strong personalities united by a common enemy; I don't believe it could have survived as a single movement if it had won, and I don't think its leadership would have been as ruthless as Mao was in crushing internal dissent after an ultimate victory. It seems plausible to me the most likely course of events would be failure to hold such a large territory under a KMT central government, a futher civil war between different KMT factions leading to the partition of China between those factions and the loss of territory to Tibet, Burma, Vietnam and Uyghur separatists.
 
Also don't forget people with Manchuria part of China the Manchurian-Huabei war in 1993 would have never happened, which was sort of like a Second Korean war except with more dead. Man, Manchuria has seen a lot of conflict, even while it was Communist. The Manchurian spring is still going on, to take down the communist regime.

OOC::D
 
OOC: he just felt it highly unlikely, as do i that Chiang could hold the country together. Certainly with the USSR breathing down their neck, occupying Manchuria and all the economic devastation from the war. Thus, a split. I don't know the regions he mentioned but Shanxi, Yunnan, Guangxi and Sinkiang where ruled by seperate warlords before so its not unlikely they would split from the main body if the Chiang regime falls.

Ooc. My post removed Chiang, relegating him to ancient history, as a might have been. I believe thats consistant with posts previous.
 
Canada might still be in NATO. Trudeau pulled out after hearing that the KMT were behind the death of Norman Bethune- with US approval.

Would the Communists have wanted the late President Tsien? He worked as a Colonel for the US in WWII and his role in rocketry helped us win the space race. He went to China not long after his retirement to help lift the population.
 
Canada might still be in NATO. Trudeau pulled out after hearing that the KMT were behind the death of Norman Bethune- with US approval.

Would the Communists have wanted the late President Tsien? He worked as a Colonel for the US in WWII and his role in rocketry helped us win the space race. He went to China not long after his retirement to help lift the population.

And to Canada's great benefit, I think. No more taking part in senseless warmongering.....no more "anti-Communist" activities in the Third World, no nothing.
 
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