As you all probably know, the Chinese Nationalist Party (aka the Kuomitang or KMT), now a small puppet party of the Communists, used to be China's ruling party before WWII and enjoyed a good relashionship with the US and the rest of the western world.
However, after their leader Chiang-kai-shek was killed in the midst of a Japanese invasion the party splintered into two weak and disorganized factions, one pro-Japanese and the other pro-communist.
From that point onwards, it became clear that a soviet-backed communist China would be inevitable after the allies won WWII.
However, there was a part of pre-war China that didn't go to the PRC. I'm talking about Taiwan, of course, which was liberated from Japanese rule by the Americans instead of the communist Chinese. Not wanting to give the island to their ideological enemies, and not knowing what else to do with it, the US kept a prolonged militairy occupation of the island. In the 1960s, they gave them their own civillian government, and now Taiwan is a commonwealth in free association with the United Sates, much like Puerto Rico.
There have been a few threads in this forum about the KMT surviving and winning an evetual second Chinese civil war against the communists, but the general consensus seems to be that such a thing would be very hard to achieve. So I propose an alternate scenario. What if a surving KMT could rely on western support to establish a "Free China" in the island of Taiwan?
Would this be possible?
What would Taiwan look like in this scenario? From the top of my head, I can think it would be less diverse, for not only there wouldn't be massive immigration from the US and Philipines, but also the KMT would likely expel the islands Japanese population, which the Americans didn't.
OOC: This is mostly a revival of this thread: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-the-kmt-gets-obliterated-during-wwii.409780/ in DBWI form.
However, after their leader Chiang-kai-shek was killed in the midst of a Japanese invasion the party splintered into two weak and disorganized factions, one pro-Japanese and the other pro-communist.
From that point onwards, it became clear that a soviet-backed communist China would be inevitable after the allies won WWII.
However, there was a part of pre-war China that didn't go to the PRC. I'm talking about Taiwan, of course, which was liberated from Japanese rule by the Americans instead of the communist Chinese. Not wanting to give the island to their ideological enemies, and not knowing what else to do with it, the US kept a prolonged militairy occupation of the island. In the 1960s, they gave them their own civillian government, and now Taiwan is a commonwealth in free association with the United Sates, much like Puerto Rico.
There have been a few threads in this forum about the KMT surviving and winning an evetual second Chinese civil war against the communists, but the general consensus seems to be that such a thing would be very hard to achieve. So I propose an alternate scenario. What if a surving KMT could rely on western support to establish a "Free China" in the island of Taiwan?
Would this be possible?
What would Taiwan look like in this scenario? From the top of my head, I can think it would be less diverse, for not only there wouldn't be massive immigration from the US and Philipines, but also the KMT would likely expel the islands Japanese population, which the Americans didn't.
OOC: This is mostly a revival of this thread: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-the-kmt-gets-obliterated-during-wwii.409780/ in DBWI form.