DBWI: The Nationalists lost the Civil War

As we all know, the Nationalists won the Chinese Civil War and took control of all of China, but what if the Nationalists lost the Civil War and the Communists had taken over? What PODs might be needed for such a scenario? How would the Cold War be affected without the Republic of China being a "third superpower"/unaligned kingmaker? Could a hypothetical Communist China have filled said role? Or would the role have been filled by India or someone else?
 

Deleted member 1487

The Republicans would have had a field day with Truman. I'd expect him to lose the next election and who knows how much history would diverge or who the GOP would run. In Asia without China being the bulwark against Communism, perhaps it would with the USSR seek to spread it through the region and drag the US into multiple wars; certainly the US wouldn't have the advantage over the USSR of knowing they had a strong ally threatening the Soviets in case of war in Europe. The 'Evil Empire' as it was was quite restrained in it's foreign policy thanks to the Chinese threat on it's long border, without that and instead an ally there...who knows what they might have gotten up to. Perhaps the USSR would have survived longer without being bankrupted by the major military spending they engaged in to check potential Chinese threats. I also wonder what the global economy would look like with China behind the iron curtain; it is the world's largest economy today, picking up that title in the 1990s, and was a VAST trade partner for the US in the post-war era. I wonder if the Japanese economy would have boomed like it did without the Chinese market? Germany certainly thrived on Chinese trade as well, so I'd think the 'capitalists' would have suffered quite a bit (never mind the Chinese themselves!) without access to the Chinese market and developing economy.
 
I also wonder what the global economy would look like with China behind the iron curtain; it is the world's largest economy today, picking up that title in the 1990s, and was a VAST trade partner for the US in the post-war era.
Maybe the Federal Republic of India would have filled China's historical role?
 
What about Mongolia? The Chinese's claim on it almost triggered WWIII with the Soviets, they had to wait 1991 to retake it. How would a Communist China behave instead?
 

Deleted member 1487

Maybe the Federal Republic of India would have filled China's historical role?
Perhaps, but it struggled IOTL to match China in many ways and suffered from the rivalry with Pakistan. ITTL I could see it ignoring China to fixate on Pakistan (they did have a lot of terrain in the way after all so that China was never really a major foreign policy threat), while historically India never had the economic weight of China or military power projection ability. China is...well, China. Other than the 400 year or so slump it had that ended in the 20th century it has been the world's great power in a way India has never been. Plus also India isn't close to the USSR to fill the same foreign policy goals the US had, which if anything would probably mean Japan gets turned into the primary US outpost in the region; who knows if any other option on the mainland in East Asia would exist with a Communist China; Southeast Asia would probably fall, as that is China's backyard, same with Korea, which thanks to our deal with the Soviets at the end of WW2 meant the North half was Communist for a time. When China won the civil war the Communist regime in North Korean didn't last long, which led to the united, prosperous Korea we know today...which was in large part fueled by it's links to the capitalist Chinese economy. Vietnam had it's own independence movement that was somewhat communist linked after WW2 to resist the French, but the KMT victory largely broke their external support and helped the nationalists then gain independence from the French and go on to later unite without communist influence. If that entire region started toppling to the communists with Chi-Com support, then India might even opt to be a non-aligned neutral like Yugoslavia to avoid antagonizing the Communists...plus don't forget there is and was a huge socialist tilt to India that would probably make the US skittish about supporting them and vice versa about the Indians being willing to toe the American line after having expelled the Brits. Remember too each of those countries had it's own desires independent of what the US wanted. We forget that because China in those years was so pro-America out of necessity that everyone else was/would have been too in an ATL.
 
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