DBWI: What if Communists win the Chinese Civil War

As we all know, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek triumped and defeated the communist rebels under Mao in the late 1940s. What if the Communists had won, how would China and the World look like today.
 
As we all know, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek triumped and defeated the communist rebels under Mao in the late 1940s. What if the Communists had won, how would China and the World look like today.

As we know, Chiang Kai-shek was proven to be under house arrest during World War II by his own officers, since he had refused to declare war on Japan, being so focused on eradicating the Communists as he was. His 'prime minister', Chen Cheng, was much more moderate and permitted land reform.

I still think we should stop giving Chiang credit for the post-war victories against the Communists. We're all lucky Chen Cheng came to power, at any rate.
 
Might be that Cold War would last much longer. I know that Mao was pretty egoistic and there probably would have been rising tensions between USSR and Communist China later. But without pro-West China USSR would last much longer instead that it wouldn't have collapsed violently on 1970's. And might be that Korean Civil War would be pretty different. With Communist China Korean Commies could win the civil war. And winning of Commies in SE Asia would be harder..
 
Without the Communists in power in China, the Korean Communists under Kim il-Sung had no chance--the last of the Korean Communists were literally wiped out just south of the city of Dandong on the China-Korea border in 1951. And with non-Communists surrounding Vietnam on all sides, Ho Chi Minh more or less repudiated hard-line Communism and ended up negotiating a deal with the French for a much more peaceful transition from French colony into an independent country (Vietnam in 2016 is a major exporter of tropical fruits and coffee).
 
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China would never recover culturally, Mao distroyed chinese cultural artifacts and traditions in the areas he controled. Monestaries, religious places of worship and other areas were not spared his wrath. He would have gleefully destroyed china's heratage and we would have just a mere pittance of china's vast history and culture available to us.

It would have been a cultural disaster not just for the chinese but the entire human race.
 
I honestly don't think it would go too great for the Communists. Even if you could prevent Mao from taking a bullet in August '46, if the Communists did somehow win (probably by pushing the Nationalists to exhaustion), their leadership would be so thoroughly gutted and their control so weak that China would go back to the warlords and dissolve into total anarchy.
 
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Might be that Cold War would last much longer. I know that Mao was pretty egoistic and there probably would have been rising tensions between USSR and Communist China later. But without pro-West China USSR would last much longer instead that it wouldn't have collapsed violently on 1970's. And might be that Korean Civil War would be pretty different. With Communist China Korean Commies could win the civil war. And winning of Commies in SE Asia would be harder..

It wasn't really winning for the French considering they still lost control of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. They were aware of that, and took the nicer terms Uncle Ho was giving due to the Algerian Crisis that was really brewing during the late 40s. The Metropolitan was more important than an eastern colony (and Oran is such a nice place mind you).

Ho Chi Minh was always a nationalist first and a communist second, a pragmatist that used political means to achieve his goals. Hell, he only used Communism as a tool due to the Soviet Union being one of the few nations to back his cause from the beginning (well, that and he sympathized with a lot of Marxist doctrine). His repudiation of the system and adopting a Democratic Socialist approach was a way to achieve his goal of a free Vietnam. This change in tact during the 1940s made him more palatable to Cheng's China and the US, which forced France to acknowledge that a more happy parting was better than even more guerrila war.

It really did help the KMT that Zhou Enlai decided to backstab his rival Mao in exchange for amnesty too. The loss of two members of the Gang of Five really damaged the Chinese Communists.

The Chinese Communists winning would be interesting. Cheng took a decade post civil war to finally centralize the state (with the help of such figures as Ma Bufang and Li Zongren, who'd also take reins at different points), and his successors took another couple of decades to get China really start booming as the Economic Giant it is today. A solid Communist win would result in a more centralized state, but Mao as the top dog would probably have been as good an idea as the time Beria had the reins on the CCCP; terrible and crippling. He just seemed to be too much of an idealogue.
 
Interesting idea. How would the communists have handled Tibet? I've always thought the Chinese government treated Tibet terribly and effectively made them into a puppet state - would the communists let them go their own way? Would they be better, or even worse? Is it possible the communists would annex Tibet or something as drastic as that?
 
Interesting idea. How would the communists have handled Tibet? I've always thought the Chinese government treated Tibet terribly and effectively made them into a puppet state - would the communists let them go their own way? Would they be better, or even worse? Is it possible the communists would annex Tibet or something as drastic as that?

Good question. Some communist leaders wanted annex Tibet but there was some who wanted just turn the country as communist puppet state. It is good notice that any country haven't recognised Tibet as independent nation. But situation might be different if communists win the war. Problem of Tibet is that its army was on 1940's very underdeveloped so it couldn't fight alone long.

And I am pretty sure that fate of Tibetan culture would be even worse than in OTL. Leastly in OTL China allowed Dalai Lama staying in Lhasa and allowed Tibetan practise their culture on some level. I doubt strongly that communists would allow that.
 
It wasn't really winning for the French considering they still lost control of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. They were aware of that, and took the nicer terms Uncle Ho was giving due to the Algerian Crisis that was really brewing during the late 40s. The Metropolitan was more important than an eastern colony (and Oran is such a nice place mind you).

Ho Chi Minh was always a nationalist first and a communist second, a pragmatist that used political means to achieve his goals. Hell, he only used Communism as a tool due to the Soviet Union being one of the few nations to back his cause from the beginning (well, that and he sympathized with a lot of Marxist doctrine). His repudiation of the system and adopting a Democratic Socialist approach was a way to achieve his goal of a free Vietnam. This change in tact during the 1940s made him more palatable to Cheng's China and the US, which forced France to acknowledge that a more happy parting was better than even more guerrila war.

It really did help the KMT that Zhou Enlai decided to backstab his rival Mao in exchange for amnesty too. The loss of two members of the Gang of Five really damaged the Chinese Communists.

The Chinese Communists winning would be interesting. Cheng took a decade post civil war to finally centralize the state (with the help of such figures as Ma Bufang and Li Zongren, who'd also take reins at different points), and his successors took another couple of decades to get China really start booming as the Economic Giant it is today. A solid Communist win would result in a more centralized state, but Mao as the top dog would probably have been as good an idea as the time Beria had the reins on the CCCP; terrible and crippling. He just seemed to be too much of an idealogue.

Vietnam was settled easily as well because Ho realized he couldn't move against the Viet Quoc either, since they are essentially the Vietnamese KMT. So the two of them were more or less stuck together lest they provoke Chinese intervention.

A Communist China means Asia would be a potential theater in the Cold War, instead of Western-leaning bystander. That means Europe and Africa are going to have less focus with resources diverted to Asia. I doubt the Hungarian insurgency would last as long as it did if the West was occupied elsewhere. Cuba is still going to be invaded because America isn't going to allow a Communist state in the Americas, but would it get involved as it did OTL in Africa
 
Interesting idea. How would the communists have handled Tibet? I've always thought the Chinese government treated Tibet terribly and effectively made them into a puppet state - would the communists let them go their own way? Would they be better, or even worse? Is it possible the communists would annex Tibet or something as drastic as that?

Consider the Soviets's track record for treatment of minorities. What's to say that the CCP would have done any different, or if so, any better? As bad as some of the GMD's actions were in the occupation and pacification of Tibet, any actions the CCP committed if it took over China and re-annexed Tibet as well would invariably have been more suppressive and oppressive. Sure, there was indication in the Yan'an years that Mao was generally more relaxed with his social policy, but at the time of his fall from power the hardliners like Lin Biao were becoming increasingly assertive. What areas the CCP occupied were facing increasing suppression of culture and individual freedoms. It seems that the radical wave sweeping over the CCP would have engulfed the Party to the point where Mao would have bowed to their whims at the expense of more moderate and pragmatic members like Zhou Enlai or Peng Dehuai - even a swift Communist victory in the Civil War and the destruction of the Nanjing Government would not have changed that.
 
Good question. Some communist leaders wanted annex Tibet but there was some who wanted just turn the country as communist puppet state. It is good notice that any country haven't recognised Tibet as independent nation. But situation might be different if communists win the war. Problem of Tibet is that its army was on 1940's very underdeveloped so it couldn't fight alone long.

And I am pretty sure that fate of Tibetan culture would be even worse than in OTL. Leastly in OTL China allowed Dalai Lama staying in Lhasa and allowed Tibetan practise their culture on some level. I doubt strongly that communists would allow that.

Considering Tibet's nature within the Chinese national mindset, it is pretty likely that the Integrationist wing would win that fight and incorporate it as a province. I'm fairly certain Mao would do this at least, considering he was ardently against traditionalist culture and the like. and his desperation years indicate that he isn't against doing things like that.

Plus you guys really do seem to forget that the KMT's intervention into the region, while very harsh, also did so much good. Yes, Tibet is at best semi-autonomous. It can't do anything on its own. But, you guys seem to forget the atrocities made by the Dalai Lama prior to the current one. It was a feudal-theocratic state that could, without warning, imprison and torture you due to not following religious creedo. The KMT really helped boost it economically and industrially, and really boosted the standards of living.

Vietnam was settled easily as well because Ho realized he couldn't move against the Viet Quoc either, since they are essentially the Vietnamese KMT. So the two of them were more or less stuck together lest they provoke Chinese intervention.

A Communist China means Asia would be a potential theater in the Cold War, instead of Western-leaning bystander. That means Europe and Africa are going to have less focus with resources diverted to Asia. I doubt the Hungarian insurgency would last as long as it did if the West was occupied elsewhere. Cuba is still going to be invaded because America isn't going to allow a Communist state in the Americas, but would it get involved as it did OTL in Africa

The VQ were quite critical for getting the US and China to step in without properly "stepping in" as you say, and this is reflected in them being the backbone of the second oldest party in the country, as well as the one currently in office. Without them and Algeria, I'd suspect that the guerrilla war would've lasted years more.

A bigger focus on Asia would've probably prevented the UAR Unification Wars, which last I checked managed to get us into DEFCON 2, almost into 1 due to the nature of the political situation. Suez Crisis and subsequent Shoot-out and all.

The Turkish Crisis was also a doozy too, especially when Operation Nicholas was in full swing.

Cuba becoming a Communist dictatorship and staying one in a timeline is essentially the equivalent of Ronald Reagan becoming the President of the US, or Hungary not becoming a hyper-jingoistic revanchist state. I ain't happening without some big butterflies.
 
It makes me wonder what might have happened to Japan over the years. If China had gone Communist, they would have been the US's biggest ally (in terms of population, at least) against the Soviets and the Chinese. Would they have avoided the long doldrums if China, Vietnam, and others were practically closed to Western commerce, along with the reverse?
 
I can see Japan being the big Asian economy over China in this timeline, yeah. That's going to be a huge change. If China went communist, they wouldn't be the future superpower by now and you wouldn't have Hollywood chasing the yuan.
 
It makes me wonder what might have happened to Japan over the years. If China had gone Communist, they would have been the US's biggest ally (in terms of population, at least) against the Soviets and the Chinese. Would they have avoided the long doldrums if China, Vietnam, and others were practically closed to Western commerce, along with the reverse?

Possibly, since the added US revenue would make up for the inefficient and (admittedly) corrupt practices of the Zaibatsu system that was in place until the 1980s, when the New Socialists were elected in droves to fight what was basically a generation of financial stagflation brought about by endemic corruption. Even though it's finally booming as an economy, it loses to the Twin Tigers of Korea and Vietnam, though their cheap cars and cheaper appliances are catching on in recent years.

Hmm... less resources in Africa means that Abyssinia would probably have never modernized, though we would definitely have avoided the UAR fiasco, or the Katanga Crisis and Second Algerian War for Independence under the communists. Though again, at least the Baathist State of Mesopotamia came out well in the end when the party lost power in a peaceful protest and both Iraq and Syria parted on good terms, unlike the dissolution of the UAR and the Soviets.
 
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