DBWI: Why is China so... Underdeveloped?

Mainland China today has a population of 1,6 billion people, it has the 2nd largest army on earth, just behind the Russian one. it got one of the 10 most developed cities in asian (Hong Kong, since 1997). And is still so dissapointing, it's GDP is at the same level as Algeria, and China is often called as "The Morroco of asia". We could also go for the fact that it remains a totalitarian one party state and some people even consider that got worse after Mao died and the Gang of Four took over, but can everything be blamed on the government? I really want to know more about this.
 
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Well maybe if they don't spend more than 25% of they GDP in his military, at least oficially, they would have more money to spend in infrastructure and education
Plus his stupid, and forked, interventions in tibet, vietnam, xianjing, manchúria and korea(The only one that we could call a succes and still) take a cost.

And The militar spend it's, to my ubderstand, spend un corruption and kickbacks, it not posible thar qith these level of spend his best battle tank is the tipe 89, a tank wit more than 2 decades
 
Firstly, the Gang of Four must not ascend to power, the Second Cultural Revolution was an undeniable disaster, severely curtailed productivity growth, stifled scientific advances. Like their neighbor, they are a hermit state, this could have been reversed if a reformist took the reigns.

OOC: If China was a hermit state, then neither Shanghai, nor any other Chinese city, would ever be in the list of 10 of the most developed cities in Asia, and HK would never have been handed over. The China that OP is describing sounds more like would China could look like if the KMT won the civil war. An incredibly poor, corrupt, mismanaged country with a few major developed spots.
 

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OOC: If China was a hermit state, then neither Shanghai, nor any other Chinese city, would ever be in the list of 10 of the most developed cities in Asia, and HK would never have been handed over. The China that OP is describing sounds more like would China could look like if the KMT won the civil war. An incredibly poor, corrupt, mismanaged country with a few major developed spots.

My mistake.
 
OOC: If China was a hermit state, then neither Shanghai, nor any other Chinese city, would ever be in the list of 10 of the most developed cities in Asia, and HK would never have been handed over. The China that OP is describing sounds more like would China could look like if the KMT won the civil war. An incredibly poor, corrupt, mismanaged country with a few major developed spots.

My mistake

OOC: What a nice start...so, this is a PoD were the Gang of four took over After Mao died. I removed Shangai, but the Chinese still got Hong Kong back.
 

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Firstly, the Gang of Four must not ascend to power, the Second Cultural Revolution was an undeniable disaster, severely curtailed productivity growth, stifled scientific advances. Like their neighbor, they are a hermit state, this could have been reversed if a reformist took the reigns.

So I can repost what I said above?
 
ooc:If China is equivalent to OTL North Korea, I have trouble seeing why anyone would hand HK back. Can you seriously imagine the outcry if South Korea decided to cede a chunk of its territory to North Korea?
 
ooc If this China really has the 2nd largest army in the World then there’d be precious little Britain could do to stop a takeover, that’s something that Deng pointedly told Thatcher during the handover talks. Only nuking Beijing or Shanghai might stop them but there’s be serious repercussions
 
OOC: Eh. I think that the KMT would have seen slower, but more stable, growth. No huge post-1978 boom with double-digit rates of economic growth, but no mass famines killing tens of millions and no Cultural Revolutions either.
 
OOC: Eh. I think that the KMT would have seen slower, but more stable, growth. No huge post-1978 boom with double-digit rates of economic growth, but no mass famines killing tens of millions and no Cultural Revolutions either.

OOC: Depends on whose in charge. It's true no matter what the KMT wouldn't have seen the excessive deaths under Mao, but one can easily imagine a series of incompetent and corrupt leaders who mismanage the country's economy, bringing less than ideal results for China.
 
OOC: We could, but I don't think it's an inevitable outcome of KMT rule. Much likelier, I'd say, would be continued mismanagement by the PRC along the lines of pre-1978.
 
OOC: We could, but I don't think it's an inevitable outcome of KMT rule. Much likelier, I'd say, would be continued mismanagement by the PRC along the lines of pre-1978.

OOC: I partially agree with what you say about PRC mismanagement. The PRC described in the very first post MUST have opened up though, otherwise neither Shanghai nor HK would ever become of any importance in Asia. Though the process of opening up the country may very well be mismanaged, leading to a small handful of cities like Shanghai enjoying the fruits of capitalism and the rest of the country languishing in abject poverty. We'd see nothing like OTL Deng Xiaoping pulling 90% of China out of poverty.
 
Maybe having India undergo partition could be a good POD as well as the Republic of India is probably the "superpower of tomorrow" with a thriving economy.
 
It also doesn't help that New Delhi has a strong agenda to contain China and does its best to economically cripple them. I mean, they used the Kashmir Border War to justify a total economic sanction that basically crashed the already struggling Chinese markets overnight. The United Asian Federation is also relatively anti-Chinese too. Look at the core members of the UAF: India (China's bigger and stronger rival), Korea (who, despite being reunited in the 90's is still bitter about the Korean War), Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, and even Singapore.

And they're still not part of the Permanent Security Council in the UN. The RoC has the upper hand in international politics so that any major UN resolutions to aid the PRC is instantly shot down or modified.

OOC: I'm going to also assume that Taiwan is still the Permanent Security member if China is this poor and backward.
 
The second cultural revolution was a bigger disaster than people realize, the every teacher in China from kindergarten to college was sent to a re-education camp where most died.
All textbooks were destroyed and New Red Guard volunteers took over as teaching subjects they didn't understand.
China was set back several generations by that mistake, their education system still hasn't recovered.
 
OOC: Was the OP talking about GDP per capita being on the level of Algeria, or about GDP? The first is imaginable, the second, well, not so much.
 
OCC I Assumed a GDP per capita at the level of Algeria that give us a GDP for china of $5.300.531.250.000 USD, that is least than half his actual $ 11.200.000.000.000, to have a GDP of Algeria his GDP per capita must be USD 113 an that is ridiculous it´s less than somalia
 
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