What if during the Chinese civil war, the Nationalists do well enough to force a truce with the Communists and establish a southern Chinese nation. What effects would this have on the Korean and Veitnam wars?
Wow, my first post in over three months, better make this good...
Alright, so Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists have control of South China. Probably the odds are that the border will be at or near the Yellow River. Going by the modern People's Republic of China Provincial borders, the Republic of China is going to be in for a bit of a shock. They'll have control over all of South China and most of the middle provinces. Shandong Province will be split 50/50 with the Kuomintang (Republic of China) controlling Qingdao (Tsingtao) and the Chinese Communist Party (People's Republic of China) controlling Jinan. Henan Province will probably loose its top half to the PRC, as will Shaanxi Province. Gansu Province and Qinghai will probably be split 70/30 for the PRC.
Long Run:
1946-50: Consolidation in the north with Chairman Mao and the CCP reining in the last remnants of the old warlord armies in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and Gansu Province. The small Second East Turkestan Republic in the northern 3 districts of modern Xinjiang-Uyghur A.R will most likely be dispatched quickly and quietly. By the time that the DPRK crosses the 49th Parallel in 1950, Mao and the CCP will have completed consolidating their hold over the north and will probably dispatch a few divisions initially.
In the south, things will go a bit differently. The Kuomintang and the Generalissimo will have a bitch of a time rebuilding Nanjing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, so I'd assume that they'll be holding meetings of the National Assembly in a hotel or in a Provincial Assembly Hall for a few years. Biggest thing will be that the ROC will most likely be dependent on US foreign aid for at least two to three years until 1948/49 when reconstruction is completed. Having control of Taiwan will help when the Korean War breaks out in 1950. Taipei and the other coastal cities should serve as great staging grounds for the ROC divisions dispatched to South Korea as well as for the UN forces dispatched as well.
OTL outcome in Korea, same time frame I'd assume as well. The Republic of China won't stand for a communist North Vietnam, but the odds are that about the same time that the Viet Minh kick the French out after Dien Bien Phu, there will be increased tensions along the PRC-ROC border, not helped by the stalemate that was the Korean War. Chiang and the KMT will probably also be working on the land reforms begun prior to 1937, along with some efforts to clean up corruption and such.
I'd give it until 1960 or 61 for the Republic of China to get involved with the Indochina situation and probably until 1965 for them to dispatch forces to South Vietnam to help end the communist insurgency in the countryside. By 1968, they'll probably be involved in active combat alongside the United States and the other international forces dispatched to S. Vietnam. However, I doubt that they'll just send the army over the border and march on Hanoi. They still have Chairman Mao and the PRC to worry about.
I'd think that there'd be some sort of truce between North and South Vietnam by 1974, enforced by some thinly veiled threats to turn Hanoi into the South-East Asian version of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
All in all, I'd say that there would be stalemates in both Korea and Vietnam, but stalemates enforced by the threat of a theater nuclear conflict between the People's Republic and the Republic of China that could spread out and encompass the rest of the Far East.