What would China, East Asia and the world look like by today had the Nationalists won the Civil War?
I can't think of a POD during the war itself but my favorite one to get rid of the Communists is the total destruction of the Jiangxi Soviet state in 1934 at the hands of the NRA (no Long March) and the killing of Mao and the CCP leadership. The Communists whither on into the end of the decade as a disparate guerrilla movement but are decisively defeated by the 1940's, allowing Chiang to concentrate solely on repulsing the Japanese invasion. World War II ends in much the same way with the surrender of Japan in 1945, the difference being that China does not revert into Civil War. But any other POD that would defeat the Communists and establish the Republic of China as the undisputed Chinese government by 1949 works.
The economic and geopolitical situation of East Asia in this scenario would obviously be quite different. One of the initial sparks of the Japanese postwar economic boom, the Korean War either doesn't happen (N. Korea doesn't invade) or ends much quicker (N. Korea collapses without Red Chinese support). But Japan and later Korea would have access to Chinese markets that weren't open to them IOTL and this tremendous demand for industrial and consumer products would spur those two nations' economic engines perhaps even more than what happened IOTL. China's government, I imagine, would at this point still be plagued by the endemic corruption and dysfunction that characterized Chiang's OTL rule over the mainland, preventing the Chinese initially from catching up with Japan. However, Nanjing along with Tokyo and Seoul are beneficiaries of huge infusions of American economic aid in what would be an Asian version of the Marshal Plan, as it would be in the United States' interest to make East Asia into a bulwark against Soviet Communism.
The 1950's in China also sees moves toward major land reform in favor of peasants with compensation for landowners as well as infrastructure development and the attempt to jump start the development of an export-driven industrial economy in the same vein as Japan. However, these efforts are retarded by the mediocre governance of corrupt and/or inept officials and the 1960's open with a massive purge targeting both corruption and political dissidence. Eventually this decade sees the development of a managerial brand of capitalism consisting of a partnership between a technocratic mandarin elite with the industrial-capitalist class, along with mediated labor relations and a welfare state to keep workers happy (not unlike the Japanese and German models). However, democracy is severely limited and the KMT basically runs a one-party state with very circumscribed opposition. China also begins to catch up with Japan and by the early to mid 1980's is edging to replace its East Asian rival as the world's second largest economy. Also, China has become an established nuclear power by this time, acquiring its arsenal around the same time that the PRC did IOTL.
The death of Chiang in 1975 heralds the beginning of democratization and greater economic liberalization in favor of smaller and medium sized businesses and the emergent entrepreneurial class. The first free presidential and parliamentary elections are held in 1989 which features a spirited three-way race between the Koumintang, the New Democracy Party (democratic-socialist descendants of the CCP) and the Democratic Progressive Party (liberal opposition). It is won handily by the KMT and its presidential candidate James Soong. However the rapid spurts of economic growth are beginning to slow down by the mid 1990's and though China is expected to surpass the United States as the world's largest economy by 2004, a series of stock market panics in 1996, followed by damage from the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and popular unrest stemming from inequities between the cities and the countryside threaten to undermine the country's prosperity and stability.
Given the economic competition between China and Japan ITTL, would the two nations resume their geopolitical rivalry and basically be in a situation that resembles today IOTL, with tensions over Senkaku/Diaoyu and recurrent naval brinkmanship? Or would "democratic peace theory" prevail and some kind of institutional framework is set up in East Asia between China, Japan and Korea to make war impossible, as was the rationale for the EEC? How would the Cold War play out with no PRC? My guess is no prolonged Communist insurgency in Indochina, but what else? What would Sino-Soviet relations have been like? What would the effect be on the rest of the world of earlier Chinese economic development, and of China being a democracy rather than a dictatorship?