How Could Communist China Fall Like the Soviet Union?

[MarshalBraginsky]

So inspired by the threads that talk about giving the Soviet Union an extra lifespan, is there a way for the Chinese communist regime to fall apart in a similar manner to the OTL fall of the Soviet Union, and who would be its first post-communist leader?

 

[CthulhuFhtagn]

The Gang of Four seemed intent on outdoing Mao when it came to ruining the lives of Chinese people. Keep them in power, and the PRC has a real shot at collapsing.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

The Gang of Four seemed intent on outdoing Mao when it came to ruining the lives of Chinese people. Keep them in power, and the PRC has a real shot at collapsing.

OK, so Gang of Four becoming more of a group of psychopaths than even Mao would work.

I may have read somewhere that a scenario involving Mao's nephew becoming addicted to drugs who goes on a rampage so bad that it would take the US and the USSR to beat him. I'm not sure if this is true though.

What about separatist movements inside China actually breaking out?

 

[Plumber]

A President who reacts to Tiananmen as forcefully as Bush did against the KGB putsch would go a ways towards spirally things in that direction. But probably only Tibet and Xinjiang would go independent.

 

[CthulhuFhtagn]

OK, so Gang of Four becoming more of a group of psychopaths than even Mao would work.

I may have read somewhere that a scenario involving Mao's nephew becoming addicted to drugs who goes on a rampage so bad that it would take the US and the USSR to beat him. I'm not sure if this is true though.

What about separatist movements inside China actually breaking out?

When you throw nukes into the equation, nobody really wins. A drug-addled psychopath with several hundred nuclear warheads is game over for everyone.

But I digress. The Gang of Four may be your best bet, since they were so crazy that even the Chinese Communist Party wanted nothing to do with them. Separatist movements breaking out on a large scale are pretty unlikely. Tibet and Xinjiang could both leave, but most of the country views itself as being a single ethnic group, so it's difficult to stir up separatist sentiment. The best (worst?)-case scenario would be a return of the warlord era, with local party officials all seizing power. Not a fun scenario, especially with China's nuclear arsenal in the mix.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

A President who reacts to Tiananmen as forcefully as Bush did against the KGB putsch would go a ways towards spirally things in that direction. But probably only Tibet and Xinjiang would go independent.

That would be indeed true, although wouldn't Inner Mongolia and Manchuria also try to leave too? Who's the hardline anti-China US president who could be harsh towards them? China IOTL did face isolation from the world due to Tiananmen.

 

[CthulhuFhtagn]

That would be indeed true, although wouldn't Inner Mongolia and Manchuria also try to leave too? Who's the hardline anti-China US president who could be harsh towards them? China IOTL did face isolation from the world due to Tiananmen.

Manchuria hasn't been ethnically "Manchu" for a really long time now. IIRC, Han Chinese formed a majority in the region as early as 1910. There's no real impetus for the region to split. Not sure about inner Mongolia, though.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

This might be of great help:

China under the Lesser Mao's regime in Fear and Loathing is Mao's China if the Cultural Revolution never stopped, plus North Korean-style paranoia and cult of personality, plus Khmer Rouge genocidal insanity, plus some homegrown crazy.

Essentially, in 1973 Mao's nephew becomes the real power behind his uncle and he goes completely bananas. He expels all foreigners and closes China to the outer world and starts combining regular maoist craziness with revived imperial chinese stuff. An indecisive war with the USSR in 1974-1975, together with american victory in Vietnam only makes his paranoia worse. He literally plans to conquer the world, or at least Eurasia, by making use of China's population, so rather than enacting the One Child policy he does the opposite and starts forcing the population to breed as often as possible so that in the future he can overwhelm Siberia, southern Asia, Russia and eventually Europe thanks to sheer numbers. To feed all those extra people without relying in the outer world, he starts mass-producing meth and heroin, both to export it and weaken the West; and to issue it in rations, turning chinese people into junkies. Then he starts getting addicted to his stuff, so by 1977 we have a power-mad, paranoid, genocidal madman who has absolute control over a huge country completely sealed off to the outer world and who lives in a constant meth and heroin binge. At some point, everyone holding any sort of responsability post starts being purged as a routine measure, regardless of whether they're actually even suspected of anything, turning Khmer Rouge-style of omnicidal mania into a regular workplace policy. A military uprising in a city is ended by using nuclear weapons: after that, a popular method of execution consist of having people eat radioactive dirt from the nuked city and have them exposed publicly until they die of radioactive poisoning.

When it ends in 1981, after the americans and the soviets team up to nuke his NBC program and pretty much every single one of China's neighbours invades at once, around two hundred million people have died. It's bad enough that, IIRC, a world council of Rabbis formally declares it to be a Second Holocaust.

However, we need more than just the Gang of Four to become complete psychopaths though.

 

[The Oncoming Storm]

The Sino-Soviet War of 1969 results in an exchange of chemical and nuclear weapons, China comes off the worst resulting in the collapse of the government, Tibet and Xinjiang, and possibly Manchuria, break away and in the absence of a central government the rest collapses back into warlordism?

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

The Sino-Soviet War of 1969 results in an exchange of chemical and nuclear weapons, China comes off the worst resulting in the collapse of the government, Tibet and Xinjiang, and possibly Manchuria, break away and in the absence of a central government the rest collapses back into warlordism?

Although most of the Communist Party leaders and PLA generals don't strike me as a type of people who could just grab more power. Not like the 1920s warlords who simply disobeyed the central authority. However, this could have a big effect on China's territorial claims that would be taken by its rivals (India gets the disputed Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh) but what happens to the Kuomintang government in exile in Taiwan?

 

[Ultimate Paragon]

I think the Gang of Four would be your best bet.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

The one thing about the Gang of Four is that none of them are buffoons though.

 

[SlideAway]

One of the key reasons the three Communist federations (the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia) all fell apart was because on paper these were all extremely decentralized federations – "voluntary unions" – which explicitly gave their republics the right to unilaterally secede. Now in practice this didn't matter much because they were all in fact highly centralized under Communist Party dictatorships. However, once these states ended one-party rule, two things happened: (1) one, they proved unworkable, because the central government was actually quite weak and local authorities could and did ignore commands from above, and (2) there was little in international law to prevent these countries from gaining international recognition.

China does not have the same structure. Even if, say, the Communist Party fell in 1989 after a failed Tiananmen crackdown, it's likely that a successor state government would try to maintain strict control over Tibet and Xinjiang, and its unlikely that other powers would be willing to recognize these nations' independence. (Countries are generally loath to recognize secession because of fears it undermines their own territorial sovereignty — why aside from the three aforementioned cases, there are actually no modern examples of "Balkanization," even with states like Indonesia.) Moreover, it's unlikely that any other country would be in a position to defend a seceding Tibet or Xinjiang if it tried to secede.

Now, perhaps had Mao opted to adopt a structure like the USSR — with Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and other minority groups getting their own ethnic "republics" with ethnically-drawn boundaries and a right to secede — then a collapsing Communist state might yield independent nations that a weak China is unable to prevent from seceding.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

That might be true.

I'm also wondering as to which candidate would be the perfect fit to become China's first non-Communist leader.

Then there's still the issue of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

 

[SlideAway]

That might be true.

I'm also wondering as to which candidate would be the perfect fit to become China's first non-Communist leader.

Then there's still the issue of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

I mean if it's the case of the Tiananmen crackdown failing — say, a few more generals mutiny and the protests spin out of control — you'd likely see a party split similar to what happened in Eastern Europe. Reformist legislators and party members oust Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng, putting them both under house arrest (and likely trying Li), and rehabilitating Zhao Ziyang. Then you get Zhao as Premier or President and leader of the new "Socialist Party" and likely a bumpy transition to democracy.

(And yes, electoral democracy wasn't necessarily the primary demand of the protesters. The trajectory of these kinds of things though suggests that demands would quickly have arisen for elections and an end to the Communist Party monopoly on power.)

 

[Roisterer]

Deng Xiaoping becomes ill in 1989, and the politburo are deeply divided on what to do about Tiananmen. One group want to crush them, and another want reforms, but neither is officially in charge with the leader indisposed.

There is some action, which might be like the USSR coup in 91, or even a brief civil war, after which the reformers win, but they too become split. Eventually other leaders arise, and the communist party allows a plurality of other parties. It all gets messy from there.

Regards

R

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

Of course, the fall of the Chinese communist government is gonna destroy any economic progress that Deng had made.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Of course, the fall of the Chinese communist government is gonna destroy any economic progress that Deng had made.

You have so there a potential POD for...'troubles' arising.
Maybe some remaining old time hardliners 'leftwing' maoists officials notice the ideas of Deng, and fear that he goes too far, uniting... But with the Gang of Four, the Red guards and all in a very recebt, this old guard may be discredited. Unless it's in the army, who was I believe one of the few factions that those troubles didn't touch as much...

 

[colleen1227]

I think you need the ChiComs to have the same type of satellite country system that overtaxed their control system to cause unrest and also act as conduits for outside ideas as the Warsaw pact did to the USSR.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

I think you need the ChiComs to have the same type of satellite country system that overtaxed their control system to cause unrest and also act as conduits for outside ideas as the Warsaw pact did to the USSR.

For the Chinese, they only have Cambodia as their 'satellite state', if they qualify as one.