How could we have a permanently shattered China?

As we all know, the nation-state of China has risen and fallen many times, often collapsing or getting invaded by the northern hordes but always reunifying.

How could we have a permanently shattered China? It could even happen if China was never unified under the Qin Dynasty, or perhaps China just falls and doesn’t reunify.

I’m aiming sometime around the Medieval period.

What would be the easiest possible way this could happen and what would be the implications on East Asia and the world as a whole?
 
Aim later. Much later.

Disgusted by the need to fight not one, but two wars to open China's ports to trade, the British Empire, along with its French allies, decides to crush the Qing government once and for all. After all, even anarchy would be better than the status quo. Imperial China promptly splits into several smaller states. Kept weak by internal strife and an inability to keep up with technological developments in the West, the former Middle Kingdom is never able to re-form. Substantial territory in the east is conquered by the Empire of Japan in the years leading up to the Second World War. While the Empire is eventually defeated at the hands of the Allies, and the territory liberated, the conquered land never recovers to its former levels of population. Soviet-sponsored Communist revolutions sweep across the northernmost nation-states in the 50's, but the central and southern parts of the territory are spared the same fate by aid from a containment-focused U.S. Reform slowly occurs over the second half of the 20th century, but even by the turn of the millennium the territory is still seen as backwards and undeveloped. Needless to say, the opium trade continues unabated with addiction levels high even in 2000.

I know it's not quite what you were looking for, but I think it's interesting nonetheless.
 
Could you maybe have a European level of fortification (with a castle popping up on every other hill) during one of China’s disunited periods make it too difficult for one dynasty to conquer the large swaths of land at a time that would be necessary to reunite china?
 
Aim later. Much later.

Disgusted by the need to fight not one, but two wars to open China's ports to trade, the British Empire, along with its French allies, decides to crush the Qing government once and for all. After all, even anarchy would be better than the status quo.
That's almost never the case, in an economic sense. The British and French sent troops to support the Qing against Heavenly Kingdom forces exactly to prevent anarchy (among other reasons, as well), despite having attacked the Qing previously.

Fighting a few wars to open up the world's single largest market to free, even favoured, trade was well worth it to the Western Great Powers. Even if the Qing were generally uncooperative, they were bound by treaties and military pressure to abide by deals struck in favour of the European empires. Anarchy, on the other hand, would mean no deals (no guarantees, since the warlord you struck a deal with yesterday might be replaced by a anti-you warlord tomorrow), a greatly reduced market size (since people are fighting and starving to death, not out working and buying), and puts risk on all investments put into the region (since a railroad you built today might get torn up as a scorched earth campaign, the mines you invested in might be seized by an enemy warlord, etc.).

The Qing didn't get along with the Europeans but they were at least manageable, from a Western perspective. Anarchy is decidedly less predictable, so China being Balkanized in perpetuity would take different conditions, I'd say.

If you want a medieval POD, your best bet is meddling in the 16 Kingdoms or the Southern and Northern dynasties periods, preventing the sinicization of the Five Barbarians and keeping China from achieving too much homogeneity. Otherwise, kill of Genghis Khan and keep either the Liao or Jin in control of Northern China and have them keep the Song on the backfoot. Chip the Song away at from all directions and that should work out. Any later and it's a bit trickier, since institutions for having China in one piece are then so engrained into the system (between the Yuan and Qing and excluding occasional hiccups, China had remained in one unit for the better part of 600 years).
 
That's almost never the case, in an economic sense. The British and French sent troops to support the Qing against Heavenly Kingdom forces exactly to prevent anarchy (among other reasons, as well), despite having attacked the Qing previously.

Hey, I never claimed it was a sane choice. The people in power aren't necessarily smart all the time, especially when working on the far end of a months-long communications delay with their superiors. Plus, from what I've gathered there was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment floating around at the time. Obviously whomever made that choice would be court-martialed (or fired, or arrested for treason) when they got back home, but the damage would be done. From what I've seen the British came very close to being able to just kill the majority of the Chinese court a few times during the course of the Opium Wars.
 
I think that, for a medieval PoD, a permanent division between Sinicized Turkic or Tungusic dynasties in the North (such asthe Wei, Northern Zhou, Liao, Jin, etc. ) and Chinese dynasties in the south could help. I'm not too sure how to maintain this, while arguably a more diffuse Turkic expansion in Asia due to changes in Middle-East and Central Asia (maybe a lesser or no expension of Islam to bolster Turkic advance? Maybe a stronger imperial presence in Eastern Europe such as surviving big ERE due to the same PoD?) could push more of them towards a more troubled China.
 
For a more direct approach to this scenario, how about a PoD all the way back in the Warring States' Period?
The historical precedent for a successful united Chinese dynasty would not be there, with the previous attempt (the Zhou) ending in a Voltairean disappointment. With no Qin Shi Huang to successfully stomp the other states into submission, could we see Chu, Zhao, Qi, Qin, Yan, Wei, and Han going on their own separate ways from there on in?
IMO, any PoD that successfully butterflies away the Sui dynasty and the construction of the Grand Canal is enough to prevent China from gluing itself together into one piece.
 
@GauchoBadger
While you might not have an unification Qin-style, with a stress on imperial centralisation; most Warring States able to do it were trying to establish their hegemony over other Chinese kingdoms and we might see something more alike to late Zhou-dominance ITTL.
Now, if a vassalic relationship between royal/ducal states and an emperor being effectively an high-king fits your idea of shattered, then there might be something interesting indeed.
 
Maybe a scramble for China in the late 1800s with the wrong players involved for China could do it?

Russia takes Manchuria while it has a small population, gets a European plurality, encourages intermarriage, and eventually gets a mostly Russian speaking mostly Christian Manchuria with a Manchu/Chinese/Russian Middle Class that has minimal people feeling excluded.

Tibet-Goes independent, remains theocracy to the present.

Xinjiang-Goes Independent, becomes Islamic theocracy on par with Saudi Arabia.

Interior core-Remains independent, goes Communist, becomes North Korea.

South Eastern China-Annexed by France, governed as one colony by France with Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia. Bilingual French speaking elite by 1920s, railroads connecting all French areas, intermarriage and joint business between different groups slowly normalized. Failed rebellion in the 40s unifies the people, 1950s French becomes mandatory. Another failed rebellion unites the people further. In the 1980s they get independence as Indo-China, become united under the dictatorship of the most well respected independence leader, he continues to push French as the language of business and government, oversees rapid economic development, and still rules. A new synthesis culture has been created with its own identity.

Random chunk of China gets ruled by Britain, becomes a giant Hong Kong and is more or less a Democracy with Anglo Capitalism today. Independent Great Power who consider themselves proud to be Chinese, but looks down on the rest of the country for being relatively poor and unfree.

Random chunk is ruled by Japan, has Japanese forced on them. Japan is a semi-free state today who don’t let it have independence and denies the obvious hatred China has for their rule. Living standards have become too good to just rebel in a war they cannot win, even if they are not exactly happy with the situation. Large portion of the population has also intermarried with Japanese, which in unison with actual Japanese immigrants creates a non trivial portion of the population that is actually Japanese. Like Ireland on a larger scale.

Random small chunk ruled by German Empire. Germany eventually grants them equal rights, and they eventually consider themselves German-Chinese.

Taiwan-Taken by Japan and assimilated into Japan.

Random chunk goes Christian by force during Taiping Rebellion. Portugal takes it and encourages further Christianization, eventually turning them into more mainstream Christians. Grants it independence in the 1970s with a Catholic Theocracy taking over.




Just some random thoughts. Not very realistic, but a series of China screws that might create enough economic, linguistic, religious, philosophical, and ethnic differences to retain their identity in full. Maybe setting them up to functionally cease to exist as a single thing eventually. I think I probably had more fun writing it than thoughts put into it.



Edit: Didn’t see medieval period, and thought it was somehow last possible PoD.
 
What would be the best approach to take in having minorities such as the Zhuang and Miao to establish independent states at the expense of a shattered China?
 
What would be the best approach to take in having minorities such as the Zhuang and Miao to establish independent states at the expense of a shattered China?
You'll probably need to prevent large scale colonization of the Southwest from the Ming onwards.
 
You'll probably need to prevent large scale colonization of the Southwest from the Ming onwards.
It isn't terribly hard if you have a divided China, especially with a pre-Song PoD, with such a PoD you can easily have nations/states out of virtually any of the minority currently present in China.
 
I would say a way would be needed to keep the Mongol-Muslim-Manchu (just listing those all, as the invaders apparently allied with each other at times. Less so with Muslims, who for the most part just kept to their jobs at trading. I presume there were loads of Han collaborators) from getting to the South of China. Not going to be easy, considering they only need to lose once, and the Khans were a bit brutal. I have to wonder if there would be a way for some separate lingua franca to come to being in South China. China actually kind of reminds me of India, with the south and periphery having loads of different languages and ethnicities, while the north is more solidly the same (even if you need a lingual Franca to understand people just once province away). Maybe we go with something ridiculous, like the Japanese from before the isolation trying to set someone up on the Dragon Throne? They didn't have the manpower for it of course, and the idea might have come up because the Shogun misunderstood an offer and... Hmmm. Come to think o it, maybe the invasion of Korea and Chins back then was like the First Crusade. Aim your surplus sons and marauders at someplace and have them fight for land.
 
No Hou Jing's rebellion would be a fine POD. It's easily doable. Without this event, the South could have stayed independent a lot longer and perhaps the culture between the north and the south would have drifted apart so much that they no longer recognize each other as Chinese. IOTL,there were already such trends. The Northerners for example called the Southerners 'Island Barbarians' while the Southerners called the Northerners 'Braided Slaves'.IOTL,Hou Jing's rebellion more or less destroyed the economy of the south and left it depopulated. The northerners took advantage of this and took large slices out of the Southern Empire,weakening it so much that reunification was inevitable.
 
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