How to make a successful Great Leap Forward?

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This is, to my knowledge, almost entirely inaccurate. The Nanjing decade saw significant economic reform and development, including the beginnings of the first industrial expansion in China (outside Shanghai, Tianjin, and Hong Kong) since the Qing commissioned Western-standard arsenals in the late 19th century. Do you have sources for all of this?

Shanghai was also the leading financial centre in Asia in the 1920's and 1930's. It was more important than Tokyo. After the Communists took over and messed up the economy (they had a grudge against Shanghai in particular), it lost its status and still hasn't recovered to this day (it is now behind Tokyo and Hong Kong, and arguably Singapore).
 
Honestly, if the Nationalists win, I'd expect an even worse rest of the century. Their government was ineffective and not super popular among the peasants, at least the Communists had initial efficiency on their side.

So the Nationalists would have done worse than the Mao Ze Dong's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, that claimed over 20 million lives and set back the country's progress for 30 years? I'm not sure about that.
 

Deleted member 94708

Honestly, if the Nationalists win, I'd expect an even worse rest of the century. Their government was ineffective and not super popular among the peasants, at least the Communists had initial efficiency on their side.

Nah. They'll start out even; less land reform means more rural poverty and more surplus deaths, but to balance that, there will be no absolute catastrophes on the scale of OTL's GLF. But, as I mention above, they're generally moving in the right direction when it comes to building the strength of their urban power base so that they can reform the rural landholding class. By the 1960's the results are going to be superior to those achieved IOTL by the CCP, and by the end of the decade they'll be in a position to introduce a program of export-driven economic expansion a decade ahead of schedule, expanding from a higher base. Also, their access to US technology and educational establishment on reasonably favorable terms will allow China to avoid some of the technological pitfalls its seen IOTL.
 
Chiang is not responsible for Japanese actions, the Japanese are responsible for Japanese actions. Don't push off responsibility for Japanese atrocities onto the Chinese.
Oh, so Chiang didn't need to try defend China from Mukden? From Marco Polo Bridge? Because that was several precious years wasted where Chiang could have shown to Japan that they are a tough opponent, and he missed the opportunity.
At most you are talking political incompetence not moral culpability. The Communists were just as eager to go after the Nationalists as the Nationalists were to go after them.
Did I deny any of that since the beginning?
we can't know how serious he was contemplating making peace with Japan, we only know he didn't.
Well, he did employ ex-IJA/IJN officers in post-WWII campaigns, and use Japanese soldiers against Chinese Communist ones. Furthermore considering Chiang was trained in a Japanese military academy and had personal connections with a number of IJA officers it's not hard to imagine the above being the case.
In any case I am not arguing Chiang was a moral giant, as he wasn't, just that he was better than Mao.
The fact that Chiang intentionally leaving millions of Chinese to die in the hands of the Japanese is somehow BETTER than Mao leaving millions to die in GLF and CR is what's exasperating me most. Furthermore never have I even mentioned Chiang would be close to what you call a "moral giant".
You don't know that, the Japanese were massively outnumbered and were totally frustrated in China because of both Nationalist and Communist forces. Remember they weren't kicked out by Mao either but by Soviet armored divisions.
I don't recall ever mentioning that the Operation August Storm was conducted by Mao; what I meant was that Mao's active guerrilla campaign in the countryside was what was bogging the Japanese down and not allowing them to quickly take Chungking, at least until the US supplies began massively flowing in.
Because you, yourself conceded the point. Since you admitted that they took the brunt of the war, I accepted it. If even the person most strenuously arguing for Mao admits he did less actual fighting then I admit I was probably wrong and overestimated the Communist commitment to destroying Japan over the Nationalists.
?? I don't recall making a point as such; furthermore I don't recall being a bloody Mao advocate, I'm just not finding sense in anyone viewing Chiang morally superior or more capable in comparison to Mao.
Mao era China was after the Japanese were gone. If Japan was still there Mao would have done even worse.
Eh, do you remember that time when I talked about how Mao-era military was more competent than Chiang's?? How they defended against the Soviets, beat the Americans and Indians?? Yeah, Wrong comparison just now. Mao-era China proved itself highly capable of self-defence, while Chiang-era China wasn't.
Again Mao bears some of the responsibility for the difficulty of the Chinese-Japanese War.If he would have given up the idea of revolution until the Japanese were kicked out,
Yeahh, Mao would definitely be happy to have faith in Chiang after his comrades were brutally tortured and executed in Shanghai. Yeah, Mao should've been subordinate to Chiang!! Long live Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek!!
That would have made it harder for him. of course. But if kicking out the Japanese were truly much more important to him than taking over China that is what he would have done.
And that's what happened in OTL: Mao, with the little strength his army had in comparison to the Nationalists after the Long March, managed to help beat back Japan, beat Chiang, and then even the Americans. Sure, I don't deny that it probably was for personal gain, but he sure as hell defended his country in the process.
 
Stillwell hated Chiang personally, but to my knowledge he never spoke well of the CCP.
"According to Guan Zhong, President of the Examination Yuan, Stilwell had once expressed his regret of never having the opportunity to fight alongside the Chinese Communist army, especially with General Zhu De, before his death.[76]"
Look, I'm not a huge fan of Chiang either, but the CCP essentially sat out the entire Second Sino-Japanese War, certainly the portion of it from 1941 onward, and their contributions were relatively minimal even before then. They did not contribute in any significant way to the resistance put up against the Japanese, and certainly not to the extent that would be necessary to justify the comments you've been making in this thread.
Sit out?? Please. Maybe the Chinese Communists were more focused on guerrilla warfare than outright military campaigns, but that's just absurd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Regiments_Offensive
This is, to my knowledge, almost entirely inaccurate. The Nanjing decade saw significant economic reform and development, including the beginnings of the first industrial expansion in China (outside Shanghai, Tianjin, and Hong Kong) since the Qing commissioned Western-standard arsenals in the late 19th century. Do you have sources for all of this?
During my highschool years in Shanghai we held annual history conferences on the interwar history of Shanghai. High income inequality, probably similar to ones in present-day Shanghai, strong segregation and social stratification, corruption, mass drug abuse, rise of fascist paramilitary thugs. It was not pretty.
 
So the Nationalists would have done worse than the Mao Ze Dong's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, that claimed over 20 million lives and set back the country's progress for 30 years? I'm not sure about that.
Who would've expected Mao to go that way in 1949? Who would've expected Pol Pot to go that way in 1963? Mass murders and genocides, tragically enough, aren't that hard to begin under authoritarian regimes; considering the White Terror under post-1949 Chiang in Taiwan, the possibilities are definitely there.
Shanghai was also the leading financial centre in Asia in the 1920's and 1930's. It was more important than Tokyo. After the Communists took over and messed up the economy (they had a grudge against Shanghai in particular), it lost its status and still hasn't recovered to this day (it is now behind Tokyo and Hong Kong, and arguably Singapore).
Shanghai definitely was the "Pearl of the Orient", thanks to foreign exploitation of China being focused on the Yangtze River basin.
 
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Oh, so Chiang didn't need to try defend China from Mukden? From Marco Polo Bridge? Because that was several precious years wasted where Chiang could have shown to Japan that they are a tough opponent, and he missed the opportunity.

Chiang had good reason to not defend China from the time of Mukden: he didn't have control over much of China's fighting forces, and those forces were really badly equipped and organized. When Chiang delayed the war from 1931 to 1937, he wasn't doing nothing in the meantime. He kicked the communists out of Jiangxi and pushed them into Yan'an, made a bunch of warlords fight for him in doing so, and was busy equipping his armies with foreign weapons and training them with German officers. Plans were also drafted for the comprehensive defence of the Yangzi river valley, which led to the protracted battle at Wuhan.

Chiang and the KMT had a lot on their plates from 1928 to 1937.

The fact that Chiang intentionally leaving millions of Chinese to die in the hands of the Japanese is somehow BETTER than Mao leaving millions to die in GLF and CR is what's exasperating me most.
Do you think Chiang had a choice in the matter? He tried to stop the Japanese at Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan. He lost over a million men, including his best armies, in those battles. Then he retreated when there was no other military option. Go guerrilla? The communists did that in the Hundred Regiments Offensive and it led directly to the Three Alls policy. If the KMT had done it (leave aside that the KMT had little aptitude or options for conducting guerrilla warfare), it would have also caused millions of Chinese civilian deaths.

I'm just not finding sense in anyone viewing Chiang morally superior or more capable in comparison to Mao.
Definitely superior. Chiang didn't tell his most loyal men to "go die" (as Mao did) or purge them for minor ideological differences. He may not have been as cunning in some ways but as the Chinese say a fool is better than a villain.

Eh, do you remember that time when I talked about how Mao-era military was more competent than Chiang's?? How they defended against the Soviets, beat the Americans and Indians?? Yeah, Wrong comparison just now. Mao-era China proved itself highly capable of self-defence, while Chiang-era China wasn't.
Korean War-era PVA used mostly Chiang's captured crack troops and loyal CCP generals that Mao later purged. The Soviets were not so much defended against at Damansky Island as they decided not to nuke China out of deference to the Americans. The Indians were clearly a fearsome enemy that only the CCP could have defeated.

If it had been Mao vs. the Japanese without Chiang to use as a meatshield the Japanese would've had his balls.

During my highschool years in Shanghai we held annual history conferences on the interwar history of Shanghai. High income inequality, probably similar to ones in present-day Shanghai, strong segregation and social stratification, corruption, mass drug abuse, rise of fascist paramilitary thugs. It was not pretty.
Well, that sounds like China was a developing country back then. Good thing the communists fixed Shanghai up by instituting struggle sessions to blame rightists.
 
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Deleted member 94708

"According to Guan Zhong, President of the Examination Yuan, Stilwell had once expressed his regret of never having the opportunity to fight alongside the Chinese Communist army, especially with General Zhu De, before his death.[76]"

Sit out?? Please. Maybe the Chinese Communists were more focused on guerrilla warfare than outright military campaigns, but that's just absurd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Regiments_Offensive

During my highschool years in Shanghai we held annual history conferences on the interwar history of Shanghai. High income inequality, probably similar to ones in present-day Shanghai, strong segregation and social stratification, corruption, mass drug abuse, rise of fascist paramilitary thugs. It was not pretty.

1. Haven't heard that quote, but OK. And of course, Zhu De and Peng Dehuai were essentially the only CCP combat commanders to advocate confronting the Japanese directly, and Peng paid dearly for advocating working with the Nationalists to concentrate on the Japanese.

2. From the SAME Wikipedia article: "After the establishment of the People's Republic Mao is alleged to have said to Lin Biao that "allowing Japan to occupy more territory is the only way to love your country. Otherwise, it would have become a country that loved Chiang Kai-shek."[16] Thus, the Hundred Regiments Offensive became the last of the two major Communist frontal engagements against the Japanese during the war." As I said, from 1941 onwards the Communists might as well have been dead for all the good they did against the Japanese. Peng Dehuai was thrown in jail during the Cultural Revolution for having prosecuted this offensive! Jiang Qing in particular decided that he'd been fighting the Japanese to help the Nationalists.

3. High income inequality... like almost every other industrializing region in a developing country, ever. Do you have sources for your earlier claims or not?

Look, virtually everything you've said in this thread regarding the role of the KMT and CCP in the Second Sino-Japanese War is, to my knowledge, wrong. How about we just call it quits?
 

Deleted member 94708

Okay so what I've heard from this and other sites is that we need to:

1. Have people actually report accurate grain harvest numbers so that they don't accidentally draft too many farmers from the countryside to work on projects.

2. Have Mao be slightly less anti-Soviet, so he is alright with industrializing in the Soviet manner for China's benefit.

3. Have China import more foreign technicians to help them industrialize.

4. Keep the factories in the cities, not in rural backyards.

Anything else?

What you're describing is essentially "running the economy as usual". So in other words, yes, you're right on the money: "Don't implement the Great Leap Forward at all."
 
Who would've expected Mao to go that way in 1949? Who would've expected Pol Pot to go that way in 1963? Mass murders and genocides, tragically enough, aren't that hard to begin under authoritarian regimes; considering the White Terror under post-1949 Chiang in Taiwan, the possibilities are definitely there.

Shanghai definitely was the "Pearl of the Orient", thanks to foreign exploitation of China being focused on the Yangtze River basin.

It is possible that a Nationalist China might have wrecked China in the same way that Mao's regime did in OTL, but doubtful. The Nationalists were more authoritarian than totalitarian, and in OTL the damage caused by Communist regimes (China, North Korea, Cambodia), was far more than the military dictatorships associated with the West (South Korea, Taiwan).

There was foreign exploitation of China, but it also lead to trade, development and financial opportunities which saw Shanghai emerge as the leading financial centre in Asia. Tokyo was in its shadow at the time. Thanks to Mao, today it's the opposite.
 

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With KMT winning I doubt there'd be a Great Leap in any direction, since so many KMT leaders were happy just they could extort their subjects. I can't see KMT being able to ever have the level of Control the Communists had.
 
This needs to be Step 1. Mao needs to pick up the phone to Nikta Khruschev and say to him:

"Yo, Nicky."

"Da, Mao-Man?"

"I need half a million tractors."

"Ok."

He is not going to build a modern nation in five years. The Great Leap Forward, as defined by its targets, is impossible. A Biggish Leap Forward, an absolute focus on agriculture, is probably the best thing he could do. And if he's going to do it on the scale he wants to, he has to import the machinery he needs. Which means buying Soviet, the only people with the scale of industry to help them and anywhere near the desire to. If he is ever going to attempt using mass labour to hasten industrialisation, then at the very least he has to make sure that enough labourers are available to not work on the farm.
 
This needs to be Step 1. Mao needs to pick up the phone to Nikta Khruschev and say to him:

"Yo, Nicky."

"Da, Mao-Man?"

"I need half a million tractors."

"Ok."

He is not going to build a modern nation in five years. The Great Leap Forward, as defined by its targets, is impossible. A Biggish Leap Forward, an absolute focus on agriculture, is probably the best thing he could do. And if he's going to do it on the scale he wants to, he has to import the machinery he needs. Which means buying Soviet, the only people with the scale of industry to help them and anywhere near the desire to. If he is ever going to attempt using mass labour to hasten industrialisation, then at the very least he has to make sure that enough labourers are available to not work on the farm.

And making that happen at this point is almost certainly not going to work for Moscow. By this point the Soviets were already demanding Chinese reimbursement for the aid they had given Beijing over the previous ten or so years. Furthermore Moscow was already on the edge with putting up with Mao's shit over both Taiwan Straits crises, his territorial claims, his manipulation of Albania to side with him in opposition to Khrushchev's views on peaceful coexistence, and his ugly rhetoric about how the Soviets were abandoning Communism by working with the Americans. And, depending on what time, the swimming pool meeting. By the time the GLF began, the Sino-Soviet split would be fully ensured in but three more years. There is no way that the GLF could happen like that.
 
And making that happen at this point is almost certainly not going to work for Moscow. By this point the Soviets were already demanding Chinese reimbursement for the aid they had given Beijing over the previous ten or so years. Furthermore Moscow was already on the edge with putting up with Mao's shit over both Taiwan Straits crises, his territorial claims, his manipulation of Albania to side with him in opposition to Khrushchev's views on peaceful coexistence, and his ugly rhetoric about how the Soviets were abandoning Communism by working with the Americans. And, depending on what time, the swimming pool meeting. By the time the GLF began, the Sino-Soviet split would be fully ensured in but three more years. There is no way that the GLF could happen like that.

It demands a Mao willing to swallow his pride, nut up, and work with the people he needs to work with. So does an economic policy that is a micrometer less ambitious (and rubbish) as OTL Great Leap Forward. If he could agree to scaling GLF back by so much, what is the issue of working with ha theoretical ally?
 
This needs to be Step 1. Mao needs to pick up the phone to Nikta Khruschev and say to him:

"Yo, Nicky."

"Da, Mao-Man?"

"I need half a million tractors."

"Ok."

More like "I need a half a million tractors"
"Get real we need them for ourselves. Besides you'll wreck them. Tell you what I will send you them if we get the right to reject your agricultural minister and the head of your chemical productions as you will need fertilizer as well along with you head of steel production so you can eventually make your own. Also you need to join COMECON. "

For half a million tractors the Soviets would want to have quid pro quo or better. For that much money the Soviets would expect China to become a virtual Soviet colony. A half a million tractors = $$$$$!
 
More like "I need a half a million tractors"
"Get real we need them for ourselves. Besides you'll wreck them. Tell you what I will send you them if we get the right to reject your agricultural minister and the head of your chemical productions as you will need fertilizer as well along with you head of steel production so you can eventually make your own. Also you need to join COMECON. "

For half a million tractors the Soviets would want to have quid pro quo or better. For that much money the Soviets would expect China to become a virtual Soviet colony. A half a million tractors = $$$$$!

I did arrive at the half-a-million number partly in jest, the point was that China needs to trade if it is going to grow anywhere near as quickly as Mao wants it to, and the Soviet Union is pretty much the only game in town. Of course the Soviets want a good deal, but surely even they recognise they're better off with a strong China than a weak China, especially if they could make some cash off of getting it into shape.
 
I did arrive at the half-a-million number partly in jest, the point was that China needs to trade if it is going to grow anywhere near as quickly as Mao wants it to, and the Soviet Union is pretty much the only game in town. Of course the Soviets want a good deal, but surely even they recognise they're better off with a strong China than a weak China, especially if they could make some cash off of getting it into shape.

True, but that was closer to the opening bid. They would almost certainly want China to at least join COMECON for the tractors so they could eventually loot the place. That was what it was created for in the first place, after all.
 
So we know that the Great Leap Forward didn't accomplish what it was meant to, even Mao had said so, and, directly or indirectly, caused many deaths.

Now, how can we still have a Great Leap, but a successful one? I believe it has the potential to be an *incredibly* great policy for China's growth, but if we were to change history, what could be done?
China becomes a Soviet satellite. Soviet aid would do the work.
 
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