How would a Kuomintang-controlled China change the Cold War?

The Russians might support a Communist revolt in Japan like they did IOTL in China...especially if Japan still goes the authoritarian path.






This is my point, this scenario could cause Japan to go red due to the Japanese resentment for WWII against the government especially the Anti-War factions, the postwar recovery is what prevented this.

Japan is under total US control, the only thing a communist revolt is going to do is to get mowed down by the Marines and Army. The only thing it'll accomplish is make the US go "Oh huh, maybe we DO need a navy and a budget after all?" Any outside USSR support can be STRANGLED IN THE CRADLE via the simple expedient of declaring an exclusion zone around Japan, and then enforcing it via all those lovely WW2 vintage ships the USN has kicking around. What is Stalin going to do, have men walk to Japan?
 
There are many stupid things that did happen in history...and revaunchism is one of them.
People often forget otl is actually filled with people doing a lot of stupid and near ASB stuff. Imperial culture could be very prideful and ignorant. Chinese superiority complex ends up screwing them sometimes. China might do stuff just to “show their strength to the world”. Something the US and USSR will have over China is likely be diplomacy even if they have a bigger industry.
 
I wonder how much better the US arms and aircraft industry will do now they have a massive eastern client. Maybe SEATO survives till the modern day?
 

thorr97

Banned
Perhaps with NATO to their west and a pro-US / pro-West China to their south, the Soviet Union's economic collapse comes a decade - or more - sooner in this ATL.
 
I can’t answer this question without knowing how/when Kuomintang survived and under which leader it did. I also strongly disagree on the assumption that erasing Communist China from history would automatically erase both the Korean and the Vietnam one. Soviet Union can still back those conflicts and another big communist sponsor could appear, anywhere in the world, for example a communist Indonesia. A lot of butterflies can appear.

In OTL, its undemocratic polices combined with wartime corruption made the Republic of China Government vulnerable to the Communist threat. Years of corruption and mismanagement had eroded popular support for the Nationalist Government. The big questions are thus to know if post-war Kuomintang China is centralized or still a loose Federation of warlords and if reforms were enacted. Economic, agricultural, anti-corruption or military reforms are really needed. We need to know if the communist guerilla is truly over and if Soviet Union keeps supporting them or not. Internally the role and (non)-existence of opposition parties in this country must be considered.

Geopolitically, the presence of borders will Soviet Union means that this country is militarily vulnerable and will probably force USA to create a Chinese "Marshall plan". But you could be surprised if you deeply to search about the complex relationships between Soviet Union and KMT.

Soviets were interested in mediating the Chinese Civil War due to their fear that Mao Zedong could become an “Asian Tito.”


It is well known that the Soviets maintained official, diplomatic relations with the KMT government up until the very last minute, breaking relations with the KMT only on 2 October 1949, the day after Mao Zedong declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. It is also well documented that the Soviet Ambassador to China, Nikolai Roshchin, was the only member of the diplomatic corps to follow the KMT government in its retreat from Nanjing south to Guangzhou (Canton) in early 1949.

- https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/ACFB69.PDF
- https://thediplomat.com/2015/12/what-if-the-kuomingtang-had-won-the-chinese-civil-war/

You could even see a pro-Soviet KMT during the Cold War.
 
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The problem with a pro-Soviet KMT is that the USSR, once the war with Japan is over and Mao defeated, has very little to offer China. The USSR is a wreck, that can't feed their own people, and they have no money to "invest" in Chinese industry. The USA can include China in the Marshall Plan, what can the USSR offer - nada.
 
I can’t answer this question without knowing how/when Kuomintang survived and under which leader it did. I also strongly disagree on the assumption that erasing Communist China from history would automatically erase both the Korean and the Vietnam one. Soviet Union can still back those conflicts and another big communist sponsor could appear, anywhere in the world, for example a communist Indonesia. A lot of butterflies can appear.


- https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/ACFB69.PDF
- https://thediplomat.com/2015/12/what-if-the-kuomingtang-had-won-the-chinese-civil-war/
.
The US won’t tolerate more communist regimes in Asia, the main reason why the US didn’t invade North Vietnam or North Korea was because they believed China would intervene. And Stalin isn’t gonna go to war over Korea. And the biggest issue with Vietnam is that there’s no supply route in North Vietnam other than by sea. The US could easily mine the harbors and blockade them. Without that support North Vietnam won’t last long.
 

thorr97

Banned
How about having the Nationalists win due to the Americans choosing to conduct landings along the Chinese coast instead of making the one "big jump" for Downfall?

Coming ashore along China's Pacific and Yellow Sea coast the US could put down a multi-division size force. The IJA in China would respond to it and then the US lands another division or two further up the coast and behind the Japanese. That'd force the Japanese to withdraw inland where their logistics were even worse and the Nationalists even stronger.

Rinse and repeat this a few time and you'd have shattered much of the IJA mobility in China. And you have wound up with a very significant US presence on the ground in China at war's end.

This would've given The Peanut a stronger hand against the Japanese, against the warlords, and against the Communists. It would also have tied his regime even more closely to that of America's.
 
How about having the Nationalists win due to the Americans choosing to conduct landings along the Chinese coast instead of making the one "big jump" for Downfall?

Coming ashore along China's Pacific and Yellow Sea coast the US could put down a multi-division size force. The IJA in China would respond to it and then the US lands another division or two further up the coast and behind the Japanese. That'd force the Japanese to withdraw inland where their logistics were even worse and the Nationalists even stronger.

Rinse and repeat this a few time and you'd have shattered much of the IJA mobility in China. And you have wound up with a very significant US presence on the ground in China at war's end.

This would've given The Peanut a stronger hand against the Japanese, against the warlords, and against the Communists. It would also have tied his regime even more closely to that of America's.

Douglas McArthur once famously said that anyone who wanted a US intervention in China (it's civil war, specifically) needed their head checked. I do not see the Americans landing troops in China out of a fear that they'll get dragged into the resumption of the Chinese Civil War.
 
Assuming the 1940s history of corruption & incompetence within the KMT continues I'm not sure I want them with a nuclear power program.
1940s history of corruption & incompetence within the KMT is small potatoes compared to the PRCs Great Leap of the Cliff and yet they didn't blow up the planet.

Chang was anti-communist, but not necessarily anti-Soviet. Additionally, at numerous points durring WWII tensions between the Americans and Chang were strained pretty badly.

The RoC is likely non-aligned.
I don't know about Chiang personally, but China was very anti-Russian. For all the talk about doctrinaire differences regarding OTL's Sino-Soviet split, the bottom line is that China had a massive grudge against Russia and no amount of ramblings about "Fraternal Socialist Brotherhood" was going to make it go away. For KMT China, whether to tell the US what it wants to hear in order to get in on the Marshall plan isn't something Chiang wouldn't need more than a second before deciding "Hell, Yes!". It's not like OTL Europe had a love-fest regarding the US until the end of the Cold War. KMT China and the US having a relationship akin to OTLs France and the US, is what I'd put my money on.

To change the subject: IMHO the biggest long-term butterflies would come from no "One Child Policy" and China instead having a population growth akin to India.
 
1940s To change the subject: IMHO the biggest long-term butterflies would come from no "One Child Policy" and China instead having a population growth akin to India.
The overpopulation scare will still happen, so population control measures aren’t guaranteed to not happen.
 
The question is how much of China's population growth decrease can actually be attributed to the one child policy.

Pretty much every country in Asia has had declines in fertility. Heck, every country in the world has experienced it to some degree - places where women used to have 9 kids now have 5 for example. Even the poorer asian countries like Cambodia and Laos have fertility rates below 3 children per woman. India's is below three.

China's GDP per capita measured in purchasing power (rather than nominal GDP) is around 18k. Thailand's is 19.5K. China's fertility rate is 1.6 vs Thailand's 1.5.



BlogImage_ChinaOneChild_102516.jpg


The fertility rate was already going down when the OCP was introduced. Maybe that bump we see after the introduction would have been higher without it.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis attributes two main reasons: 70s economic growth and there already being family planning available (and encouraged) before the OCP. Would the KMT be able to provide family planning? I have no idea.


How wealthy would an RoC China be? Without the communists cleaning house, I can't see China having the rapid growth rates experienced from Deng Xiaoping onwards. I also doubt that the RoC in the mainland would be a copy-and-paste economic history of Taiwan. But, there'd be an advantage in that Mainland China from 1949-1976 is going to have higher growth rates than it historically did. Compound interest is a powerful thing, and given how the global trend in the 20th century more-or-less across nations was for more liberalizing reforms in the late 20th century, I can see China becoming friendlier to business over time and attracting more investment. I think Japan in particular would start setting up factories in China (awkwardly, I guess) as labor markets tighten in the country in the late-20th century. Anyways, TLDR I can imagine China ending up comparably wealthy (or a bit wealthier) as it is today despite lower growth rates if only because its growth period would be 27 years longer. Mexico today has a 20k GDP per capita measured in purchasing power, so I guess that could sort of be a good analogue. Comparable growth rates would mean a similar demographic transition, which would mean China's population won't be drastically different from OTL.


However, another big difference for a KMT china would be no cultural revolution or great leap forward. If you're not killing off the professional class, then that likely means some improvement in the economy as a whole (unless the professional class was holding the whole system back to protect its class interest, which I doubt was that likely in a totalitarian communist state).

18 to 56 million people died in the Great Leap Forward. Let's say the number is 40 million, just by averaging out the various figures wikipedia lists off and rounding up to a multiple of 10.


In 2011 the Chinese Government said that the OCP probably prevented 400million births, but then adjusted that to say that the OCP + preexisting policies (family planning, etc) resulted in 400million fewer births. Other demographers say the OCP probably resulted in 200million fewer births, which I could sort of believe.




Also, 6 million people died in the 1945-1949 portion of the Chinese Civil War. The KMT also stripped the mainland of much of its wealth to both fuel the war effort and to bolster themselves on Taiwan. If the KMT opts to consolidate in China proper and not go after Mao in Manchuria, more or less avoiding the 1945-1949 fighting in China proper, then you have another 6 million people alive from 1949 onwards.


I guess a KMT China would have 300 to 400 million more people. Although you'd also need to subtract Mao's Soviet-backed Manchuria (~122) and East Turkestan (~8) and add Taiwan (~24). So that nets you 194 to 294 million more people.



I guess there's the question of what happens to Hong Kong and Macau here though.
 
Also, how Democratic will KMT China be by present day?

It's going to be a bigger country so I doubt the transition would be as easy as it was in Taiwan. You won't see the cleaning house that the Communists enacted - local landlords, warlords, etc - either. If there's a Democratic transition, I get the impression it'd be more similar to Latin American democracy than Japan/Taiwan/South Korea/etc.

I wonder how the Hong Kong and Macau hand-offs would go TTL. Would they even happen at all? I read somewhere that Xiaoping didn't care all that much about HK until Thatcher said something dumb about how the Opium Wars were justified. If they're handed off, would one country two systems still occur or be necessary?
 

thorr97

Banned
Douglas McArthur once famously said that anyone who wanted a US intervention in China (it's civil war, specifically) needed their head checked. I do not see the Americans landing troops in China out of a fear that they'll get dragged into the resumption of the Chinese Civil War.

This wouldn't be a US intervention in China's civil war. Instead, it would be the US actively pursuing its war against the Japanese empire by engaging and destroying its military in an advantageous manner as possible. What the Nationalists did otherwise wouldn't be the primary concern or involvement of the US so long as it did not interfere with that primary objective.

Yes, this would serve to strengthen the KMT's position as the US would be eliminating the IJA's threat and also securing whatever areas it liberated. That would free the Nationalist army to go after its opposition - both what remained of the IJA and warlords or Communists - in a more undisturbed fashion.

I'd expect there'd be no small amount of friction with the Peanut wanting the might of the US military to smite any pesky warlords who opposed him while the US commander would be at pains to keep his sights solely on the Japanese army.
 
One other issue is religion in the KMT Republic of China.




In 1900 there were 100,000 Protestants in China (.025%). In 1950 this figure had risen to 700,000 (0.12%). That's a 380% increase in percentage of population.

There's also been a pretty significant developmental trend where urbanizing societies - which result in the straining and severing of social bonds since people are no longer as connected to their villages and families - tend to embrace dynamic forms of protestantism. In the US this sort of happened twice: First in the north (19th Century) and later in the south and west (20th Century). This arguably is happening in Latin American in recent years and today too.

Today Protestantism is spreading petty quickly. At 40 million, that's just 2.85%. That's still a pretty big increase over a short period of time however, given that the Communists eradicated the protestant presence after they took over. Apparently in today's China the government and businesses look somewhat positively on Christianity - particularly protestant christianity - as a social tool. The Catholic Church is seen as being more troublesome, given fear of foreign allegiances.

I'm not sure how widespread Protestantism could get in China.
  • In South Korea (not the perfect analogue) the country is 27.6% Christian: 19.7% Protestant, 7.9% Catholic. 15.5% say Buddhist, another 56.9% say unaffiliated. However, Christianity was also pretty tied to Korean Nationalism during occupation so that gave it a boost in Korea. Most growth in Christianity was in the north before the Korean War, but most Christians fled south. Christianity was also sees as providing some more cultural-ideological bulwark against communism. There was a "conversion boom" until the 1980s. I wonder what slowed that boom.
  • In Taiwan, 3.9% Identify as Christian. 35.1% say Buddhist, 33% say Taoist.

Sun Yat-sen was a Protestant Convert. Protestants established hospitals and clinics, trained the first chinese nurses, opened the first modern schools, worked to end footbinding, worked to improve the treatment of maids, fed the poor, opposed the opium trade, and treated drug addicts. Did the KMT have a sizable number of protestants in its leadership?

Meanwhile the RoC wouldn't be as anti-Tibetan Buddhist as the PRC and I'm fairly certain the folks running Tibet were pro-KMT. I'm pretty sure the KMT was opposed to traditional religions however. I wonder it Tibetan Buddhism could serve a similar social-cultural niche as Protestantism.

Note: Sorry to triple post. I figure though that since each post is on a different subject, it's cleaner to break them down than to have one very very long post.
 

thorr97

Banned
Jackson Lennock,

I don't think it was just the fertility drop alone which made the difference it was the gender skewing of it due to its forced nature. The OCP forced China's families to accept that their family line depended on just that one child they were allowed to have. Given the primogeniture nature of China's culture even under Communism, if that child was female then the family was doomed. At least so in the eyes of the males. So, that has meant that an obscene number of females birthed were immediately murdered so that the family would have another chance to "save itself." This has, over the decades, created a vast imbalance in the number of women in the younger of China's demographic cohorts. That has even further accelerated the fertility drop off.

In other Asian cultures that drop off was more of a "natural" thing as the parents chose not to keep having kids. Or at the very least, didn't murder their female births if they chose to still stop at having but one child.

China has dug itself into a deep, deep demographic hole that they are NOT going to recover from. They're now facing a situation where their median age is rising while they've a diminishing number of "working age" adults to support that elderly population. They can't import more women to boost that child birth number as, culturally, mixed race children are an anathema to the Chinese. And yet they also have this growing number of "surplus" males who will never find a women to marry and start a family with. That's a dire situation as those males still need some outlet and the temptation will be to start wars so as to "use them up." But at the same time China can not afford to lose more of its workforce as that would make supporting its elderly even more difficult.

None of this bodes well for China today.
 
Jackson Lennock,

I don't think it was just the fertility drop alone which made the difference it was the gender skewing of it due to its forced nature. The OCP forced China's families to accept that their family line depended on just that one child they were allowed to have. Given the primogeniture nature of China's culture even under Communism, if that child was female then the family was doomed. At least so in the eyes of the males. So, that has meant that an obscene number of females birthed were immediately murdered so that the family would have another chance to "save itself." This has, over the decades, created a vast imbalance in the number of women in the younger of China's demographic cohorts. That has even further accelerated the fertility drop off.

In other Asian cultures that drop off was more of a "natural" thing as the parents chose not to keep having kids. Or at the very least, didn't murder their female births if they chose to still stop at having but one child.

China has dug itself into a deep, deep demographic hole that they are NOT going to recover from. They're now facing a situation where their median age is rising while they've a diminishing number of "working age" adults to support that elderly population. They can't import more women to boost that child birth number as, culturally, mixed race children are an anathema to the Chinese. And yet they also have this growing number of "surplus" males who will never find a women to marry and start a family with. That's a dire situation as those males still need some outlet and the temptation will be to start wars so as to "use them up." But at the same time China can not afford to lose more of its workforce as that would make supporting its elderly even more difficult.

None of this bodes well for China today.

Maybe the Chinese Government should get all those surplus males to sign up as Tibetan Buddhist Monks and Catholic Priests. (ba dum tssss)
 

thorr97

Banned
Maybe the Chinese Government should get all those surplus males to sign up as Tibetan Buddhist Monks and Catholic Priests. (ba dum tssss)

Hah! That'd be pretty cool to see!

On a more serious note however, those "surplus" males are actually anything but that. While their marriage prospects are next to zero their utility in keeping the Chinese economy is absolutely vital. Without them, the calculus of "x" many workers supporting "y" number of retirees becomes even worse than it now is. This is a problem for China that isn't getting better. It could well lead to some truly nasty consequences - i.e. yet another revolution - if the Chinese economy hits the skids to any significant degree. Throw some several million of those folk out of work and not only does that leave those individuals unemployed it also destroys the support system for all their elderly family members dependent upon them. That makes for a whole bunch of folks really, really angry with their local Communist Party officials.
 
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