How would China react to WWIII in 1962?

GauchoBadger

GauchoBadger

So, suppose that the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is unresolved and escalates into a direct military confrontation between the US and the USSR. My question is: how will Maoist China react to this situation? The Sino-Soviet Split hasn't yet happened, but Mao already has his doubts regarding the Comintern.
IOTL, noticing that Khrushchev was distracted by the crisis, Mao managed to get a carte blanche from the Soviets to attack India, in order to acquire some disputed border regions (such as the Aksai Chin). In case WWIII erupts, what happens to the Sino-Indian Border Conflict?
 

Thon Taddeo

It's somewhat difficult for a country to react when it has just been burnt to ashes. SIOP-63 did allow for hold options sparing specific countries, but considering the communications issues of the time, Mao's belligerent attitudes and the fog of war, there's a good chance China gets hit, even if Kennedy places such a hold order.
 
Kalga

Kalga

Sino-Soviet split occurred in 1960. At this point in time the PRC has no friends of note for all intents and purposes (like only Egypt and maybe a couple of other countries even recognize them officially at this point in time).

Good news:
-the soviet arsenal at the time was probably not large enough (more of a delivery issue rather than warhead) for them to spare significant amount to warheads to nuke 3rd parties (like many speculation of potential soviet targets of WWIII in the late 70s onward).
-the country was pretty cut off from world trade (akin to modern DPRK), so things won't get much worse...

Bad news:
-they're on pretty much everyone's shit list, also in the middle/just out of a famine (great leap forward, 三年困难时期, whatever you want to call it).
-lacking much force projection capabilities, I'm not sure if there's any of note.

So really it depends on how much of NATO gets out of the war intact.
 
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sloreck

IMHO China will get some hits from both sides. The last thing the Soviets will want is an intact China with central control right next to Siberia after they have been in the receiving end of a nuclear attack. The USA will want to make sure China is knocked back some. What China does depends a lot on how badly they are hit, how much of the leadership is alive, is the country still under control etc. Depending on how bad the USA is hurt, they might try to help the DPRK go south, even try for Taiwan if the US Navy is otherwise occupied. Going north for Siberia might happen, although I don't know if the resources of Siberia were well known in 1962. If they take enough hits in the right places the country may splinter, Chiang may try to re-establish on the mainland...lots of possibilities.

One thing I am fairly certain about, Mao is NOT going to make any show of Socialist Solidarity over and above some very careful wording - he will do nothing that might bring the wrath of the USA down on him, and any of the moves in the previous paragraph would only happen after the shooting stops.
 
History Learner

History Learner

Banned
GauchoBadger said:
So, suppose that the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is unresolved and escalates into a direct military confrontation between the US and the USSR. My question is: how will Maoist China react to this situation? The Sino-Soviet Split hasn't yet happened, but Mao already has his doubts regarding the Comintern.
IOTL, noticing that Khrushchev was distracted by the crisis, Mao managed to get a carte blanche from the Soviets to attack India, in order to acquire some disputed border regions (such as the Aksai Chin). In case WWIII erupts, what happens to the Sino-Indian Border Conflict?
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It reacts by dying; Sino-Soviet split had already occurred and large forces were already being built up while China remained on U.S. targeting plans.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Thon Taddeo said:
It's somewhat difficult for a country to react when it has just been burnt to ashes. SIOP-63 did allow for hold options sparing specific countries, but considering the communications issues of the time, Mao's belligerent attitudes and the fog of war, there's a good chance China gets hit, even if Kennedy places such a hold order.
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Everything I've discovered seems that during the CMC, SAC, under Power, would be following SIOP-62, so bye bye Red China
 

Richard V

How does that work exactly? Let's say all Chinese cities were nuked. That's 20% of the agrarian population. More like <10% since the cities would be evacuated. Does the US plan on keep nuking China for decades to prevent cities from being rebuilt?
 

sloreck

If you gut Chinese industry, the military and infrastructure to support it, you'll also trash most of the central government and what is left will have a very hard time communicating and controlling the un-nuked parts of the country. It is almost 100% guarantee you'll see a good bit of warlordism, and in 1962 you did not have the legions of fanatic cadre (Red Guard) you did somewhat later to maintain the communist faith and they were more urban than rural based. I expect Tibet will break away, and some of the Muslim/non-Han parts of Western China likewise. In 1962 these areas had not had the influx of Han immigrants and the Sinicization efforts were in the early days. Agriculture will promptly return to subsistence level, and to the extent fallout, any efforts of "nuclear winter" affect farming this will be a potential source of famine (a persistent Chinese problem) in some areas, over and above direct effects of loss of crops and stored food.

In 1962 the "Great Leap Forward" was coming to an end (started in 1958) and OTL it took China some time to recover from the major negative effects of this event - so they start out in 1962 behind the 8-ball.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Richard V said:
How does that work exactly? Let's say all Chinese cities were nuked. That's 20% of the agrarian population. More like <10% since the cities would be evacuated. Does the US plan on keep nuking China for decades to prevent cities from being rebuilt?
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Evacuation plan?

Mao cared not about deaths in nuclear War
'If the worst came to the worst and half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist; in a number of years there would be 2,700 million people again and definitely more'

The US and USSR had Civil Defense plans for WWIII, the PRC did not.

It wouldn't be all cities, just anything that had any air defense ability that would interfere with SAC ingress and egress to the USSR from Guam, Clark in the Philippines or Okinawa
 

Richard V

marathag said:
Evacuation plan?

Mao cared not about deaths in nuclear War
'If the worst came to the worst and half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist; in a number of years there would be 2,700 million people again and definitely more'

The US and USSR had Civil Defense plans for WWIII, the PRC did not.

It wouldn't be all cities, just anything that had any air defense ability that would interfere with SAC ingress and egress to the USSR from Guam, Clark in the Philippines or Okinawa
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Mao wasn't even in power in 1962. Do you have any evidence the country didn't have nuclear war contingency plans? As far as I know Mao planned to turn the whole country into a giant version of his cave dwelling guerilla army with weapons and supplies stashed everywhere and every urban citizen was required to do farm work as part of their "re-education". They were prepared in the way only a totalitarian regime can be.

According to the report the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent McNamara SIOP-1962 would have the following effect:

If the full U.S. nuclear force assigned to the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) struck the Soviet Union, 54 percent of the total population would be killed, that is some 108 million of a total population of 217 million. If the smaller alert force (bombers on 15 minute to 2 hour alert) was used, total Soviet casualties would be 37 percent or about 80 million. Against China, the full force would kill a smaller proportion because there were fewer cities: 16 percent of an estimated 650 million or about 104 million.
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pages-from-1961-06-26a.png


https://unredacted.com/2011/11/08/u...dence-on-siop-62-and-the-origins-of-overkill/
 
Kalga

Kalga

Just wanna mention that the tunnels & caves dug out in various mountains [during that time period] for nuclear warfare contingencies were a popular place to escape from the heat during the summer, especially considering the lack of AC for most of the country at the time... Great place for studying for exams for many students.

Also of note, do we know what number of warheads (and more importantly, delivery systems) the USSR & USA has allocated for nuking misc 3rd parties such as the PRC? This is the early 1960s after all, where the USSR doesn't necessarily even have enough to end the USA as a functioning country (though the converse is true however).
 

RousseauX

Donor
marathag said:
You really think Mao had less power than Liu Shaoqi in 1962?
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Mao was sidelined from power after the failure of the great leap forward, China in the early 1960s had Liu and Deng doing the day-to-day running of the government, which is precisely why mao launched the cultural revolution: to purge them from the government
 
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