Japanese Manchukuo during Sino-Soviet War

I wonder, in the event of an open Sino-Soviet War, how important is the control of Manchuria? Is it more or less important than Mongolia or Xinjiang? If Japan controlled Manchuria would the Soviets or the Chinese felt compelled to extend the war to get Manchuria or would the fighting shift elsewhere?
 

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I wonder, in the event of an open Sino-Soviet War, how important is the control of Manchuria? Is it more or less important than Mongolia or Xinjiang? If Japan controlled Manchuria would the Soviets or the Chinese felt compelled to extend the war to get Manchuria or would the fighting shift elsewhere?
Look at the infrastructure between China and Russia. Tell me how easy it would be for either side to supply an army against the other. Manchuria was the only place where there was a decent enough rail net and roads to fight.
 
Look at the infrastructure between China and Russia. Tell me how easy it would be for either side to supply an army against the other. Manchuria was the only place where there was a decent enough rail net and roads to fight.

This. The diplomatic configuration is wrong - all-out war between China and the Soviets isn't going to happen with the Japanese holding Manchuria - both China and Russia would rather fight the Japanese than each other so long as the Japanese hold Manchuria. Manchuria is probably more important to any Chinese or Russian regime than Mongolia or Xinjiang.
 
And, if the rest of China has a strong government, Manchukuo's days will be seriously numbered. After all, the reason Japan expanded the war beyond Manchuria in the first place was to provide it with strategic depth.
 
This. The diplomatic configuration is wrong - all-out war between China and the Soviets isn't going to happen with the Japanese holding Manchuria - both China and Russia would rather fight the Japanese than each other so long as the Japanese hold Manchuria.
In theory, if Japan doesn't wage war in the Pacific AND the situation in China stalemated AND later communists won the struggle for power in China we could get the Soviets-PRC-Manchukuo configuration holding for some time before the Sino-Soviet split. Or is that too farfetched?

Indeed, after looking at the railways map it seems Japan can't "vacate" parts of Manchukuo and keep the rest given that the railways are almost at the Korean border.
 
In theory, if Japan doesn't wage war in the Pacific AND the situation in China stalemated AND later communists won the struggle for power in China we could get the Soviets-PRC-Manchukuo configuration holding for some time before the Sino-Soviet split. Or is that too farfetched?
I don't think this could happen, since once Japan expanded beyond Manchuria they were set on a course of iterative expansion that made the Pacific War hard to avoid. On the other hand if Japan doesn't expand beyond Manchuria (i.e. freeze their expansion at 1931), the conditions for the CCP to overthrow the KMT don't exist, since the KMT would not be fatally weakened by the war of 1937-45 (which hurt the KMT far worse than the CCP).
The most likely outcome would be probably the KMT would maintain a tactical alliance with the CCP and eventually (say sometime in the 1940s, once they had built up Chinese strength sufficiently) launch a war to force Japan out of Manchuria. In such a case Stalin would probably be mainly concerned to protect Russian interests in the Manchurian railways (a Tsarist hold-over), rather than promoting the interests of the CCP.
 
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