June 1935, Mao's Long March is over

June 1935, Sichuan China:


Mao stares as another platoon of Zhang's men enter the church. The link up with Zhang was expected to be tense, but not this tense. The men are armed with rifles that undoubtably function and have real, not home made gernades. Mao and his staff are pushed against a wall while an officer reads a hurried declaration in the almost unintelligible dialect of Zhang's home province. The words "spies" and "spying" are used again and again.

Sporadic rifle fire outside the church is followed by long bursts machine gun fire, then gernade explosions. Mao's exhausted and poorly equipped forces in the area are out numbered 8-1, and even those who are willing to try, cannot fight past Zhang's picked force outside the church in time. Twenty seconds later, its over. Mao and his staff are dead and Zhang Guaotao is the leading communist commander.

How does this impact the Civil war and later events? (good point by Meadow too early to look at Great Leap Forward etc)
 
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How does this impact the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution etc.?

Well, neither of them are going to happen now, are they? The butterflies from this POD render that question meaningless. It's a bit like asking 'Hitler is shot and killed in 1918. How does this affect the fall of the Berlin Wall?'

Now, as for how this affects the Chinese Civil War, I'm clueless. I'm not sure it necessarily makes the nationalists more sure of victory, but at the same time it probably changes the way in which the Communists win, if indeed they win at all.
 
The Communists certainly don't win in 1949, but unless Chiang suddenly discovers competence and becomes totally honest then the causes of the Civil War remain and China remains unstable through the 1950's and probably the 60's as well.
 
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