Left Kuomintang Government in 1930s China

So I'm reading Max Hasting's history of the Pacific War. And he mentioned that Jiang Jieshi is regarded with favor even in mainland China as a result of historical revisionism that seems him as a Chinese nationalist unifying figure. A Communist Party historian is even quoted as saying that he deserves the same 7-parts good and 3-parts bad ratio as Mao Zedong. Certainly he proved to be a very effective governor of Taiwan leading a backward Confucian feudal society into 1st world status. But he was the governor of a small American-backed province as opposed to a huge land-empire. And while its true that he reigned under one of the worst periods in Chinese history, to a large extent he brought on himself especially through the corrupt gangster friends he made in the 1920s. The unbelievable corruption of the Chungking WW2 government pales in comparison with the relatively austere and disciplined Red regime in Yanan during the same period. So its not simply cultural that Chinese troops had to be poor and demoralized during the 1930s.

So I guess that brings me to my main POV mainly the bad choices made by Chiang in the 1920s that brought on all the disasters. Stalin always had a soft spot for Chiang, even in 1948 he urged Mao to form a unity government with the KMT. Chiang's son was trained in the USSR. And Soviet agents helped reorganize the KMT on Leninist lines. One of the major bones of contention with Trotsky on the Comintern front was the role of the "progressive" KMT. Stalin strongly promoted the progressive credentials of Chiang and considered him a revolutionary democrat along the lines of Ataturk. Unlike Trotsky he suggested the CPC play second-fiddle to the KMT during the "bourgeouis democratic" phase of backwards China's revolution.

So I'm wondering what could have happened if Stalin's policy had worked out. If Chiang had had a change of heart or a different KMT leader had been in power in 1927. I don't see the possibility of direct Communist rule in 1920s China. But there was a real possibility of a Left-KMT CPC coalition government. A Popular Front along the lines of the Spanish Republic of 1936. Through a combination of ruthlessness and genuine popular support a Bolshevized Chinese government might have achieved a degree of unity and stability akin to say early 1950s PRC. This close alignment with the USSR comes at the expense of American sympathy. But this proved relatively ineffectual as far as US aid in WW2 actually goes. Militarily and industrially I think this Chinese government could acheive the level of 1930s Mongolia or 1950s Korean War PRC. Both a far cry from the motley army of Chiang. US observers who had seen the 1940s KMT army, could not believe that the same Chinese army could accomplish the Battle of the Yalu. A Soviet backed Chinese army could at least achieve the level of the Mongolian People's Republic. Which despite being smaller and poorer, with Soviet aid delivered crushing blows to Japan in the 1930s. So a Left-KMT government might very will be able to face down the Japanese threat in 1928 when they halted Chiang's Northern Expedition. Or achieve a Nomohan-style border battle victory in 1931 in Manchuria.

Of course the question is how does this butterfly in the larger international scene? European events most likely proceed as in OTL. Tensions between the USA and Japan do not heat up, since American fear of Communism means less sympathy for a perceived ally of the USSR. And in addition China might very well be able to take care of itself anyway. The Japanese still ally with Nazi Germany if anything they are pushed into their arms faster since they perceive the threat as greater. With greater animosity towards USSR for the perceived humiliation in Manchuria, and less beef with the USA. Japan might very well join in Hitler's invasion in 1941. This might not be as disastrous as it would have been in our time-line, since a far better trained and equipped Chinese army might be able to hold the Pacific Front for the Soviets and thus allow Stalin to remove reserves from Siberia anyway. The Sino-Japanse war would play out less like the pitiful one-sided massacre it did in OTL and more like the Soviet-German war. Still without any direct cause of Pearl Harbor and US intervention, the USSR, PRC and UK face a much harder task in crushing the Axis.
 
This is definitely worth exploring. It's more original than the simplistic "Chiang stays in control, China becomes one huge Taiwan" discussion we often see.
 
Here's the funny thing - it's not just Jiang. Up to when the ROC had to flee Nanjing for Taiwan, the KMT was largely socialist - to a degree, with a whole amount of clarifications and reservations. That is because Sun Yixian was in large part inspired by the philosophies of Henry George. This article shows how much influence Henry George influenced Sun Yixian; let's say that under Jiang some of this was taken to an extreme in some ways, aided by corruption and mad people like Chen Yi.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0254/is_n3_v53/ai_15593163/
 
This is definitely worth exploring. It's more original than the simplistic "Chiang stays in control, China becomes one huge Taiwan" discussion we often see.

i havent seen that and ive assumed it'd be more of 'china has a few decades of warlordism then begins to develop similar like OTL as mongolia, tibet etc are designated as 'loose' republics of china. We might see a china-soviet war over Mongolia and Uiyghurstan (Xinjiang)....
 
Certainly he proved to be a very effective governor of Taiwan leading a backward Confucian feudal society into 1st world status.
I'm sorry, what? When the KMT fled to Taiwan, it was by no means a backwards place, least of all compared to China. After 50 years of Japanese colonial rule, it was significantly more developed than almost any place in China. It had much higher life expentancy, literacy rates, much better infrastructure--hell, even the average height was larger, due to better childhood nuitriton. And what did the KMT do when they arrived? They spend the first four years after the war stripping down all the factories and everything of value and shipping it off to China to feed their war effort in the Chinese Civil War.

Yes, the KMT did eventually preside over decades of impressive economic growth (after they gave up trying to "take back the mainland"). It's debateable how much credit for this can be placed at the feet of CKS. If you want give him the credit, I won't argue. But the idea that Taiwan was a "backwards Confucian feudal society" when the KMT came is laughably false--it was easily one of the single most developed spots in Asia. Taiwan could boast a highly educated workforce and good infrastructure. Indeed, part of the friction when the KMT soldiers came in 1945 is that, to the Taiwanese, these troops often seemed like so many illiterate country bumpkins. If anything, CSK left a backwards fuedal society to arrive in developed, modern Taiwan.
 
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Cook

Banned
One thing to consider concerning Stalin’s approval of a non-communist leader and his instructions to the Comintern to support that leader and the local Communist Party to not take the leading role is that the local Communists often proved less than enthusiastic at obeying the instructions coming from Moscow.
So I'm reading Max Hasting's history of the Pacific War.
When it comes to the Pacific Hastings isn't very good. For the Pacific War try Pacific Fury by Peter Thompson and for China try Shanghai Fury by the same author.
 
Stalin was pragmatic and betted Chiang as the "best horse on the race" even after the purges of Shanghai in 1927. While doing so he sowed the seeds that were later reaped as one of the main reasons of the Sino-Soviet split - delivering massive aid to National Revolutionary Army while all PLA got during the war era was one shipment of AA-MGs, using RKKA troops to push PLA kadres away from cities in Manchuria to make room for forces of Chiang as per the bargain Stalin had struck with Chiang, stripping Manchuria bare from the prewar Japanese industry...But I digress.

Assuming that CCP really can internally infliltrate KMT according the original plan of First Unified Front, KMT will most likely push forward more ambitious land reform agenda - pissing of the landlords and old elites, but winning the support of millions of the downridden rural population driven to poverty during the long wars between warlord cliques.

For me, the main butterfly here is the possible absence of Sino-German cooperation. In OTL the 8 German-trained kadre divisions and 12 divisions that had already received their equipment but were still in a middle of their training when the 2nd Sino-Japanese War begun were without doubt the best forces Chiang had at his disposal, and were used extensively in the massive early war battles, 2nd Shanghai being perhaps the most famous:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_battle_of_the_Battle_of_Shanghai

Then again these might well be replaced with equivalent Soviet-equipped and -trained force. Earlier equivalent of Type 53 (Chinese license-build version of Винтовка Мосина) as standard service rifle, DP-28 as the standard LMG, and so on.

Soviet-imported and Chinese licence-build heavier weaponry would also ease the supply problems of rearming the National Revolutionary Army:
http://russian.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/images/i153-3.jpg

And this in turn would lead to interesting butterflies regarding OTL fate of Manchuria in 1930s...
 

RousseauX

Donor
Here's the funny thing - it's not just Jiang. Up to when the ROC had to flee Nanjing for Taiwan, the KMT was largely socialist - to a degree, with a whole amount of clarifications and reservations. That is because Sun Yixian was in large part inspired by the philosophies of Henry George. This article shows how much influence Henry George influenced Sun Yixian; let's say that under Jiang some of this was taken to an extreme in some ways, aided by corruption and mad people like Chen Yi.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0254/is_n3_v53/ai_15593163/
I don't think it was "Socialist" in any way other than having a statist economy.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Assuming that CCP really can internally infliltrate KMT according the original plan of First Unified Front, KMT will most likely push forward more ambitious land reform agenda - pissing of the landlords and old elites, but winning the support of millions of the downridden rural population driven to poverty during the long wars between warlord cliques.
I'm outright not sure if this is plausible if Chiang is head of the KMT, OTL Chiang started out as the defacto leader of the right-KMT who were pretty explicit against destroying the old order using land reforms and such.

Other butterflies from this would include ones on the CCP: without the 1927 purge it means that the Comintern crowd who were OTL killed/discredited by the purge would retain leadership of the party. Mao is probably going to be either a nobody or somebody small ITTL, and Zhou Enlai might end up either heading the CCP or at least be one of its most important leaders.

The CCP would be urban based in this scenario, and be a party of trade unions and the working class of the cities as oppose to a peasant revolutionary party.
 
Wang Jingwei

A figure hugely underutilized in alternate history given the widespread "President Benedict Arnold" trope that exists in the genre, is Wang Jingwei. Before he was Japan's man on the mainland, he had been the leader of the lft faction of the KMT. He seems tailor-made for this discussion.
 

RousseauX

Donor
A figure hugely underutilized in alternate history given the widespread "President Benedict Arnold" trope that exists in the genre, is Wang Jingwei. Before he was Japan's man on the mainland, he had been the leader of the lft faction of the KMT. He seems tailor-made for this discussion.
Basically, what is the chance of him actually gaining leadership?
 
Basically, what is the chance of him actually gaining leadership?

I get the impression that he had a real shot at it in the 1920's if Jiang is somehow removed. Perhaps the Zhongshan Warship Incident goes as planned, but results in Jiang's demise?
 
A non-Communist but strongly Soviet-backed China should fare better in any conflict against Japan. Chiang nearly completed the unification of China during his Northern Expedition but was forced to backdown near Manchuria when Japan intervened. A better-armed and more centralized Soviet-leaning Chinese government should be able to unify the country better and modernize the military. The USSR is geographically in a much better position to arm KMT than either Germany or the USA. If Japan launches a full-scaled invasion in the 1930s it would play out more like Barbarossa, as opposed to the turkey-shoot and massacre it ended up being.

Returning to the international scene. In my OP I stated that the main problem for the Allies is ensuring US intervention with China as the conflict-point. In my first scenario Japan gets bogged down in a long-stalemated war against much more effective Chinese resistance should a 2nd invasion be attempted. But suppose instead a 1931 border clash in Manchuria, scares Japan away from the Soviet-Chinese alliance, and earns the same respect they gained for the USSR after their crushing defeat at Nomonhan in 1938. Would Japan lose confidence and respect at not being able to defeat the sick man of asia, and thus be less confident and aggressive? Or would Japan be driven toward more desperate measures. While gaining respect for the tough iron Communists, Japan remains dismissive of the soft decadent west. Meanwhile the western powers lose all respect for Japan when she can't even beat China and thus are less wary of insulting Japanese pride and honor. Perhaps more aggressive UK-USA complaints when Japan occupies Vichy Indochina in 1940. Japan assembles a massed land-army in its client state of Siam. Japan has a much larger land-army available since 2 million men are not exhausted and bogged down in the long China war. Various border clashes along the Siam-Burma border, lead Japan to conclude that WW2 is their best opprotunity for Pacific hegemony. And they launch Pearl Harbor as in OTL in order to eliminate the US Philippines from blocking their conquests.

The Left-KMT government will be pressured by both the West and Stalin to enter the Pacific War to relieve pressure on the Allies. If they do enter the war, they could be in a similar position as Stalin in Eastern Europe to set up satellite governments. It should be no problem securing Korea, Thailand, Formosa and Indochina from the defeated powers and setting up friendly "democratic" governments. As for former-British colonies like Malaysia and Burma, China might agree to withdraw in exchange for the Finlandization of an independent India.

It depends on whether China feels strong enough to intervene in 1942-1943 or instead waits till the last minute for a August Storm type attempt to gobble up prizes at the end.
 
Wang Jingwei could have avoided the stigma that made him a traitor by not defecting to the Japanese, although if there was an incident that he was involved in which could have been avoided, then he'd have a chance.
 
Here's the funny thing - it's not just Jiang. Up to when the ROC had to flee Nanjing for Taiwan, the KMT was largely socialist - to a degree, with a whole amount of clarifications and reservations. That is because Sun Yixian was in large part inspired by the philosophies of Henry George. This article shows how much influence Henry George influenced Sun Yixian; let's say that under Jiang some of this was taken to an extreme in some ways, aided by corruption and mad people like Chen Yi.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0254/is_n3_v53/ai_15593163/
Yes the KMT had socialist tendencies, but that was because it had both right and left wings. Although the left was certainly marginalized after the disastrous attempt in making a government in Wuhan.
 
Yes the KMT had socialist tendencies, but that was because it had both right and left wings. Although the left was certainly marginalized after the disastrous attempt in making a government in Wuhan.

Marginalized, yes, but Henry George's ideas did influence Sun Yixian - that can't be denied, for sure. Particularly in such ideas like the land value tax, which was implemented in the ROC and is now used in modern Taiwan, for example.
 
I'm outright not sure if this is plausible if Chiang is head of the KMT, OTL Chiang started out as the defacto leader of the right-KMT who were pretty explicit against destroying the old order using land reforms and such.
Actually, until even after the Shanghai purges / "white terror" of April 1927, Shanghai was considered a centrist within the Guomindang (between the Western Hills generals on the right, and the Wuhan group of Wang Jingwei et al. on the left), and the British and French in Shanghai still thought he was a communist! He was known as the Red General in that period, after all. Although Jiang's regime would shift to the right in the 1930s, immediately after the Northern Expedition it was still relatively centrist. Though he didn't go as far as some would have liked in terms of tand reform, he did take steps in extorting millions from Shanghai bankers and foreign capitalists, bringing industry under state control, etc.... interestingly that seems to be what both the right and the left wanted (except maybe the hardcore reactionaries like Xu Chongzhi, and I don't even know if Xu knew what Xu wanted :p) ...

I get the impression that he had a real shot at it in the 1920's if Jiang is somehow removed. Perhaps the Zhongshan Warship Incident goes as planned, but results in Jiang's demise?
In my opinion it would be better for the incident to not happen at all. From what I've read, it seems like a lot of the whole "incident" was based on miscommunication between various parties (one of the sources on the incident I am using for my TL - "War and Nationalism in China, 1925-1945" (p. 103), points out a lot of what happened in the incident can be traced to personal rivalries, stress, and even faulty telephone lines! :( Which makes it kind of funny that such a farce helped Jiang consolidate his power. So it would be better to just avoid the incident, and have Jiang become completely devoted to the military sphere like he originally indented, carrying out reform and leaving politics to Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin, and the rest.

Wang Jingwei could have avoided the stigma that made him a traitor by not defecting to the Japanese, although if there was an incident that he was involved in which could have been avoided, then he'd have a chance.
I always thought it was interesting that the most prominent Guomindang leaders who collaborated with the Japanese / fascists were those who in the 1920s were considered to be on Left wing of the GMD - Wang Jingwei, for example, or Chen Gongbo, though IMO his economic philosophy always had a fascist bent. :p
 
I really disagree with the original post.

Chiang really didn't make bad mistakes in the 1920s. He had very bad luck with how the war with Japan developed (it happened 1-2 years too soon; his best, most loyal divisons with their cadre of trained officers were wiped out very early in the war; and the Burma Road being cut off in 1942 extremely hurt the Chinese economy and ability to rebuild the army), and made critical mistakes in 1945-1948 because Chiang didn't realize the CCP was far different from what he fought in the '20s and '30s.

I also disagree that Stalin had a soft spot for Chiang. Stalin had no "soft spot" for anyone. Stalin backed Chiang because Chiang was the only real leader of a united China in the 1920s and 1930s, and he needed a strong China as a counterbalance to Japan. He "backed" Chiang in the immediate postwar period because of diplomatic ties to the US, and at that point wanted a divided China to keep it weak, and only switched to backing Mao because Mao had dominated the Chinese Communists by that time and he had to deal with him, and Mao was proving capable of uniting China on his own.

Chiang fell out with the CCP in 1927 because the CCP/radical leftists went wild after the KMT captured Wuhan. Their revolutionary anarchy offended Chiang's Confucian sensibilities, frightened Chiang's supporters in the Shanghai business community, threatened to bring certain warlords directly against him, frightened the Western colonial powers (who could intervene in China if they wanted to), and challenged his own control of the KMT.

To say that Chiang could have easily allied with the radicals is to ignore political constraints that Chiang actually faced. The KMT had major enemies among the warlord factions, and they needed the support of the Shanghai/Nanking business community. The left wing radicals could not offer anything like the support Chiang did gain by turning against them.

You are also wildly conflating Mao's army of 1949 with what any army in China could do in 1928. The Japanese would have utterly curb stomped any such army. And it remains very doubtful if they could have even defeated the northern warlords. There are many reasons why the Chinese had difficulties against the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s (which Mao would have faced if he had been paramount leader), and those reasons did not exist by 1951. (Furthermore, the Chinese actually performed poorly relative to the UN AFTER their initial strategic surprise which was caused by MacArthur's incompetence rather than any great superiority on their own). There is a reason why the CCP lost - and lost badly - against the KMT in 1927 and afterwards.

Chiang actually did a lot of good things during the Nanking Decade, and while he was always a bit of a fascist and didn't reform as much as he should have, he provided China with a much improved government than what it actually had. Compared to a theoretical standard, Chiang comes up far short. Compared to his other rivals and the actual challenges he faced, he doesn't turn up so bad. If for whatever reason, the Marco Polo Bridge incident never happened, and war with Japan was delayed by only one year - Chiang's China would have fought far better. He not only would have had 30 (as opposed to 8) German trained and equipped decisions, he would be one year further along in plans to build Chinese industry in the interior. This would have saved the bulk of his trained army, and allowed him a much better position to not only fight the Japanese, but position himself with the warlords he became heavily dependent on during the war. Mao, put into the same position as Chiang was in 1937, probably would not have done any better. Probably worse because he lacked the political skills necessary to deal with the warlords at that point.

The CCP benefitted from a huge double standard and blatant propaganda in the 1940s. It was brutally oppressive and censorious in Yenan, but Mao escaped any criticism from those who were complaining about far lesser censorships than Chiang. The CCP avoided combat with the Japanese with a few exceptions and underminded the KMT armies which fought all the major battles against the Japanese, yet the postwar rhetoric was exactly the opposite. Mao had none of the responsibilities that Chiang did, so Chiang got all the blame while Mao was given all the benefit of the doubt.

The only way to prevent the break between Chiang and the CCP is if the CCP and its leftwing radical allies in the KMT don't plot against him. The key is probably getting rid of Wang Jingwei who was a bitter political rival of Chiang. You also probably need a Wuhan government that is less radical and less threatening to the local elites. I don't think either is possible.

So you either need Wang Jingwei to eliminate Chiang, or totally change Chiang's personality so that he went along with them. In either case, the radicals in control of the Nationalists scare the living hell out of everyone. With Nationalist troops assaulting Japanese and Westerners living in Shanghai and Nanking (including killing some consulates), it provokes an international reaction. Japanese and European colonial powers intervene in 1927 to stop the Bolshevik menace, aided by right wing Nationalists and warlords.

From the south, the New Guangzi Clique lead by Bai Chongxi attacks the Communists in Wuhan while taking control of Guangzhou. From the north, the warlords also attack the Wuham KMT. Both are supported by the British, French, and Japanese. Eventually, the KMT Wuhan collapses, and the Communists go into guerilla mode. Chiang is dead, either from being killed by Wang Jingwei to begin with, or falling in battle while defending the left radical KMT. You end up having the exact same situation as OTL except the right wing KMT government has even less control of China, and the more divided China puts up even worse resistance against the Japanese. It's even possible that Japan effectively "wins" any Sino-Japanese War by controlling the North China Plain without much resistance, or beating any KMT government sufficiently enough that a collaborationist KMT ensues (with Wang Jingwei at the head, this is almost a given).

In the extreme unlikelihood of the left wing radical KMT somehow surviving in 1927 and defeating the warlords, then Mao and the CCP would be in the unenviable position of actually ruling China after the long years of civil war were over (by when, 1930, 1932, 1936, never?). Mao might initially be popular by giving land to the peasants, but he'll have scared away most of the capital industrial stock in China. No investments by Germany or the USA that built up China's industry in the Nanking Decade. And Mao at some point while likely become Mao and initiate the horrendous Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution. China becomes engulfed in famine, economic disaster, and ongoing civil disturbances. The Japanese then decisively intervene and succeed even better than IOTL.
 
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