More East/Southeast Asian city-states

Strategos' Risk

The East Asian Tigers got really hyper-developed, partly due to Cold War politics bringing copious foreign aid and incentives to modernize as part of a siege mentality. It's particularly interesting how all of them are very dense nations, with two of them- Hong Kong and Singapore- being actual city states.

Could there have been more city states, such as Chinese ports ceded to imperialist powers during the late Qing? Why is it only Hong Kong and Macau that lingered into the 20th century, and not any of the other foreign concessions?

(I wonder how the Kaiserreich team chose the ports they used in the Legation Cities)

Not all city-states need to be Asian Tigers. Macau is too small to be one, after all, though it certainly is hyper-developed as the others. Some might even be failed states, though it seems like in the modern post-WWII world the only city-states that exist are incredibly prosperous ones, and not pirate havens.

And this idea need not even be isolated to city-states only, but also geographical regions that are somewhat hemmed in, thus promoting densification.

Southeast Asian states are game too. Brunei is extraordinarily rich, though it's a completely different animal from the East Asian tigers.

Ideas:
Hainan!
South Vietnam holds out in Vung Tau, or Dao Phu Quoc
South Korea restricted to Busan and/or Jeju-do
What about an independent Okinawa or recreated Ryukyu Kingdom?
What about White Russians holding out in Vladivostok or some other tiny Russian Far East state?
 

idonotlikeusernames

Hainan sounds like a good one.
Its basically China's Hawaii isn't it?
If so there should be opportunities to develop a tourism and service oriented economy possibly boosted by fishing and offshore oil and gas drilling.
However unless it can work out a Puerto Rico type of deal with a great power I have to wonder how it is going to defend the narrow strait from the Red/Mainland Chinese Hordes.
 
St. Just

St. Just

Is Macau too small? If it got more development earlier in the 19th century, I could certainly see it as an Asian Tiger.
 

mlp

The British have tried a Korean version of Hong Kong on Koje Island. If they had kept it there due to increasing Russian pressure, perhaps that could also develop into a city-state.
Jeju island is not capable of becoming a city-state because it lacks much freshwater.
Perhaps there could be a TTL Dejima on Nagasaki, along with a Spanish one.
Other than that, Tsushima may be capable- maybe the Russians take over, maybe the British do.
Note: after the fall of the Ming, one of the major naval generals held out on an island in western Korea for many decades. If that was developed as a city-state, another diversity is added to the group. :D
hope that helped.
 
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katchen

Banned
Pontianak on the west side of Borneo was an overseas Chinese basically city state with a Dyak hinterland that unfortunately, the Dutch were able to take over. ITTL, something prevents that from happening.
Maybe Rajah Brooke sees value in making a free port out of Kuching, Sarawak and the company that controls North Borneo, the same with Jesselton and /or Sandakan. Maybe Phuket Island becomes a Thai city state treaty /free port. As does Sattahip. Maybe a Canal Zone and canal on the Isthmus of Kra to Nakhon Sawan.
Natuna Island betwen Malaya and Borneo can make a good entrepot city state. All it really needs is a country like Denmark to make full use of it. The Nicobar Islands if Denmark hangs onto them.
On the China coast, both Dalien and Weihaiwei would make excellent Hong Kongs as would Antung, adjacent to Korea as well as Lliaodong. Peter the Great Bay and the Mouth of the Amur River both are good places for city state treaty ports if developed as concessions to countries like Denmark or Sweden or the US before the Russians get there. Farther south, Chousan Archipelago off Ningbo would be perfect for another Hong Kong, as would the islands of Amoy and Kinmen(Quemoy) . And of course the Makung Tao (Pescadores Islands). Then there is Chongming Island in the Yangtze River off Shanghai.
On the Philippine side, Palawan (Puerto Princessa) has a good harbour for somebody.
Even many of the larger Micronesian islands such as Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Babelthuap (Belau) and Ponhpei, in the right hands are close enough to Asia to make good city states.
Or Kunashiri and Etorofu, or Paramushir of the Kuril Islands. Or even Hawaii.
 

Strategos' Risk

Does anyone want to speculate how these city-states come to be?

I think it's a combination of both economic support (from foreign investment) and political pressures (siege mentality) to seek hyper-development. Hosting exile populations also helps, too.

As far as I know, the only timeline featuring this concept is the Republic of Hainan, which has a pre-1900 POD.
 
Ariosto

Ariosto

Strategos' Risk said:
Aha! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_ports#Leased_territories_in_China

It would have been interesting if France had stuck around in Guangzhouwan, especially as a staging ground for operations in Indochina...
Click to expand...

The French had to give it up in return for Chiang Kai-Shek pulling out of Northern Indochina (they had occupied just south of what would be the eventual border between Northern Vietnam and Southern Vietnam, including Laos), so its a bit of a non-starter.
​
 

Strategos' Risk

I don't think Chiang would have wanted Indochina anyway- I'm thinking with an earlier POD where the French puts more effort into developing the city as a rival to British Hong Kong (maybe they get a longer lease from the Qing), plus a different political deal later on in WWII, means the city remains in French hands after WWII. And after the humiliation of losing both Algeria and Indochina, they actually put investment into Guangzhouwan. A French equivalent to HK would be pretty fascinating.

This is a low-butterflies zone, as I want to see what happens with more regional powerhouse city-states. Kwantung and Qingdao (Japanese and German) as hyperdeveloped enclaves would be cool, too, but that would involve butterflying the World Wars so they're out.
 
Ariosto

Ariosto

Strategos' Risk said:
I don't think Chiang would have wanted Indochina anyway
Click to expand...

He didn't (Roosevelt offered him Indochina, adamant that the French should not take it back, but Chiang refused to consider it in addition to the Ryuku Islands), but he knew that the French did, and he had the leverage as well considering he could just as well have left the Vietnamese do their own while the area was "technically" under Chinese occupation. It was because of this that the French buckled as they did, and even if Guangzhouwan were on par with Hong Kong, in comparison to the jewel that was Indochina (to the French second only to Algeria), they would be willing to make the trade with only minor reluctance.

Only when the Viet Minh would begin their operations would the French have realized how poor a deal they made, and that they would never have been able to obtain the kind of control over Indochina they had before the Second World War.
​
 

Strategos' Risk

True, but I guess the question here is how badly Chiang wanted that city. Going by the Wikipedia article, it seems like the ROC were pretty respectful of French authority there, albeit that was when they weren't able to do much about the city anyway:

After the fall of Paris in 1940, the Republic of China recognised the London-exiled Free French government as Kwanchowan's legitimate authority and established diplomatic relations with them; from June 1940 until February 1943, the colony remained under the administration of Free France.[4] This is an interesting fact bearing in mind that Kwangchowan had been governed from French Indochina, and that the authorities there were loyal to the Vichy Régime. The explanation may lie in the fact that Kwanchowan was totally surrounded by Free China and that the Japanese did not occupy that part of the China coast.
Click to expand...

It also seems like the French were willing to give the Chinese back a lot after the war:

In exchange for a withdrawal of Chinese forces from northern Vietnam, the French not only returned Kwangchowan to the Nationalist government, but also gave up extraterritorial rights in Shanghai, Hankou, and Guangzhou, sold the Yunnan Rail Line to China, and agreed to provide special treatment for ethnic Chinese in Vietnam and Chinese goods exported to Vietnam.
Click to expand...

What I'm hypothesizing is a scenario where the French are more willing to hold on to the city, which I think can be rationalized (including a longer lease that would entitle them to hold it for longer). I'm not sure how much the Chinese wanted it back, though. In any case, if it remains in French hands, it would make the situation in Indochina even more interesting.
 

Strategos' Risk

This is more fanciful and pre-1900, but could exist in a steampunk setting:

The Republic of Ezo holds out due to weird imperialistic intervention from the (possibly steampunk) French, and becomes a bizarre Taiwan-analogue where you've got old-school Tokugawa samurai, modern avant-garde French advisors, and hapless Ainu natives all coexisting and creating a hybrid society with a government modeled on the United States. The culture that develops would be fascinating and contradictory as heck. They modernize like Hong Kong except more frenetically to beat the south, get invaded during World War II- the Japanese are a good more pissed off towards the French in this timeline- but recovers afterwards and goes Asian Tiger hyperdevelopment status.

The Republic of Ezo would be cyberpunk as hell.
 

Strategos' Risk

One last question, then: Would it have been feasible for the survival of any sort of White Russian or other splinter Russian state in the Far Eastern territories?
 

mlp

Strategos' Risk said:
One last question, then: Would it have been feasible for the survival of any sort of White Russian or other splinter Russian state in the Far Eastern territories?
Click to expand...

yes, if Japan keeps militarily supporting them. IOTL it stopped in 1921. with a stronger financial base and more popular support(we must stem the flow of Communism! etc), the EoJ can probably support a White Russia until the Russian Civil War dies down(although another question may be whether it will cease with the Russian Empire extant).
 
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