East Asia Regional Update
Before I progress into the 1960s, I want to take a look at the nations of East Asia so that we're all on the same page going forward...
The
Republic of China is on its way to becoming a first-world nation. A whole generation dubbed the "Second Nanjing Generation" (the first being in the early 1930s), or "Chinese Boomers" has grown up knowing nothing but Chiang's peaceful, albeit authoritarian, regime. Living standards are fairly high in the eastern coastal cities and Open Investment Zones, at least by regional standards. The cities of Xian and Chongqing are also wealthy and prosperous, both fully recovered from World War II. In the countryside, peasants have it harder, but a seventy-year-old man in 1960 would say without a trace of doubt that times are better than he has ever known. Indeed, access to imported American farming technology, combined with a good crop year in 1958 (1), means that rural China is in a golden age. Food prices remain relatively high, and Chiang is able to export rice and meat to Western nations at favourable rates.
The Open Investment Zones are still a controversial issue, with many Chinese comparing them to pre-Boxer Rebellion concessions. People in them strongly dislike working for low wages in poor conditions for foreign companies. However, since 1951 there has been no major unrest in the cities. What cannot be denied, however, is that the ROC economy has been immeasurably strengthened by them- by 1960, China's GDP will be on a par with Great Britain. (2)
However, Chiang's remains an authoritarian dictatorship. Critics of the KMT are imprisoned, and the human rights situation in China remains poor. In particular, ethnic Mongols, Manchus (Manchuria being under Communist rule), Muslims (the Second East Turkestan Republic being a Soviet puppet), and Tibetans are all persecuted fairly viciously. Christianity, however, is allowed to thrive in China, Chiang being a Methodist himself. With the exception of tolerance of Christianity, Chiang's programme is overall Han-specific sinicisation.
Relations with America remain generally good throughout this period, although there are a few bumps in the road, such as over the annexation of Tibet. Owing to the with-us-or-against-us politics of the Cold War, America turns a blind eye to Chiang's human rights abuses. (3)
Warlordism is long dead, although some of the old warlords hold sway in their old bases in exchange for loyalty to Nanjing (Long Yun is governor of Yunnan and Yan Xishan governor of Shanxi, minus of course Yan'an). The old Young Marshal of Manchuria, his domain lost, is currently living as a private citizen on Taiwan, and will later retire to Hawaii.
Chiang's main goal in this period is to gain the atomic bomb. Chinese nuclear scientists are given very good treatment from the regime, and there is a fair deal of co-operation with the USA. With a nuclear-armed USSR right on China's border, many feel that Chiang needs nukes to defend himself.
Chiang is also grooming his son Chiang Ching-kuo to take over one day...
The
People's Republic of North China, by contrast, is reeling from the Great Leap Forward, which managed to kill five percent of the country and only widened the gap between it and the West. The fallout has created a division in the leadership. Mao and defence minister Lin Biao are all for the continuation of Mao's style of rule, while state president Liu Shaoqi is opposed to Maoist economics ruling the day. Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping both keep their opinions on the Leap and on Mao's policies in general quieter, not taking direct sides.
The people of the PRNC, meanwhile, have one basic goal- to survive. Although the Great Leap Forward and related famine are mostly over by 1960, the suffering and its aftereffects will last for a long time.
Maoist propaganda plays its role well, though. The Great Leap Forward was not the fault of the Great Helmsman Chairman Mao, but of rightists in the government like Peng Dehuai- or so they’ll tell you. Although some tried to flee to China or North Korea during the famine years, the trickle was never large and abates completely by 1960. Sadly, the people of Communist China have little idea of what else is in their future…
Yan’an is by far the poorest region of the PRNC, as it suffered an additional decade and a half of brutal communist rule dating back to the Long March. By this point, it consists of a few memorials, army bases, and dirt-poor mountain villages.
The
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea could, in fact, be doing a great deal worse. Ruled by Kim Il-sung, it has managed to avoid the turmoil faced by its neighbour to the northwest. Kim still dreams of invading South Korea, but he recognises that going in alone carries too many risks. Since Mao is not strong enough to ensure his victory, and Khruschev will not be sympathetic should he invade, Kim must keep his troops north of the 38th parallel for now.
During this period, North Korea becomes a fairly well-to-do Communist state, better off than some Eastern European countries in Moscow’s orbit. Since liberation in 1945, the country has been at peace and received a fair amount of economic and military aid from the USSR. Although Kim has resisted de-Stalinisation, he knows that he is dependent on currying favour with Khruschev, and as such cannot develop a cult of personality too far. (4)
The image of North Korea is also further heightened by the fact that Chinese refugees are fleeing into his country to escape the Great Leap Forward famine. As such, Kim enters the year 1960 fairly optimistically…
The
Republic of Korea, by contrast, leaves a lot to be desired. It is under the rule of the authoritarian Syngman Rhee, who one American critic describes in a 1958 editorial as “a wannabe Chiang Kai-shek without the guts or the bald spot”.
South Korea lacks much industry and is forced to buy equipment from China and the US. Between 1945 and 1955, it played host to elements of the Eighth Army, before they were transferred to Japan to quell the uprising there. When US ground troops were withdrawn, President Eisenhower signed the Defence of the Republic of Korea Pact with Seoul and Nanjing. The provisions were numerous, but basically boiled down to if you attack, Kim Il-sung, prepare to have a nuclear bomb land on Pyongyang one morning, and Mao, if you get involved, prepare to have millions of ROC troops pouring into Manchuria.
Rhee attempts as much as possible to ape Chiang, copying his dictatorial, corrupt, one-party style of rule while buying ROC military equipment. Although its situation is not as bad as Japan (there is no active socialist underground, for instance), South Korea is effectively an economic colony of China, with Chinese dominance preventing much industry from developing. Thus, Rhee and the whole population of South Korea continue to muddle along, putting one foot in front of the other.
Indochina is clutching at straws of hope. No Vietnamese, Cambodian, or Laotian much likes their semi-independent status as a French protectorate, as exemplified by a Vietnamese political cartoon depicting Vietnam as a man being torn apart by two horses: one being labelled Paris, the other Nanjing. However, most of the radicals realise that Hanoi or Saigon could be struck with a nuclear weapon a la Sapporo, and as such armed revolt is not on anyone’s immediate radar.
The
Soviet Union continues to exert a tremendous influence in East Asia, even if China is increasingly a viable regional counterweight to its power. With a comparatively more liberal regime under Khruschev in power, Moscow is doing its best to pull Harbin and Pyongyang in the direction of de-Stalinisation. In both cases, however, it is failing. Mao’s personality cult is as strong as ever, while Kim Il-sung is neither liberalising or cracking down. There is virtually no Sino-Soviet trade in this period, and plans are ready for war with the ROC.
The Kremlin is also worried that Mao is destroying the PRNC with his Great Leap Forward, and has a plan to prevent its North Chinese proxy from collapsing. Its name is Wang Ming…
Finally,
Japan is a hot mess. The country is under military rule by the US, and neither Hirohito nor the Diet have even an iota of power. Matthew Ridgway, commander of the Eighth Army after Douglas MacArthur’s death, has been dubbed the “American Shogun” by friend and foe alike. The people live in constant poverty and fear that they may be the victim of a nuclear strike if they so much as protest. Japan’s economy is in too deep a hole to be salvaged for years, and the locals are dependent on the cold US authorities for absolutely everything. Sapporo will not recover from the nuclear strike until the mid-1970s. The people of the island are too cowed to have another go at revolt, however…
- This good crop year is actually OTL, but Chiang won’t squander it like Mao obviously did.
- Mao is in no state to appreciate the irony.
- There is a precedent for this, such as America backing Mobutu’s tyrannical regime in the Congo in OTL (and, for that matter, TTL)
- OK, this is a controversial one. My reasons for butterflying away the Kim cult are twofold: with no Korean War, a lot of the DPRK’s core mythology does not exist. Second, with Mao’s own personality cult coming from a country which is not Kim’s main sponsor, and de-Stalinisation coming from a country which is, Kim will be placed under a lot of pressure internationally should he develop a personality cult like OTL. He is still a tyrant, though.