No Soviet Aid to the Kuomintang?

I'm surprised this has never been discussed.

By 1922, it had seemed that Sun and the KMT had, well, fizzled. The KMT-Warlord alliance that controlled Guangzhou had ruptured, and Sun was cooling his heels in Shanghai.

Enter the Comintern. As part of its plan to promote revolutionary movements, it helped train Chiang (among others), provided equipment, and (some) money. Soviet equipment ad training was key to the KMT's successful wars over the next few years, and without it I don't think the KMT would have succeeded.

What's the alternative, though?

By 1924, Northern China was divided between the Fengtien Clique led by Zhou Zuolin, based in Manchuria, and the Chili Clique, based in Beijing. All things being equal, by 1926 Zhang Zuolin had the upper hand (indeed he had taken Beijing), but he was very much a Japanese proxy.

The end result would be Japanese domination of Northern China, without a shot being fired by their army.
 
Okay, following up on awkward silence, this will also have significant effects on Japanese politics. In OTL the rise of militarism was caused by fears about the Kuomintang, along with the Depression. In a world where the Japanese already dominate Northern China, that is less threatening.

My guess is Japan ends up with fewer crazy militarists, but more technocrats. Hrm.
 
Hmm, I guess Formosa would remain part of Japan. Now, if Japan was willing to make Formosa a prefecture earlier than OTL, that would be a blessing in disguise for Tokyo.
 

raharris1973

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Japanese politics -

significant effects on Japanese politics. In OTL the rise of militarism was caused by fears about the Kuomintang, along with the Depression. In a world where the Japanese already dominate Northern China, that is less threatening.

I wonder what Doug Muir and Mike Ralls would say about that. Doug has (infrequently) posted here, but I am not sure about Mike.

Japanese militarism may not have been as dependent on real-world validation of threat perceptions as the above seems to suppose. Japan's relationship with Zhang Zuolin is not guaranteed to stay positive forever. After all, in OTL the Kwangtung Army did not appreciate the upside of their mutual relationship with Zhang and they decided to kill him.

Any number of things happening in China could be seen and portrayed as threats requiring Japanese expeditions or occupation, even if centralization was not happening.

What's the alternative, though?

For the Soviets, the alternative to the KMT tie is support for the communists anywhere they develop cells, and playing warlord politics, likely with a greater emphasis on western and northern China.

Conceivably if the right types of local allies are in place, the Soviets could try to support local regimes in some provinces that are organized along the lines of outer Mongolia.

The Soviets have alot of flexibility. They could gamble on communists in the cities and try to play warlord politics to allow CCP to gain urban power. If this fails and warlords universally suppress the CCP in all eastern cities, it does not mean they cannot go the route of rural bases they took post 1927 in OTL. It would take remarkable warlord coordination to achieve anything like the success of Jiang's fifth anticommunist extermination campaign.

In the ATL, Sun and his heirs may rely on Japanese patronage more than anyone else's, and the Japanese won't reject such a relationship out of hand.
 

raharris1973

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If at first thread necromancy does not succeed...

.... Try, try again...

To add detail to the factors in the soviets' decision aid the kmt and support a united front, I will cite some related info from jay taylor's biography of Chiang.

From the perspective of the late 20s and 30s, after massacres of the communists by a kmt army the soviets originally trained and equipped, it was always easy for critics to argue the united front was a disaster that Chiang exploited to the ccp's detriment and that the kmt clearly got the better end of the deal.

However this a post facto judgement. In the end perhaps we can say the decision to support th kmt was a disaster, but that conclusion is not self evident, either at the time the decision was made, or even now.

When Comintern operative, "Maring", proposed united front in 1921, according to Taylor, "at that point, the CCP had only 123 members and Maring did not consider it a serious organization. The KMT itself had only a few thousand members, but they included career military men, writers, teachers, and scolars, as well as the new and growing patriotic class of patriotic merchants and bakers. Most importantly, the KMT had an army. Dual membership in the KMT, the Soviets, argued, would provide the small groups of Chinese communists with respect and credibility."

Sun Yatsen's historical reputation has endured ups and downs. But although he was not a factor in the initial 1911 revolution, he was relatively well-known in the English-speaking world for decades (English was the main language of communication between non Chinese Comintern agents and chinese communists in the 1920s). The kmt party he led had some legitimacy from sun's initial presidency and the kmt's early parliamentary majorities in 1912-1913.

Sun had been sidelined in intervening years, pushed to the margins of national politics. He lost control of his territorial base, but if you could call him a washed up "has been" that was still better than the untried and untested CCP, which was a "never was" from Maring's perspective at the time he proposed united front.

Another, more immediate factor in betting on a united front with the kmt instead the CCP going alone was the kmt's greater success in organizing a general strike in hong kong, at the same time that a communist-backed railway strike was brutally crushed by the ccp's former ally, warlord Wu Pei Fu.

The relative advantage to each party after the united front began is debatable. With important exceptions like shanghai, the communists were only able to organize the peasants and workers in the countryside and cities after the kmt army drove off warlords.

On the other hand, soviet aid and the largely communist staffed commissar system were important in helping the kmt dramatically improving kmt progress against the warlords and in chiang's ability to establish national legitimacy. When the kmt purged the communists, kmt party discipline and popularity diminished quickly.

The fact is, both parties grew enormously during their collaboration.
 
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