North/South China

It depends. Although the government would definitely be revamped...

Wow, good post!

What kind of PoD would be necessary for a North/South China to form? IOTL we saw the CCP having a very nonlinear type of territorial structure, with various less-than-permanent bases about the country. Would would need to happen to make the civil war a symmetrical one?
 
Wow, good post!

Xiexie. :cool:

What kind of PoD would be necessary for a North/South China to form? IOTL we saw the CCP having a very nonlinear type of territorial structure, with various less-than-permanent bases about the country. Would would need to happen to make the civil war a symmetrical one?

That much I don't know. I'd probably see cramming a good portion of that between 1945-1947 - which is not a lot of time, so essentially everything has be functioning on overdrive and has to be exactly right. One slight mistake and the whole thing falls apart. Which means that, for example, Jiang should be reforming the GMD in the 1930s along the lines he was wanted to do - and did after moving the ROC's capital from Nanjing to Taipei - in OTL, and not wait any later. Technically, Nanjing should be planning for the long-term as early as the 1930s as well - you know, in case of an ROC victory over Japan - but Nanjing politics being what they are, the earliest I could see would be during WW2.

Ultimately, it's what the prospective writer chooses.
 
What kind of PoD would be necessary for a North/South China to form? IOTL we saw the CCP having a very nonlinear type of territorial structure, with various less-than-permanent bases about the country. Would would need to happen to make the civil war a symmetrical one?

I think no Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945 is the cleanest, simplest PoD. After routing the Japanese forces, Soviet troops transferred captured weaponry to the PLA. I would imagine the Soviets also generally helped the Maoists consolidate their position, but this isn't an area expertise for me.
 
How does this look?

Classic Korea analogue. Shanghai (Or Nanjing) are right on the border, and vulnerable, while the communist capital is tucked away safely in its heartland. This proplem could have been avoided if the capital was initially made Canton/Pusan instead.
 
What about retaining the capital at Chongquing, and perhaps rebuilding and expanding the badly damaged city into a Brasilia analogue?
The remote capital would be more loyal politically and it's building would promote development of the hinterland. Granted, Brasilia was not established until c. 1960, but there was already Ankara as a precedent.
 
There are ample candidates for a capital city of South China. Also, the proper parallel here culturally is North and South Vietnam, though any South China/Huanan state of consequence will be likelier to succeed.
 
South China (presumably under the KMT) will if possible make its capital at Nanjing, if nothing else because of the historical and cultural value of that city. The OTL KMT claimed to be fighting barbarian Communists just like the Ming fought barbarian Manchus. Most of the KMT's political base is in the Yangtze Delta, and it also has been the wealthiest region in China.

Moving the capital to Chongqing would be too nakedly seen as panic, and Sichuan was already home to tens of millions of people with a rich identity of its own. It wasn't exactly wilderness like Brasilia.
 
Moving the capital to Chongqing would be too nakedly seen as panic, and Sichuan was already home to tens of millions of people with a rich identity of its own.

My opinion as well. Is would also be suggestive of KMT resignation to the loss of the North - the "proper" Republic of China is one with a capital at Nanking - and that's another message that nobody would want to send.
 
Does anything about Mao's OTL rule suggests to you that he had any sense? He didn't engineer the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution because he felt the Nationalists could not take advantage of their disastrous consequences but because he didn't think there'd be any. Making the Nationalists stronger would not deter him.
 
Does anything about Mao's OTL rule suggests to you that he had any sense?
This is the fascinating thing about Mao; he did so many things that amounted to shooting himself in the foot but ultimately helped him because they killed off his rivals, both real and potential. He did things that resulted in utter national disasters, but he wasn't concerned with the strength of the country so much as the strength of himself. This man was an opportunist to the extreme of extremes.

With Mao Zedong, it seems that without serious foreign intervention he would not be content of anything short of being the supreme ruler of China, a position that would require there not being any other Chinas (i.e. the RoC) in existence. This line of thinking was part of the reason why Mao cared more about defeating the KMT rather than fighting the Japanese, who, before 1941, he hoped would make a deal with Stalin to split China into a Communist north and a Japanese-occupied south.
Thus, as long as the KMT continued to exist on mainland China, Mao would've been finding ways to subvert and eventually destroy it. He may have made some peace or cease-fires in the short term but ultimately there would have been war in which one side would have to lose totally or be reduced to a marginal territory like Taiwan, Xinjiang, or Manchuria.

It is thus necessary, in order to cause a stable north-south Chinese split, to kill Mao, but not too early that the CCP can be crushed by the KMT. Therefore, I point to the time at Yan'an, during which Mao was pissing off the Russians (and indeed Stalin himself) by defying Moscow's order to resist the Japanese. This would be a good time for Stalin to look at one of Mao's impertinent, lie-filled reports the wrong way, reach for his telephone, and order the Chairman to be disappeared (along with Kang Sheng) and replaced by someone more loyal. Maybe someone like Wang Ming.

This replacement of Mao would make the CCP somewhat less diabolical and also less successful in the long term, and thus could very well yield the required north-south China split after Japan is defeated. If the CCP spent few years actually fighting the Japanese, they could strengthen their base in the north and with Soviet supplies and backup, fend off Jiang Jieshi's attacks. Eventually there would be a cease-fire and negotiations would result in a split China.
 
I should point out that despite our belitting of Mao, he won.

Fighting a war and governing a country are 2 different things. This whole debate started with you making the Vietnam analogy and me pointing out that the Communists wouldn't be enjoying an awful lot of support either. I see no need to shift the discussion.
 

mowque

Banned
So, my map wasn't very well appreciated. Interesting about the rice-wheat line.

I would have thought having a big river would make a normal border to be made in the midst of two nations at war.
 

iddt3

Donor
So, my map wasn't very well appreciated. Interesting about the rice-wheat line.

I would have thought having a big river would make a normal border to be made in the midst of two nations at war.
Except when that river is an essential life line for commerce, it would be like divide Egypt along the Nile. Rivers are often good natural barriers, but less so in this case.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
The closest to this we can come IOTL is Jiang listening to his advisers and not taking that reckless gamble in Manchuria.

We end up with an ROC based in Nanjing while the Soviets prop up a Communist regime in Changchun. Long-term, I foresee two North Koreas festering in East Asia instead of one :(

The ROC will likely take Tibet (provided there aren't more pressing concerns), same goes for Xinjiang. Mongolia will remain a Soviet-leaning buffer.
 
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