At some point, if you want the KMT to maintain its popularity against the CCP (or if they're wiped out, another populist force), you need to deal with their deep, systemic corruption. By the 40's the whole party was rotten, held together by graft and foreign support.
If I were to try and do it, I'd have Wang Jingwei succeed in capturing Chiang and his chief lieutenants, defanging the right wing of the KMT. To avoid the CCP launching a coup attempt when they got stronger, I'd try to co-opt and expand the labor movement, diluting the population of those organized by socialists with those organized by progressive liberalizers. Encourage local democracy in areas reclaimed by the landlords. Government-enforced local elections, as well as peasant co-ops to negotiate better treatment and pay from the landlord class. Enact a policy like Mao's famous Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points of Attention for the armed forces, and you could make it easier to grind down the remaining warlords in peripheral areas.
This is all off the top of my head, but the point is for the KMT to stay a popular movement, with lots of support from the bottom, instead of just the top. With that kind of support and real democratic accountability for the leadership, corruption is a problem that can be addressed peacefully, rather than through a bloody civil war.
If I were to try and do it, I'd have Wang Jingwei succeed in capturing Chiang and his chief lieutenants, defanging the right wing of the KMT. To avoid the CCP launching a coup attempt when they got stronger, I'd try to co-opt and expand the labor movement, diluting the population of those organized by socialists with those organized by progressive liberalizers. Encourage local democracy in areas reclaimed by the landlords. Government-enforced local elections, as well as peasant co-ops to negotiate better treatment and pay from the landlord class. Enact a policy like Mao's famous Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points of Attention for the armed forces, and you could make it easier to grind down the remaining warlords in peripheral areas.
This is all off the top of my head, but the point is for the KMT to stay a popular movement, with lots of support from the bottom, instead of just the top. With that kind of support and real democratic accountability for the leadership, corruption is a problem that can be addressed peacefully, rather than through a bloody civil war.