PRC without USSR

How could a Communist China have come to power without the the Soviet Union having ever been formed? What if the Bolsheviks were defeated in the Russian Civil War?
 
How could a Communist China have come to power without the the Soviet Union having ever been formed? What if the Bolsheviks were defeated in the Russian Civil War?

Strategos' Risk

How influential was the SU in the forming of Communist China? It gave an example of communism but also did much to make such systems unpopular. Stalin did add Mao and the communists after WWII but gave a lot of support to the KMT during the long war with the Japanese as the best way of opposing the latter.

If the communists were defeated in Russia then you would still have Marxist ideas and they might well gain support amongst some in China. [Especially with the development of local industry based on foreign investment probably meaning such movements gain anti-foreign support]. If you have Japan developing as OTL then it would probably invade China where forces resisting the Japanese will get support from foreign powers, including whoever is in charge of Russia. If the KMT equivalent is corrupt and increasingly dominated by vested interests then a reaction to that will gain a lot of support.

Communism in China would be less likely to be supported by Russia given the history. However, without a Bolshevik Russia, unless some other major power becomes a hard line communist state, communism won't have anything like the reputation in the rest of the world. You might even have in the west a romantic view of the 'unfortunate crushing of Lenin's reforms'. As such there might not be widespread opposition to such movements. Also if there is a feeling of guilt over the long domination of China by the west, coupled with the exhaustion of a WWII like events a communist resistance to a corrupt right wing regime might be viewed sympathically in the west. As such you may get little opposition and some support. With a home grown communist movement that gains widespread support because it shows concern for the ordinary people you could see a communist success in China. It might play quite well on the collectivist tradition in the country as well.

Steve
 

Hnau

Banned
The initial Chinese Communist Party was formed by Russian Bolsheviks and with their funding was able to draw together many Chinese intellectuals, mostly anarchists, into their Marxist ideology. Without the Bolsheviks taking power, they will likely remain anarchists, taking more influence from European socialists and Chinese philosophies, no doubt. However, without the funding, the Kuomintang will likely remain in power, with TTL's replacement of the CCPs becoming either a nuisance or terrorist group, or forging an alliance with Chinese democratic socialists and bolstering their ranks.
 
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My guess is...nope. Mao and the rest learned at the lap of Lenin and the gang, with the example of a successful (supposedly) communist revolutionary state to us as a model. The Russian revolution provided an example of a socialist revolution in a largely agrarian society, which helped support the notion one might be successful in China as well.

Also, although Stalin was very much "on again, off again" in his support of the communist insurgency in China, it would have had far less chance at success without support from the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, western (ie US, and European) knowledge of China was minimal. It is quite possible a Maoist revolution could have gone largely unobserved without the overall context of an "Intertrnational Communist Conspiracy" based in Moscow.
 
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