Republican China: consequences on its periphery?

Expected when? Maybe in the 20's and the 30's when he was favourable towards the KMT? By 1945, Stalin had thrown in his lot with Mao, and Chiang with the western democracies.

Stalin still expected them to win in '45 and a year later when the war restarted. It was one of the few mistakes he ever openly admitted.
 
Stalin still expected them to win in '45 and a year later when the war restarted. It was one of the few mistakes he ever openly admitted.
True, but once he openly backed the communists, the dice was cast. It was either win, or face the angry dragon.
I agree that a diplomatic agreement with nationalist China could be reached eventually (maybe an even better one that historically with the PRC) but things would be quite scary for a while.
 
True, but once he openly backed the communists, the dice was cast.

No, it wasn't. Stalin backed them in one form or another throughout their period of opposition even though he didn't think they would win for most of it. It was one of his means of exercising influence in China. You have to understand Stalin's mentality, he assumed that all non-communist governments were inimical to the Soviet Union and thus didn't really worry that his actions would turn any of them against it. From his perspective, backing a communist movement which couldn't overthrow the government but did pose a serious threat to it was just applying pressure. It didn't occur to him that said government might be genuinely interested in good relations with the Soviet Union and would interpret his actions as unjustified aggression. That's basically how the Cold War got started.
 
OK, I'm not sure what your overall argument is anymore. You challenged me when I said that North Korea's survival is a given and now you come up with a scenario where it either survives or triumphs. A scenario which is unlikely, since: 1) Kim had already tried to get Stalin's permission to invade before 1950 and did nothing when it was denied, so the historical records indicates that he wouldn't act independently, and 2) the United States would intervene with or without UN support.

So let's go back to square one. On what do you disagree with me?

I yhik to settle this question, we have to first establish how Jiang and the Nationalists win in China.
 
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