Thande
Donor
Currently re-reading Le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy and it got me thinking: how much of the chaos and ideological conflict in SE Asia in the latter half of the 20th century is attributable to the presence of Communist China?
Although most of the Communist rebel movements tended to be aligned with the Soviets rather than the PRC, I think the fact that China was seen as an example of the triumph of Communism must surely have helped inspire their ideological bent. After all, as others have observed, Ho Chi Minh for example was primarily a nationalist and his adoption of Communism was more pragmatic than ideological.
But I'm not that knowledgeable about the area and the period so I'll throw it up to the house: let's say we have the stereotypical KMT victory scenario - Chiang doesn't invade Manchuria, the Chinese Communists are restricted to a rump Manchurian "Chinese Democratic Republic" which is never anything more than a minor puppet of the USSR (obviously, no Sino-Soviet split then) and the Republic of China develops as a loose ally of the United States, though I have a feeling they might go nonaligned eventually.
What effect does all this have on Southeast Asia, from the defeated Communist insurgencies in Malaysia and the Philippines up to the successful ones in Indochina?
Thoughts?
Although most of the Communist rebel movements tended to be aligned with the Soviets rather than the PRC, I think the fact that China was seen as an example of the triumph of Communism must surely have helped inspire their ideological bent. After all, as others have observed, Ho Chi Minh for example was primarily a nationalist and his adoption of Communism was more pragmatic than ideological.
But I'm not that knowledgeable about the area and the period so I'll throw it up to the house: let's say we have the stereotypical KMT victory scenario - Chiang doesn't invade Manchuria, the Chinese Communists are restricted to a rump Manchurian "Chinese Democratic Republic" which is never anything more than a minor puppet of the USSR (obviously, no Sino-Soviet split then) and the Republic of China develops as a loose ally of the United States, though I have a feeling they might go nonaligned eventually.
What effect does all this have on Southeast Asia, from the defeated Communist insurgencies in Malaysia and the Philippines up to the successful ones in Indochina?
Thoughts?