Second Sino-Japanese War without Allied Intervention

Suppose the Pacific War never breaks out and the international relations in that region remain frozen in their 1940 configuration a few years longer—Britain and France supplying Nationalist China by way of Burma and Vietnam, American neutrality, no embargo on Japan, modest Soviet support of the Nationalists. How would the Sino-Japanese War ultimately end?

The Japanese showed as late as the Ichigo offensive that they still outclassed most of the Nationalist forces, but a lot of Chiang’s best troops then were in Burma. Without that distraction, would the Nationalists perform better, and could they turn the tables on Japan?

Could the Japanese cut off supplies to China by taking Kunming and cutting the routes from the south?

Would the combination of Japanese success and the Henan Famine force the Nationalists to the negotiating table without cobelligerants? Would Wang Jingwei’s regime succeed in creating a legitimate, Japanese-backed ROC? And what would a Japanese-satellite China look like?

Would Chiang get overthrown, and would another Chinese leader be more open to either submitting to Japan or succeed in getting direct Soviet involvement?
 
The IJN grumbles at its lost chance at attaining glory, but generally, the IJA's odds are improved greatly by the lesser overstretch in men and resources. Something tells me the invasions of Burma and Southeast Asia weren't that necessary in the sense of cutting off pro-Chinese logistics (Japan's navy already dominated the Chinese coast, and OTL's Japanese invasions of SEA didn't provide for enough material resources to balance out the cost), but i'm not entirely sure.
Overall, there is the possibility that the Japanese Empire could be tolerated by the great powers after the war is over, as a means of deterring communist ambitions in Asia.
 
Japan will go broke in the 1945-47 timeframe, even without OTL sanctions, they had plenty of problems paying for the war.
 
Suppose the Pacific War never breaks out and the international relations in that region remain frozen in their 1940 configuration a few years longer—Britain and France supplying Nationalist China by way of Burma and Vietnam, American neutrality, no embargo on Japan, modest Soviet support of the Nationalists. How would the Sino-Japanese War ultimately end?

For me, the only way for the Sino-Japanese war to end is that the Chinese still fighting the Japanese loose their will to continue the war. Basically the KMT regime under Chiang Kai-shek must stop the war, and it is nearly impossible.

The KMR regime will always be supported by someone, the British, the Americans, the Soviets. Once Nazi Germany surrender in Europe, the SU will be able to finance and arm the KMT for years.


Japan will go broke in the 1945-47 timeframe, even without OTL sanctions, they had plenty of problems paying for the war.

Japan was very successfull by financing its war in China using not only a widespread looting policy but also various criminal means to finance war ( very wide opium trade, organised prostitution...). The "Confort Women" were only one part of various sex slavery networks organised by the Japanese.

The Japanese used the western POW's for forced labor, but they used many more of korean, chinese or people from others occupied territories as slave workers.

I don't how real it was but I read a book about the "Golden Lily Operation" which show the cooperation of the IJA, the Kempetai, the japanese criminals and was covered as high by an Imperial Prince and was basically an ultra widespread looting of everything valuable in occupied areas.

It gave birth to the famous "Yamashita Gold Treasure" legend in the Philippines.


The war can only be win by the Japanese if their puppet regimes are able to continue most of the fighting while the Japanese only support them, by artillery, air forces, tanks... The chinese armed forces from the puppets regimes must take the infantry duties. Basically a "sinicisation" of the war, similar to what happened during the Vietnam War...
 
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The embargo not going through is a big POD, but let's wave it aside- that particular congressional session is divided, or the US gets drawn into Europe earlier and FDR can't afford the political capital or what have you.

The problem- and you see this a lot with things like Axis China threads- is that Japan's war in China is going against the interests of literally every other Great Power. The Soviets don't want a Japanese victory. The British and French don't want a Japanese victory. The Americans don't want a Japanese victory. Even the Germans don't want a Japanese victory, not really, though they're prepared to swallow one if in the process it draws the Japanese in against Berlin's enemies.

That means that even if we avoid the Japanese getting into a war with either the west or the Soviets, as time goes by the economic problems become more and more severe for the IJA. Foreign support for China is actually likely to increase- no embargo presumably means no Japanese occupation of Indochina, and that probably means allied victory in western Europe, and that means the Entente will have more resources (and earlier) to funnel to the KMT.
Even if there's no embargo, there's other ways to cut Japan off from strategic resources. In that scenario I would expect the allies to make a point of either outbidding Japan for resources (South American rubber) or leaning on suppliers to find alternative markets (the Dutch oil supplies.)

So then it becomes a question: what breaks earlier, Chinese morale or the Japanese economy? In a scenario where China's troops aren't committed to Burma, and when its lines of supplies are better, I think that Japan's offensives will have less success. Yes, they'll have more troops to commit- but I'm not sure this will overcome the increased strength of the KMT. Plus, of course, the IJN can't be totally unfunded- not only would that compromise the defence of the Empire, it would probably invite a Navy-backed coup.

So I think that while China will suffer terribly, they have a good chance of outlasting Japan. In this scenario, the KMT might well be strengthened thanks to the perception that it was China who beat Japan, not America or the Soviets.
A big problem will be getting any Japanese government that is willing to propose terms that China can accept- after almost a decade of war the status quo pro ante bellum wouldn't be acceptable, but there's a reasonable chance Japan could keep Korea and Taiwan. By then, of course, a Japanese collapse in China would probably invite foreign 'mediation,' which strengthens the KMT's hand dramatically- it wouldn't even have to be military. By the mid forties the basic question of Japan's access to the markets of New York, London and to a lesser extent Paris would be fundamental to the basic functioning of the government.


EDIT: Oh, and of course- any KMT 'victory' in this scenario would butterfly the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which dramatically decreases the chance of a Communist victory in the civil war- it certainly doesn't make one impossible or perhaps even improbable, but I would be astonished if you see a PRC by 1949.
 
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A big problem will be getting any Japanese government that is willing to propose terms that China can accept- after almost a decade of war the status quo pro ante bellum wouldn't be acceptable, but there's a reasonable chance Japan could keep Korea and Taiwan. By then, of course, a Japanese collapse in China would probably invite foreign 'mediation,' which strengthens the KMT's hand dramatically- it wouldn't even have to be military. By the mid forties the basic question of Japan's access to the markets of New York, London and to a lesser extent Paris would be fundamental to the basic functioning of the government.


EDIT: Oh, and of course- any KMT 'victory' in this scenario would butterfly the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which dramatically decreases the chance of a Communist victory in the civil war- it certainly doesn't make one impossible or perhaps even improbable, but I would be astonished if you see a PRC by 1949.

Yeah, I was wondering what kind of terms would be acceptable for ending the war. The Japanese IOTL pushed for recognizing Manchukuo's independence--which Chiang was extremely reluctant to do. If momentum starts to shift in China's favor, would the KMT push for a Japanese withdrawal from Manchuria? Could the Japanese ever agree to that? Or would they rather keep fighting until their economy collapses?
 
The longer the war goes on, the harder it is for the KMT to recognize Manchuria. By Marco Polo, there was huge pressure on the KMT from all levels of society not to give into any further Japanese encroachment, and other side of that resurgent nationalism was a sense that the day was coming when Japan had to be driven from North China. For all the Japanese talk of a separate Manchu identity, the region was majority Han and had been for decades, and had been part of the Chinese polity for centuries. It was, as far as the man in the Nanjing street thought, Chinese.

That means that as I said, a return to the status quo would seem like a Japanese victory- sure, they may not have taken any more territory, but the KMT giving up their claims to the existing Japanese empire would be an incredible humiliation. After one of the bloodiest campaigns in human history the outcome would be that China had essentially recognised another unequal treaty.

That's in a long war. It's possible that an early settlement resolves on those lines and Chiang might survive by promising that the issue isn't settled for good, but that would probably require a peace before 1940.

For their part, the Japanese find it harder and harder to accept a status quo peace because it represents the failure of the great militarist political program. Generals might recognise the war is lost- politicians certainly will- but the problem is that it's very hard for them to make policy in response to that without running the risk of being jumped in the street by a bunch of sword-wielding lieutenants. This also speaks to why the simple absence of the embargo won't create a Japanese victory. The stalemate and resource shortages were already present in 1940. The Embargo made those situations much more urgent, but the clock was already ticking down.
Eventually, the Japanese government has to recognise that it's in dire economic straits. It can resolve that by
A: Attacking north. (Very unlikely to help, very unlikely to work, very unlikely to be chosen.)
B: Attacking south. (See above, but more palatable.)
C: Winning a total victory in China. (Even Ichi-Go didn't accomplish this OTL, and that's against a far poorer and weaker China than in this scenario. It also doesn't do anything about the foreign support pouring into China that can't be cut off without occupation of Western or Soviet territory.)
D: Negotiating a peace settlement.

And the problem with D is that any peace that can be signed by a Chinese government who wants to survive the aftermath will be unacceptable to a Japanese government with unchecked militarists, and any peace that the Japanese are happy with can't be signed by Chiang without prompting a coup and the resumption of resistance.

Manchuria is also the Kwantung militarists' base of power, which makes checking their influence quite hard to say the least.

So I think that the longer the war goes on, the more the outcomes narrow to one side or the other collapsing. And I really do think that in this scenario, that's a bit more likely to be the Japanese.
 
Good points. I went into this thinking a Chinese collapse was more likely, but your points on Allied pressure even short of embargo are not ones I’d considered.

So what would a Japanese collapse look like? We know from OTL what a collapse of the Chinese state looks like—warlordism, famine, Communist takeover. Would we see similar in Japan? Fragmentation of the army as individual generals sign armistices and extricate their armies? The Navy launching a coup and forcing the Attack South option no matter how bad things get? Something analogous to the Henan Famine?

The Japanese IOTL suppressed most of their leftist movements, so there wasn’t any force as well organized as the CCP to contest the Imperial government. So as you’ve suggested, military coups are more likely.

Maybe this culminates in Japan turning into a revolving-door dictatorship, with a new military government every few months ruling in the Emperor’s name as troops are recalled to the Home Islands for that purpose and China steadily regains ground. Chiang, in this scenario, can push to the Korean border and enjoy a legacy as China’s Bismarck, with the CCP either coopted into the Nationalists’ chain of command or suppressed.
 

ASUKIRIK

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In the other hand, Kuomintang could ends up falling apart,and in absence of Central Chinese Authority, Japanese Empire could practically keep Manchuko forever.

Fall of China might also trigger Britain to make peace with the Japanese, as they would secure Canton to maintain Hong-Kong, andJapanese might be grateful enough to just let them do that.

Soviet Union will definitely took the East Turkestan and Mongolia as SSRs, if they didn't get too busy pounding Germans, that is.
 
A Japanese collapse might possibly take the form of a Navy coup- not to strike south, but to end the Army's disastrous war. The admirals might not want to form an actual government, mind- a peace settlement that cuts the Empire back to Taiwan and Korea will be hugely unpopular, so you don't want to have your name on the paper.
Let the army take the blame for losing the war, the civilians for losing the peace, and the Navy can take credit for being the protectors of Japan.
That's also a peace settlement that much of the other Great Powers can get behind- an independent Korea risks heavy Soviet influence, especially if the 'victorious' Chinese government looks like it's about to pass out from blood loss. And once Japan is out of China, there's not actually much threat of further expansionism into Western territories- there's no longer a war to finance, after all, and Tokyo will be too exhausted to try and start a major conflict with her rivals anyway.
So at that point, if you're a diplomat from London or Washington or Paris, you actually might quite want a Japan that's just strong enough to control the waters around the USSR's pacific ports.
And for China's part, even if the Japanese armies begin breaking due to lack of supplies it's unlikely China can push into Korea (or even Manchuria itself.) They'll rely upon international support, so they'll have to live with a deal that the West (and to an extent, the Soviets) can accept. China probably wants a generous scheme of reparations far more than Korea or perhaps even Taiwan anyway.

As for internal politics- Chiang will be stronger and the communists (relatively) weaker, assuming no Soviet Manchuria. That might not be enough to save the KMT, but their chances are better than in our timeline. What that means in practice- a White Terror or successful Chinese reform fifty years ahead of schedule- is up to your imagination.
Your image of a succession of military governments in Japan seems plausible, and it would certainly fit neatly with my idea of the Navy 'restoring order.' I don't think you'll see the full restoration of democracy, but you might see the clock reset back to say, the late twenties- the military (well, the navy) enjoying a great deal of influence, but civilian leadership that's much stronger than in the late thirties.
 
Japan will go broke in the 1945-47 timeframe, even without OTL sanctions, they had plenty of problems paying for the war.

Certainly by that date. I'd think sooner. Looting is much like a coorporate raider breaking up a business. Short term profit, but the long term is usually one of retrenchment & reorganization as the destructive effects of looting take hold. The general trend OTL was for the Communists to establish cadres and recruit/build a base within the population. Where the Japanese we're easy on a province the Communists we're weaker, where the Japanese went hard the Communists recruited strongly.

Looting undercut Japanese efforts to build a longer term profit model on China's economy.
 
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