Sino-Japanese War

If Japan was not subject to an oil embargo for whatever reason, and thus decided not to strike out into the Pacific, how would the Sino-Japanese war have proceeded? Could Japan realistically take over China? Would the western powers intervene, knowing that they'd be voluntarily splitting their forces between Germany and Japan? How would the post-war world be effected by a continued conflict in China after the Germans were defeated?
 
The Japanese were stalemated in China, and had been since 1938. Japan was not able to make any significant advances until the 1944 Ichi-Go Offensive which required them to strip most of their forces in Manchuria defending the border from the USSR. They still controlled the tempo of operations though. The Chinese did not initiate major offensives of their own after 1940.

Without a Japanese attack in the Pacific, the Burma Road remains open. American Lend Lease to China was authorized in April 1941. The first AVG units are operational in December with a bomber group due to be sent in December and an additional fighter group to be sent later. All of that aide will be able to be sent to China without problem. IOTL, the war diverted the bomber group, cancelled the second fighter group, and prevented supplies from reaching China once Japan cut the Burma Road.

Japan will probably not be able to defeat the Nationalists. The Allies will not intervene since China will begin to greatly improve its army once significant American supplies come in. Chiang will likely not order any major Chinese offensives until the army is resupplied and reorganized. I don't see any attacks until at least 1944, maybe not even until 1945.

When they do, the initial Chinese objective will likely to be to free the port of Canton, and afterwards to advance along the Yangtze to liberate Wuhan. Shanghai will probably not be taken until 1946 or 1947. After that, it's a push on the north China plain to Beijing that might be reached in 1948 or 1949.

I am assuming here that the US will continue to escalate support to China. I believe originally that the US intended to train Chinese pilots in the US to rebuild the Chinese air force. This will probably happen as well as more supplies sent. A Burma-Yunnan railway will likely be completed in 1942 or 1943 and greatly increase what can be sent to China. Eventually, maybe even US advisors might be sent to help the Chinese with staff work or at least train the Chinese how to do it themselves.

If the Japanese do not attack the US, it is hard to see how the US enters the war in Europe. Without the US pushing for a second front, the British may never do it themselves. That may convince Stalin to make a separate peace. There are a lot of unknowns, so I can't say what will happen to Europe.

If we assume the US fights in Europe anyway, after the war the Western Allies likely push Japan into a mediated peace to return all Chinese land back to China. Depending on how crazy you think the Japanese government is, they either do it and make peace, the war continues with full support being given to China short of war, or the Japanese attack the Allies.
 
What if the US is preoccupied, or uninterested in helping China? Without huge external pressure on Japan it's hard to see how the stalemate would end. I doubt the Chinese would settle for a deal allowing Japan to keep large chunks of their country, and I doubt the Japanese would be willing to withdraw voluntarily.
 
I don't really see this ending well for the Japanese. Divided as China may be in the 30s, it's still united against Japan. If nothing else, the sheer attrition of fighting a ground war with roughly equal technology against a nation many, many times its size in both population and resources will have bled Japan white by the 50s. Think the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, except take away their Hinds, tanks, and all the fixed-wing aviation that was out of reach for the Afghans, then make Afghanistan twenty times bigger then the Soviet Union with a corresponding increase in population. Remember what was said about land wars in Asia, people ;)
 
I agree. If Chiang got that much L-L aid and support, there might have been enough weight to do counter-offensives in 1943.
HOWEVER, (ahem) IIRC though, the issue wasn't so much materiel as political reliability vs competence in the KMT forces after CKS purged the leftist wing of KMT officers and partisans in the late 1930's and thus gutted the morale and effectiveness of his army.
I'm going off of impressions of long-forgotten articles and books about the Chinese Civil War but CKS couldn't care less how effective his army was as long as it was loyal to him. He tolerated warlords that needed to stretch a rope or get with the program IMO, but according to Chinese politics, what he did made perfect sense as he was playing long ball against the Communists and Japanese to do all the threatening for him.
The various US military and State missions despaired of how moribund, corrupt and incompetent the KMT forces were at the highest levels.
Your KMT platoon through battalion leaders were actually pretty good, but they were constantly being extorted for bribes just to get supplies and anyone who dealt with the ARVN twenty years later would have had horrible deja vu whammies of how the KMT operated.
Long story shorter, pretty much everyone from Lord Mountbatten on down
in theater considered CKS a total waste of resources except they wanted to do something to keep the Chinese somewhat in the game against Japan.
If you want a railroad, maybe one from Bombay or Bandar Abbas to Soviet Central Asia then through Chinese Turkestan would've been more viable than trying to hack through the Himalayas and rainforest from Burma to Yunnan.
It's not as goofy as the Friesland D-Day nightmare as far as wasting time, $, and energy so hundreds of thousands of Allied troops are sitting ducks on coastal barrier islands, but it'd be a mighty engineering challenge plus the USSR'd have to be really secure about its southern flank which strikes me as ASB after Barbarossa and Khalkin Gol.
What could go wrong building a railroad that could carry hundreds of thousands of troops, megatons of supplies, probably also have pipelines and power lines alongside it?
Could that be an invasion route with a fully capable port at one end of it out of range of Soviet aircraft and artillery? Nahhh!
 
What if the US is preoccupied, or uninterested in helping China?

Hard to see how that would come about with a PoD close enough not to alter the war beyond recognition. The 'China Lobby' in the US was strong, and US interests were extensive. The USS Panay and her cousins weren't hanging around the Yangtze for fun; the US purpose-built six gunboats displacing over 2,500 tons JUST to patrol that river.
 
Hard to see how that would come about with a PoD close enough not to alter the war beyond recognition. The 'China Lobby' in the US was strong, and US interests were extensive. The USS Panay and her cousins weren't hanging around the Yangtze for fun; the US purpose-built six gunboats displacing over 2,500 tons JUST to patrol that river.

And then withdrew them a few years later, and accepted Japanese reparations and the apology, no?
 
If the war drags on too long I can see the Soviets swooping in from the north like in OTL and creating a Chinese Soviet puppet, with CKS still in control of most of the country.
 
I agree. If Chiang got that much L-L aid and support, there might have been enough weight to do counter-offensives in 1943.

While some of this has the ring of truth, be very careful about what you "know" about Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalists from books written 1945-1990. There is a lot of mythology out there. There has been a lot of scholarship recently that has exposed a lot of this mythology for what it is.

HOWEVER, (ahem) IIRC though, the issue wasn't so much materiel as political reliability vs competence in the KMT forces after CKS purged the leftist wing of KMT officers and partisans in the late 1930's and thus gutted the morale and effectiveness of his army.

This is wrong. There was no purge in the late 1930s although there was one in 1926-1928. The Whampoa officer corps after that was still highly trained and very loyal to Chiang and the Nationalists. What destroyed the effectiveness of the army was that Chiang lost most of the pre-war officer corps and his elite "German trained" divisions in the Battles of Shanghai and Nanking. After that, Chiang was heavily dependent on warlord forces that had only dubious loyalty to Chiang or the ROC.

I'm going off of impressions of long-forgotten articles and books about the Chinese Civil War but CKS couldn't care less how effective his army was as long as it was loyal to him. He tolerated warlords that needed to stretch a rope or get with the program IMO, but according to Chinese politics, what he did made perfect sense as he was playing long ball against the Communists and Japanese to do all the threatening for him.

Your facts are partially right. Chiang did indeed value loyalty over competence, but there was a reason for this. Loyal officers were the ones who actually followed orders. The other ones, no matter how talented, didn't follow orders. So they didn't attack the Japanese, or were known to retreat without warning, or do any number of things with the intention to avoid combat with the Japanese so that their own forces would continue to survive and preserve their power base. Chiang was forced to deal with this situation, and it is perfectly understandable why Chiang did was he did. Why give a competent enemy control of your forces if all he is going to do is sabotage the war effort? The only problem you can really blame Chiang for are situations where he had good, loyal generals, but which he unfairly suspected as being disloyal.

Of course, you can ask why he tolerated warlords at all, and the answer is that without them, he lost most of his army. There was a very real possibility that some of them might not only not fight at all, but could defect to the Japanese. Internal politics were that bad. In retrospect, Chiang probably could have made several moves that would secured more loyalty and eliminate some of the worst generals while still keeping things safe, but it would be making a great deal of risk given the times.

The various US military and State missions despaired of how moribund, corrupt and incompetent the KMT forces were at the highest levels.

This is true, although it's worth pointing out that much of the dysfunctionality of the US military mission in China is due to Joseph Stilwell who acted terribly in his role. The man was doltish in many ways. He spent more time absorbed in ridiculous coup plotting against Chiang and politics than actually doing his job. Sending him to China was a major mistake. Things improved incredibly after Stilwell was replaced by Wedemeyer who somehow managed to make things work where Stilwell couldn't despite internal Chinese politics still being a complete mess.

Your KMT platoon through battalion leaders were actually pretty good, but they were constantly being extorted for bribes just to get supplies and anyone who dealt with the ARVN twenty years later would have had horrible deja vu whammies of how the KMT operated.

This is true too. In order to keep the warlords loyal, Chiang more or less gave the supplies and salaries of soldiers directly to the warlords, who kept most of it, letting their troops starve or be without supplies. Chiang should have instituted a centralized payment system and supply network. It would have eliminated most corruption immediately. Chiang even knew he had to do this, but kept putting it off thinking he had time to deal with internal enemies in the KMT after the Japanese and Communists were defeated. He didn't. Biggest mistake of his life. After fleeing to Taiwan, it was practically the first thing he did.

Long story shorter, pretty much everyone from Lord Mountbatten on down in theater considered CKS a total waste of resources except they wanted to do something to keep the Chinese somewhat in the game against Japan.

Well, if Chiang ever got resources, they might have had a point. After the Burma Road was cut off, China was almost totally isolated. It received virtually no aid until 1945. What supplies were sent over the Hump went towards the American air force in China rather than the ROC Army. What aid it did receive - notably loans and credits - only fueled inflation because there was nothing more it could buy. The fact is China was totally on its own, and after fighting the Japanese by itself for 4 years could not do a lot more. The British were exceptionally selfish and arrogant jerks who botched the defense of Burma, and had no interest in helping China at all because of their imperial views. The China-Burma-India theatre was certainly the least important of all Allied theatres in the war, and probably would have been even if the Burma Road was open. Nevertheless, a lot more could have been done had the Road remained open and aid actually rendered.

If you want a railroad, maybe one from Bombay or Bandar Abbas to Soviet Central Asia then through Chinese Turkestan would've been more viable than trying to hack through the Himalayas and rainforest from Burma to Yunnan.
It's not as goofy as the Friesland D-Day nightmare as far as wasting time, $, and energy so hundreds of thousands of Allied troops are sitting ducks on coastal barrier islands, but it'd be a mighty engineering challenge plus the USSR'd have to be really secure about its southern flank which strikes me as ASB after Barbarossa and Khalkin Gol.
What could go wrong building a railroad that could carry hundreds of thousands of troops, megatons of supplies, probably also have pipelines and power lines alongside it?
Could that be an invasion route with a fully capable port at one end of it out of range of Soviet aircraft and artillery? Nahhh!

You need to check the map again. A railroad from Burma to Yunnan does not go through the Himalayas. It would go through the Hengduan Mountains just as the Burma Road did.

The Yunnan-Burma Railroad was being built and was due to be completed by late 1942 or 1943. And of course, the Ledo Road was completed in our timeline under similar terrain and under worse conditions. If the French could build a railway between Hanoi and Kunming 30 years earlier, certainly the British could build this.
 
What if the US is preoccupied, or uninterested in helping China? Without huge external pressure on Japan it's hard to see how the stalemate would end. I doubt the Chinese would settle for a deal allowing Japan to keep large chunks of their country, and I doubt the Japanese would be willing to withdraw voluntarily.

It's hard to see what could make the US so pre-occupied or uninterested in helping China that it would get nothing. China is down the list on Lend Lease priority, but it's going to get something. Items that weren't effective against the Germans will still be very useful against the Japanese. And the Chinese Army is so threadbare that even ordinary supplies like rifles, ammunition, basic machine tools, and canned foods would dramatically increase the ability of the ROC to fight.

Even during World War II, when the US was directly fighting the war itself and diverted a lot of aide away from China for its own needs or needs of its closest allies, the Chinese would have gotten something had the Burma Road been open. In a reality where the Burma Road is open, and the US does not need to rearm itself, you are going to see a lot of the ROC Army turn out like X Force although training will probably not be as good, and it will take a while.
 
And then withdrew them a few years later, and accepted Japanese reparations and the apology, no?

The Yangtze gunboats were commissioned in 1928, so they patrolled for almost ten years before the USS Panay was sunk. The rest of the gunboats remained in the area until late 1941, when most of them were pulled back to the Philippines, it being clear at that point that the war was about to start.
 
So their presence actually had nothing to do with Japan's actions, then.

I never said they did. They were there because of US interest and involvement in China. That doesn't go away because the Japanese show up, in fact US hostility to Japan was aggravated by incidents such as the rape of Nanking.
 
I humbly accept your corrections Blackfox

I freely admit I was off a decade on the KMT purges, but the effects were felt when the Japanese decided to push it from Manchuria in the 1930's.
There were instances where the Chinese did very well when they had clear orders and the supplies to fight. Like anyone else without a clear game plan, results were very mixed.
Pushing roads through mountains and jungle is a very capital and labor-intensive endeavor to make the Yunnan-Burma road happen is all I'm saying.
Hooray, for billions of dollars and 100 million man-hours, not to mention environmental damage galore slashing, burning, blasting and defoliating our way through the jungle plus God knows how many thousand dead due to disease, exhaustion, accidents with explosives, we'd have a road that could increase the trickle of supplies from .01% of what the KMT needed to 5%. A railroad through there would probably up it to 25-30% but cost 3-4X more.

I agree with you that Mountbatten and Stillwell did their best to keep the Burma-India-China theater a sideshow, but even if the Allies made Operation Overlord commitments of men and materiel, it wouldn't have justified the expense to do it that way even if CKS was the reincarnation of Siddhartha himself and KMT China a veritable Shangri-la.
Nonetheless, it's a shame for the ages that IOTL China got left to fight with a slingshot and a pocket-knife against the Japanese for eleven years (1931-1942) then once the US got involved, as you said, the materiel over the Hump was mostly for the US air group. Could the US have done more?
Undoubtedly.
The questions you're posing are:
"What could they do @ what time?" and "How much better effect against the Japanese would maneuver/campaign X have been vs OTL?"

I've posed a few OPs about better US-USSR cooperation during that I feel made technical sense but were politically ASB due to Stalin's paranoia.
IDK what how much L-L aid that went through Vladivostok was earmarked for the Nationalists that the Soviets appropriated for themselves, if any, but I'm thinking you've got a railroad going west that could do a lot to get the Chinese the gear and supplies they needed to be more effective against the Japanese.
Why couldn't Frunze have been a joint training center for Soviet, Chinese and American officers? Americans could've definitely learned a bit of Deep Battle, the Soviets about the role if initiative and tactical flexibility, while the Chinese could've hipped them both to partisan/commando ops.
IDK if the KMT officers could've trained with the Brits in India as well.

Turkestan would make a swell tank park, and allow a nice training ground for the KMT to learn how to use them, artillery, and aircraft to give the IJA the drubbing they so richly deserved, not to mention train the mechanics and techs to keep the gear functioning.

Another possibility is that the US doesn't waste time with the Philippines and takes Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Canton so they can open up a more direct link to the Nationalists. Anything before 1943 is too risky with the IJN still in play. By 1944, such a campaign becomes doable but still very risky, plus, where do we stack everyone before the big push?

IDK how much typhoons played a role in ops planning in the PTO but
trying to push 500K troops, gear, and so forth over thousands of miles of ocean subject to sub, air, and maybe a few raids by surface vessels as well through Typhoon Alley gives me the willies.

Could it be done? Sure! Should it have been done? I'd argue so.
Allied troops on the ground aren't a magic panacea to peace, love, and groovy tunes after the war, but having people see Americans risking their lives to save their country had a positive effect.
Also, Americans directly observing Nationalist China at ground level might have had an effect on evaluating how well CKS could've kept things together without the Japanese as the external pressure.

Anyhow, more food for thought...
 
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