Superpower Empire: China

[Nicole]

Also, I think the Soviet Union would be affected enough that it's ending would most likely go down differently than OTL?

And what happened to the Russian population in Vladivostok? I know it's not as large as OTL, as in OTL the Soviets expelled the substanial Japanese and Chinese populations, but there were still many Russians there. Do they basically get the boot?

It's a very good, well-thoughtout timeline overall. Great job!

 

[Hendryk]

And what happened to the Russian population in Vladivostok? I know it's not as large as OTL, as in OTL the Soviets expelled the substanial Japanese and Chinese populations, but there were still many Russians there. Do they basically get the boot?

It's a very good, well-thoughtout timeline overall. Great job!

I appreciate that, even though this TL has been around for a while, fellow members still enjoy checking it out.
As for your question: when the Chinese re-annexed those parts of the empire that had been confiscated in the 19th century by Russia, part of the recently-settled Russian population moved out (some went North to Magadan, Okhotsk and other coastal towns, and the rest boarded ships to the USA and Canada); but a majority stayed there. Of course, as time went by, they were gradually swamped by the Chinese, but by 2005 Russians still account for some 12% of Dongwang's population. Also, about 26% of Yakutia's population consists of descendants of White Russians who found themselves East of the Ienisei when the war against Russia/USSR ended in 1922.
Someday I'd like to ask for someone's help to flesh out Yakutia as a country, with detailed map and stuff. It's actually the fourth largest country in the world size-wise, after China, Canada and the USA, but also one with a very low population density as only 13 million people live there. It's basically to China what Canada is to the USA, only even more so.

 

[Hendryk]

Since I posted this picture in Mikey's thread about the Cheyenne helicopter, I might as well post it in mine as well.
In OTL, the Sikorsky S-67 Blackhawk was developed as a ground attack helicopter but the US Army was uninterested, and Sikorsky tried to sell it to other governments. Unfortunately none put in orders, and the project was scrapped after a prototype crashed at an air show in 1974.
In my TL however, China expresses an interest in the helicopter, and begins to deploy it in 1975. After getting clearance from the US government, China produces the S-67 under licence from the late 1970s onward (a general Chinese policy since the 1920s is to licence-produce as much of its arsenal as possible, both to lessen dependence on foreign imports and to develop its own R&D capability through reverse-engineering).
The S-67 sees some action in Afghanistan during the 1979 three-way face-off between the USSR, India and China, but never gets involved in large-scale operations. Since 1996, it is being gradually phased out and replaced by the newer Eurocopter Tiger. It is among the first aircraft to be equipped with Chinese-designed weapons systems, and the Chinese versions have been exported to such client states as Burma, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Yakutia.

 

[Thande]

BTW Hendryk, this seems like the best place to ask: What does your signature mean? I tried Babelfishing it but the programme ain't exactly up to usefully translating Chinese yet.

 

[Musketeer513]

This is Great

Keep up the good work.

 

[Hendryk]

BTW Hendryk, this seems like the best place to ask: What does your signature mean? I tried Babelfishing it but the programme ain't exactly up to usefully translating Chinese yet.

That's the opening sentence of the first chapter of the Daodejing, aka The Classic of the Way and its Virtue, written by Laozi. You wouldn't be able to get a good translation with Babelfish because it's classical, as opposed to modern, Chinese.
Transliterated in pinyin, it spells like this:
Dao4 ke3 dao4, fei1 chang2 dao4.
Ming2 ke3 ming2, fei1 chang2 ming2.
(The numbers refer to the tones: 1 is high, 2 is rising, 3 is falling-rising, 4 is falling; don't get them confused or it can completely alter the meaning).
In translation:
The Way that can be named is not the enduring Way.
The Name that can be named is not the enduring Name.
In other words, the ultimate principle of reality can't be grasped intellectually, it has to be experienced for oneself.

 

[Hendryk]

Like other air forces around the world, China's has had emblematic aircraft. Mentioning the S-67 has made me feel like listing some of them.

Royal Aircraft Factory FE2 This sturdy 2-seat fighter, designed with a pusher-propeller configuration to give the front gunner as wide an arc of fire as possible, is along with the Vickers FEB one of the very first aircraft used by China. Imported from Britain and deployed from 1915, it was soon outmatched by newer fighter designs, but proved its worth as a ground attack plane during the Russian Campaign of 1917-1922.

 

[Hendryk]

Nieuport 17 This manoeuverable and versatile French-made fighter formed, along with the SPAD S-XIII, the backbone of the Chinese air force during the Russian Campaign, and was only retired in 1925.

 

[Hendryk]

Fokker D-XI In 1922, after the end of the Russian Campaign, the Chinese high command decided to follow the lead of the Western powers and organize its Air Force as a separate wing of the military (the Chinese Navy began using aircraft soon afterwards, leading to the same redundancy as in other countries). The political leadership further decided to have as many planes as possible built under licence in national factories, in order to close the technological gap with the Western powers and Japan, which was at the time beginning to develop its own air force. A deal was made with the Fokker company to that effect, and for the two following decades Fokker planes were the workhorses of the Chinese Air Force. The first fighter to roll out of the assembly lines of the new factories, located in Chongqing as part of a policy of industrialization of the hinterland provinces, was the D-XI, deployed from 1924 to 1929. It would be followed by the D-XIII, the D-XVI, the D-XVII and eventually the famous D-XXI.

 

[Hendryk]

Caudron G-4 The first bomber used by China, from 1915 to 1919, at which point it was replaced by the Vickers Vimy.

 

[Hendryk]

Dewoitine D-510 Built under licence from the Dewoitine company, this fighter was remarkably fast for its time. It was hastily deployed in 1934, in the midst of the Japanese onslaught, and claimed more victories than any other type of plane for three straight years.

 

[Hendryk]

Fokker D-XXI In many aspects, this unprepossessing fighter holds the same place in the Chinese collective memory as the Spitfire for the British. A comparatively low-cost but reliable plane, it was produced in large numbers by the Chongqing factories and was involved in countless dogfights from 1937 to 1941, although by then it was already outdated by the rapidly evolving standards of aerial warfare (in spite of such upgrades as retractable landing gear and a more powerful armament consisting of two 7.7 mm machine guns and two 20 mm cannons), and increasingly relegated to patrol duty.

 

[Hendryk]

Dewoitine D-520 If the Fokker D-XXI was China's Spitfire, the Dewoitine D-520 was its Zero. Definitely the second-most famous fighter of the Sino-Japanese war, and one of the best aircraft ever, the D-520 was the main fighter plane in the Chinese arsenal from 1939 to 1945, and remained in use in the Navy until 1947, when it was replaced by the Grumman F8F Bearcat.
The D-520, in fact, was the only plane that could compete with the Zero in terms of manoeuverability until the P-51 Mustang came along. Constantly upgraded in the course of the war, it benefited from advances made by Dewoitine's engineers for the D-550 prototype, which came too late to be of use to France but proved their worth on the Chinese models.

 

[Hendryk]

Noorduyn C-64A Norseman No sooner had the Canadians begun producing the Norseman in 1936 that the licence was acquired by China. This rugged, no-nonsense, versatile light transport plane was ideally suited for the Chinese Air Force's needs, and it remained in use well into the 1970s, along with similarly durable designs like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain and the Curtiss-Wright C-46 Commando. Those planes, once decommissioned, were frequently sold to Chinese airlines at bargain prices, kick-starting the post-war boom in Chinese air transportation. The Norseman remained a common sight on Chinese airports for over a half-century, and some are still in use in the more remote areas of both China and Yakutia.

 

[Hendryk]

De Havilland Vampire The famous Daweilan 8, as it was known to the Chinese, was the first jet-powered aircraft used by the CAF. The licence had been acquired by China in late 1945, as De Havilland was completing the pre-production runs and various countries such as France, Sweden and others were lining up to purchase the rights to the promising fighter. Initial models were equipped with the relatively underpowered Goblin engine, but all D-8s came equipped with the excellent Nene engine from 1949 (the same engine that would equip the MiG-15, so desperate were the British for easy cash). The D-8s had a number of run-ins with Soviet fighters over the Yakutian border throughout 1950 and early 1951, as Stalin was testing China's resolution to defend its northern client state. After 1951, the D-8s were gradually replaced with the more advanced De Havilland Venoms, or Daweilan-9s, but many remained in use to the end of the decade, especially the two-seater night-fighter version; the instruction models were only decommissioned in the early 1960s.
China exported the plane to most of its satellites, and it formed the backbone of the fledgling Vietnamese air force among others.

 

[Matt]

Keep on going!

I wish I saw this thread before ME5 started, I would have liked to play as China

 

[Hendryk]

Saab J-29 Tunnan In the latter phase of the Sino-Japanese War, from 1940 to 1945, China increasingly used aircraft designed in the USA (and Britain to a lesser extent), as its strategic partners in continental Europe were under German occupation; by the end of the war such planes as the Lockheed P-38, the Republic P-47 and the North American P-51 made up most of the CAF's fighter force, just as its bombers were mostly Douglas and Boeing designs. But the evolving geopolitics of the post-war years, in particular the emergence of a tripolar order and the inclusion in China's sphere of influence of various former European colonies, convinced the Chinese leadership to get its most sensitive equipment from neutral countries so as not to become overly dependent on a potential strategic competitor. So, just as Fokker had been the primary provider of fighter designs for the CAF in the 1920s and 1930s, a deal was struck with the Swedish company Saab in 1951. From then on and up to the present day, while China has gone on importing or license-producing various aircraft from US-aligned countries, the bulk of its fighter force has consisted of Saab planes.
The first such plane, used from 1952 to 1972, was the J-29 Tunnan.

 

[Hendryk]

Saab J-35 Draken China's first supersonic fighter. Saab's policy of coming up with basic fighter designs that could be easily customized to fill varying mission roles was well-suited to China's strategic priorities. The Draken, first deployed in 1960, remained part of the Chinese arsenal until 1998, and some of China's client states still use them to this day.

 

[Hendryk]

Saab JAS-39 Gripen Deployed in 1993, it has gradually replaced the J-37 Viggen as China's main fighter.

 

[Matt]

Using this for ME6, so it gets a nice healthy bump!