Survival and/or expansion of the Chinese Soviet Republic?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Soviet_Republic

The Jiangxi Republic appears, at least on the surface, to be different than the modern People's Republic of China that we know. There is the obvious Soviet influence, internationalist bent, the images of Lenin on the currency, etc. They even seemed more internationalist than the Soviet Union at the time, but whether these are merely attempts at garnering Soviet support or not are unknown.

Is there a way for the Jiangxi Republic to continue existing past the Civil War, or even expand from its initial borders, centered around Ya'an (so they are fairly inland)? I don't see it really surviving the Civil War, at least as we know it, and it would probably evolve into the PRC anyway. Would the Soviet love persist more so if it didn't die? Would the Soviets be willing to co-opt them into their fold?

A good place to start would be avoiding the Long March, and several encirclements.
 
The PRC is to the Chinese Soviet Republic what the United States under the Constitution is to the United States under the Articles of Confederation or the earlier Continental Congress. It has all the same people with the same cause and same politics.

The reason it "ended" legally was that as part of the united front against Japan it technically became part of the Nationalist China authority. In reality, the Chinese Soviet Republic did not end and retained its completely separate stance. After it won the civil war, Maos imply proclaimed the PRC, but it was exactly the same people. Institutionally, there is no difference between the PRC and the earlier CCP soviets.

So I'm not sure I understand what it is you are trying to do. You seem to think there is a real distinction, and there isn't.

The earliest politics of the Chinese Soviet Republic was much more "loyal" to the Soviet party line. Mao's peasant emphasis was "heretical" to the official Marxist dogma of industrial workers rebelling. Mao took over because only his peasant forces really survived in the KMT's purges, so hewas able to eliminate rivals who were much more orthodox in their Marxism. Perhaps that is what you are talking about.

If so, it would be very hard for the orthodox Marxists to survive. Chiang was very succesful in wiping them out because China did not have a large enough proletarian base to support a worker's revolution (of course, neither did Russia and the Bolshevik success there was for reasons much more complicated than Marxism could articulate). Any CCP that didn't adopt Mao's methods and philosophy was likely doom to fail, but while it survived it would be very loyal in carrying out Moscow's orders. Any CCP that managed to independently conquer and rule China will eventually disagree with Moscow's policy and adopt an independent stance. China is too big for the USSR to dominate/control. Much of the Sino/Soviet split had less to do with any the public arguments about Marxist dogma, and much more to do with traditional great power politics.
 
I would be interested to see what we could do to delay the split... I could imagine a true communist block alliance causing a big shift in the later cold war. Certainly it gets harder for Nixon to open up relations with China if they are anything like Russian allies...

I do agree that this is going to challenging, and probably stretch credibility (or at least probability) but I imagine something reasonable might be possible. I guess a starting point would be that they would definitely be on better terms if things had gone differently in Korea. I have a hard time thinking that direct Russian intervention wouldn't have resulted in general war, but maybe a smaller Chinese intervention with much more thorough Russian technical assistance? If the North falls without PLA backing the butterflies on Vietnam might also be interesting.
 
The problem is that the Chinese Soviet Republic itself was unlikely to survive past early 1937. Mao did survive the Long March, but he was almost finished before Xian Incident. Most recently, former CPPCC Chairman Jia Qinglin admitted that had Zhang Xieliang not staged that coup in December 1936, the Communist Party may have been destroyed.

On the other hand, the KMT would still have been too corrupted to govern by the late 1940s, but Mao was the only guy who could lead the Communists to power.

You want no Sino-Soviet Split? Even if Stalin survived past 1960, the split would eventually happen. The split did not occur only because of the so-called revisionalism of Khruschev, but that Moscow treated China as its subordinate. Alright, let's say Mao never returned to power after the devastating Great Leap Forward for some unknown reasons (borderline ASB), and China was ruled by a coalition of Liu Xiaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Even in such a scenario, Sino-Soviet reapproachment would still be unlikely; unless you butterfly away the nuclear test, China had no value to use from the American point of view, and China was forced to return to the Soviet camp.

Anyway, for the Chinese Soviet Republic to survive, you need the leadership of Mao Zedong. With Mao hanging on there, the Sino-Soviet split would one day happen.
 
Top