The Articles of Deconfederation: A World Without America

[GBehm]

After about a week and a half of debating with myself as to whether or not I should actually do it, I've decided that the answer is a semi-confident "yes." This "graphic-timeline" started as a fascination with the idea of a world in which the United States either didn't exist or held significantly limited influence. This can be seen in some of my earliest posts on the site; election wikiboxes about an America that existed as a dominion of the United Kingdom. At first, "Articles of Deconfederation" started as a universe that I had no serious plans to expand upon, as I was sure it would fall through due to some kind of eventual disinterest. However, the idea stuck with me, and the demand seemed like it was there. So here it is.

Big props to @Kanan and, to a lesser degree, @LeinadB93, for giving me the thought, via their insanely fleshed-out and well-made timelines "Our Fair Country" and "Hail, Britannia" (respectively), of making a separate thread for this project.

If I had to give a basic outline of "Articles of Deconfederation" it would be this: Due to much more severe public resistance and a stronger distaste of the idea of a powerful federal government (a-la colonial rule), the United States falls apart after the failure of the Articles of Confederation. What was once a federation of thirteen states dissolves into an assortment of six sovereign nations: New England, New York, Pennsylvania (now Midatlantica), Virginia, North Carolina (now Carolina), and the Union of Southern American States (now the Union of Socialist American States). The world that results from this dissolution is drastically different from the one we know today.

I'll leave a link to all previous "Deconfederation" graphics below the included world map. If you had an idea for an infobox request; don't worry, I'll still take requests for expansion on in-timeline information every once and a while.

Articles of Deconfederation:
New York Legislative election, 2008
New York Progressive Party
Midatlantica Legislative election, 2017
Carolina Presidential Election, 2017; Matt Watson
Cabinet of President Bob Casey Jr.
Mexican General election, 2012; Robert F. Kennedy
Union of Socialist American States; Gavin Newsom
Louisiana general election, 2017; Ernie Chambers
Alaska; Doug Jones; Roy Moore
French Presidential Election, 2017; Xu Qiliang
Danic General/Presidential elections, 2016; Loretta Sanchez
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[GBehm]

I'm sorry to say that this might be the only or last wikipage for a while, as some mod at Wikipedia decided to mark my sandbox, not any official page I've created as an encyclopedia entry, but my sandbox, which does not claim anywhere on it to contain encyclopedic information, for deletion, meaning making entire pages, along with some more uncommon types of boxes, like this will be significantly harder for me to do without using the clunky and slow-moving "inspect element" tool in chrome. My page contained the Republic of New York article in it for three days before this deletion request. Has anyone who makes entire wikipages like this ever had this problem, or been able to avoid it? @Kanan, you make a lot of these, has this ever been an issue for you, or do you use something other than your own userpage to craft your articles for Our Fair Country?

Anyways here's a semi-rushed page about New York, with sections near the end missing because I wanted to just get this one over with. Sucks that this timeline is already hitting speedbumps.

 

[GBehm]

Bob Casey, Jr. (born 13 April, 1960), or simply Bob Casey, is a New York politician currently serving as president of New York. Casey is a member of the Progressive Party, and served as prime minister under 39th president Shannon O'Brien from 2008 to 2016. Additionally, he served as leader of the opposition as head of the Progressive Party from 2006 to 2008.

From 2000 to 2016, Casey was a member of the New York House of Representatives, and represented the constituency of Ward 5, located in southwestern New York State, near the border with Midatlantica, where Casey was born. He was elected as leader of the Progressive Party when former party leader John Kerry stepped down in November of 2006 due to a health scare, forcing a leadership vote which Casey won by a relatively large margin against Jerrold Nadler and Jeff Woodburn. Under Casey's leadership, the party took the direction of "Real Progress" and re-branded from the days of Kerry's leadership. The Progressive Party put public emphasis on the "Progress" part of its platform, and stated its mission to be one that would push morally-right change in the face of what Casey perceived to be the Pataki administration's lack of care for the poor, the sick, and the needy citizens of New York and its neighbors. Casey's policies became integral to the foundations of the New York Third Way, sometimes also called the Left of the Third Way; an ideology which is relatively similar to the Third Way politics seen in Europe and North America, but with a greater focus on governmental economic intervention, a matter on which Casey regularly expressed concern. During his term, he has overseen the passage of new tax laws which treat New York's upper classes more harshly than other codes, an expansion of most of the country's social services and welfare, and a more hostile position toward New England with the goal of "Damaging [New England's] political infrastructure, from the inside, as much as possible."

In 2008, the Progressive Party won in a landslide in both the House and Presidential elections, making Casey prime minister on April 1 of that year. This was the Progressive Party's largest landslide win since the 196 house-seat win of 1968, after which Robert F. Kennedy became president alongside prime minister Claiborne Pell. The party picked up 68 seats in the house in 2008, followed by an additional three in 2012. Casey was immensely popular, with an average 78% approval rating during his time as prime minister. The O'Brien-Casey administration essentially remolded the entirety of New York's economic and social structure by lowering income and wealth inequality, introducing the Children First educational model, and by promoting net neutrality and freedom of information on the internet, among others. Casey gained a reputation for being very pro-American by fighting hard to ensure New York's further integration with the American Union, and even negotiated Cuba's entry into the union, which went through in 2017.

In foreign policy, Casey initiated a refugee-acceptance program in cooperation with France and Italy, in which a portion of Saudi refugees coming to France and Italy would be redirected to New York upon screening. Additionally Casey has brought New York significantly closer to Japan with the goal of creating an anti-fascist security net from northeast North America to the Pacific.

Casey was succeeded as leader of the Progressives by Luke Bronin, who, upon the party's victory in 2016, became New York's youngest ever prime minster. In 2015, Casey was awarded a ceremonial Order of Arts and Letters award by French president Nicolas Sarkozy as a sign of friendship between New York and France.

 

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Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is a sitting member of American Parliament from the electoral region of southern New York. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality known for his casino ventures in New York City and Atlantic City, Midatlantica.

Trump was born and raised in the Queens region of New York, within New York City, and received an economics degree from the Wharton School of the University of Midatlantica. He inherited control of his father's real-estate business in 1971 and renamed it to the Trump Organization, expanding its dealings into Manhattan in the 80s. The company built skyscrapers, casinos, and golf courses throughout both New York and Midatlantica, but soon became known for its excessive number of bankruptcies. Trump's businesses became relatively quiet in the 1990s before picking back up in 2005 with the debut of the television series The Dealmaker, in which Trump played the part of a boss looking to hire new talent at a real-estate agency. The show became a commercial success, giving Trump a new rush of notoriety throughout the 2000s and into the 2010s. Trump used this fame to begin a political career, an endeavor which he claimed to have interest in since 1987, with the opening of the office of governor of New York State.

In 2014, Trump began a campaign for the office of Member of American Parliament (MAP), and managed to secure the nomination of the South New York Liberal Party. Trump, along with 22 other candidates for the region, was elected successfully on November 24, 2014. He took office on January 3, 2015 as a member of the People's Moderate Party group, despite his tendency to more often caucus with the right-wing Americans for Liberty and Sovereignty group.

As of early 2016, it became public that the New York Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) was conducting an investigation in Trump's finances, with speculation being that he accepted illegal donations from foreign dignitaries and governments in exchange for spreading anti-American Union rhetoric and talking points in his speeches to parliament with the goal of creating general discord.

 

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The House of Representatives of New York (Dutch: Lagerhuis van Nieuw York or Tweede Kamer van Nieuw York) is the legislative body of the Republic of New York. It has 257 seats, each filled by a representative elected via the First-Past-the-Post electoral system, with one member representing one constituency. It meets in the center chamber of the Capital Building in New York City.

Elections are held either every four years or at the discretion of the president. Special, off-schedule, legislative elections have only ever been held twice; once in 1808 and again in 1904. Constituencies are drawn based on the population of an area, with each containing between 100 to 110 thousand eligible voters. These seats are either maintained or redrawn based on information gathered every ten years by the New York Federal Census. Additionally, four classes of "list seats" are elected by voters in each of New York's states, each of which are divided into ten sub-regions that are larger than most constituencies. These forty regions each elect their own Member of the House, along with local Representatives. Representatives may serve up to five terms of four years, meaning no representative may serve longer than 20 years.

The House was created in 1782 upon the independence of New York from the United States. It operated under procedure put in place by the New York state constitution until the "Republican" Constitution of 1792, which established the House of Representatives as an entity separate from the state legislature it proceeded. The House followed a number of conventions that applied to the House of Representatives of the United States, and is considered by most legal and pan-American historians to be an essential continuation of the United States' legislative branch. The House served as the lower chamber of the New York legislature until 1911, when the New York Senate was abolished due to the perception of the body as a betrayal of representative democracy due to it requiring each region to send two senators, regardless of how the regions were drawn or how many people lived in them. Since then, the legislature has been unicameral, and the members of the cabinet have been granted the responsibility of advising the president on whether to pass or veto a bill proposed to be a law by the House.

In the event that the president chooses to veto any bill passed by the House of Representatives, the House has the ability to force the bill into law through an affirmative vote by two thirds of the body, or 171 members as of the current composition.

The leader of the largest party in the House automatically becomes Prime Minister on the first day of May after the election. The current Prime Minister is Luke Bronin of the Progressive Party. The Speaker of the House, officially a non-partisan title, is Charlie Baker, who is listed as a member of the Whigs by most non-official counts. The Speaker has the power to moderate and direct debates on the floor of the House, and may punish members who break convention. The Speaker may only vote in the event of a tie, which, with the current number of members, cannot occur unless an odd number of voting members are absent.

 

[GBehm]

Just in case you all wanted to imagine something completely awful:

 

[GBehm]

The New England Resistance Army (NERA) is an anti-government militia currently operating in the Theocratic People's State of New England. The group has operated since 2000, on the basis of attempting to overthrow the current government of New England. It is an illegal organization in New England, and all of its estimated 8,500 to 10,000 members are wanted for arrest for conspiracy, treason, blasphemy, and hold the official status of "Abomination in the Eyes of God" as proclaimed by the governmentally-interconnected God's Church of New England. Additionally, it is a proscribed terrorist organization in New England and Canada, although the latter has sent material and humanitarian aid to NERA despite this. NERA was founded after the Fredericton Massacre of November 1999, in which government troops opened fire on a crowd of secular protesters, killing 145 and arresting those left alive.

Since its formation, NERA has run a campaign of violence against government officials and infrastructure, their most notable being the burning and destruction of Christ's One Church, the largest in all of New England, in Halifax in 2001. Over the course of its 18 years of operation, the group has been responsible for an average of 346 deaths a year, consisting mostly of attacks on clergy and government ministers. Although not confirmed, it is believed that NERA was responsible for poisoning Craig Blomberg, lead pastor of the Theological Legislative Council, to death in 2016, which would make Blomberg's death the army's most high-profile killing. NERA also targets minor figureheads and church officials with gunning attacks, grenades, planted explosives and, on several occasions, mustard gas bombs. The most noteworthy gas attack carried out by the army occurred in 2003, in which executive Jerry Falwell was injured and made sick for several weeks, although it is not considered to have led to Falwell's death in 2007.

When asked why NERA resorts to such brutal violence during an interview in Toronto, Tim Ashe, deputy head of the army, responded; "The government of the State of New England has committed atrocious acts of violence against our Jewish friends, our Catholic friends, our gay friends, and anyone else who has been brave enough to step out of line. The only thing that a Jerry Falwell or a Cal Thomas will understand is violence, because they know that their god will judge them harshly for what they've done, and that to stay alive is the only way to keep out of hell." Ashe, being forced to remain in Canada due to possibly exposing his whereabouts during a 2017 attack, has led the army from across the border alongside chief commander David Zuckerman.

From its founding onward, NERA's goal has been the dissolution of New England's current government in exchange for a republic. The exact position of the army as a political entity was not always clear, until 2013 when NERA published its manifesto through a proxy in New York. This pamphlet stated that the army was devoted to "anti-fascism, anti-religious radicalism (as opposed to the common outside perception of NERA being plainly "anti-Christian"), and republicanism" although some chapters of the army reportedly hold definite socialist or communistic values.

 

[GBehm]

The Alaskan legislative election, 2016 was held on May 28, 2016 to elect or reelect all 95 members of the Alaskan Legislative House. The ruling Green Party, led by Sergei Serebryanyy, won the majority of the seats in the legislature despite losing eight to the Conservative Party led by Alexei Navalny. As in the 2012 election, Sergey Baburin's Alaskans' Party (AP) came in third with two total seats. Although the Greens suffered losses in both the popular vote and in seat count, the party managed to finish with a majority of the vote; just over 800 thousand in total, coming out to 51 percent of the popular vote.

The chief issue surrounding the electoral campaign of 2016 was Alaska's place in North America in terms of integration with the American Union and closeness of trade with Canada and Oregon, Alaska's two largest economic partners. Serebryanyy campaigned with the promise of getting Alaska into the A.U., an idea that has rarely ever sat well with most Alaskans. Although he acknowledged the lack of support behind such a move, Serebryanyy insisted on applying for union membership as a way to help the struggling Alaskan economy, which had remained stagnant in recent years and, for a time, risked falling behind that of the USAS in regards to output. Navalny, in contrast, was of the belief that Alaska's economy could be repaired by reconnecting with Siberia, Russia, and potentially, Denmark, in order to create a network of Arctic-based economic cooperation grounded in mining, fishing, and oil exportation. Navalny's policies appealed to rural voters whose jobs relied on these industries, marking a continuation of the recent trend in which the Greens become an increasingly urban party whereas the Conservatives shift away from past, socially liberal, policies in favor of economic deregulation and a decreased concern for environmental impact.

While the Alaskans' party remained the third largest in the legislature, it suffered at the polls due to the regrowth of the Conservatives. Post-election research showed that upwards of 45 percent of all Alaskans who voted for AP in 2012 voted instead for the Conservatives in 2016. The AP stronghold of the Aleutian island-seats all held the party among their top two most-voted, although the Conservatives did come close to closing this gap in some seats, whereas the Greens managed to pick up the seat of Aluetiana due to a weak showing by AP candidate Grigori Surkis.

Although the Green victory by no means yielded a mandate for rule, Serebryanyy had remained adamant in getting Alaska into the American Union, and had suggested that if Alaska truly could not be persuaded to favor the A.U., it would not have voted for several more years of Green party leadership. However, when the issue came to a vote in the Legislative House, not even a majority of the Green party favored joining the Union. Serebryanyy stepped down in January of 2018, claiming that failure of the A.U. vote was a failure of his administration. He was succeeded by Alexander Zykondyrin on January 14, 2018, and has said that he will not seek reelection in his seat come the next election.

 

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[GBehm]

Just kidding. It's a news article. AU elections are after this, I swear

 

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From 21 to 28 September, 2014, elections to the American Parliament were held in the American Union. This election was the 11th of its kind since 1959, when the parliament of the American Economic Community Network was founded.

This was the second election in which parliamentary groups and parties put forward candidates for president of the parliament. The Social Democratic League selected Richard Blumenthal of New York as their candidate after the resignation of Vicente Fox at the end of his term. The Moderate People's Party selected Mark Kirk, while Martin Heinrich ran for the Liberal Democrats, Rand Paul for Americans for Liberty and Sovereignty, Barbara Lee for the Party of '05, Reginald Meeks for the Coalition of Regions and States, and David Cobb for the Greens and Environmental Bloc. Despite winning the most seats and getting Blumenthal into office, the Social Democratic league lost the highest number of seats and came in second to the MPP in the popular vote. Although the three main federalist parties; the SDL, MPP, and LDG, all maintained their size, the election saw a rise in power for regionalist, nationalist, and anti-Americanist parties like the AFLS and CRS, reflecting a growth of these kinds of politics in member countries. Additionally, this election yielded the lowest seat share as a percentage for both the SDL and MPP since 1999.

Cuba, which applied for membership to the union in 2013, participated in the election despite not then being a member due to a rule passed by the parliament in 2011 which allowed all states accepted to the union to participate in elections regardless of whether or not membership for said states had been finalized. This caused a 68 seat increase in the size of the parliament and created a significant boost for the Party of '05 group, which held strong support from Cuba's ruling Worker's Party. American Parliamentary elections in Cuba resulted in 18 new seats for the Party of '05, 14 for CRS, 14 for MPP, 12 for AFLS, and 10 for SDL. Even more, Bruno Parrilla, a Cuba native, won the P'05's leadership election a year prior.

American Council president Pedro de Alemán described confidence in the union as being at an "all-time low, despite a booming economy, likely due to the fact that nothing seems to be changing, or just from burnout in general." It was often speculated that anti-union or anti-American parties would win just under 200 seats in parliament; a prediction which came true with AFLS, P'05, and CORS winning 188 seats in total. Despite this, preliminary polling for the 2019 series of elections suggests that faith in 'establishment' parties is returning as the Midatlantican union membership referendum is on track to fail, and anti-Americanist parties such as Virginia's Reform and Carolina's Carolina Strong fail to win elections on both federal and local levels.

The field will also be larger in 2019, with the AU having un-banned centralist parties in 2017, and up to four new parliamentary groups with significant public support looking to contest.

 

[GBehm]

Centralism is a form of radical ultranationalism similar in practice to fascism. Characterized by complete civilian devotion to protecting one's country, forced or excessive labor, jingoism, and extreme state-business integration via corporatism. Centralism is often accepted to be a direct successor to fascism and is sometimes called the "Fascism of the post-war world" despite the fact that distinctly fascist regimes such as those in Italy and Venezuela existed parallel to centralist states like China and Argentina until the 1960s. Directly opposed to liberal democracy, Marxism, anarchism, and progressivism, centralism is typically placed on the far-right end of the left-right political spectrum.

With the defeat of the Soviet Union by both democratic and authoritarian states in the Second World War, centralists viewed the world of the 1950s and 60s as one in which the left was struggling and on the verge of being fully rejected by the population of Europe, Asia, and North America. Centralism was founded by Chinese warlord Chiang kai-Shek, who served as the president of the semi-democratic Republic of China and as leader of the Kuomintang party, which would go on to transform into the Fascist-Republican Party of China. Chiang envisioned a China that had a definite social order, and felt that the country could ascend to the status of global power with much-needed economic growth. The best way to do this, Chiang postulated, was to promote the growth and founding of corporations originating both within and outside of China and to grant the heads of said corporations a degree of government oversight. Additionally, Chiang was assisted in forming his theory by Syngman Rhee, president of Korea from 1948 to 1965, who argued that if corporations were allowed to have their laborers work for approximately 84 hours a week without a full day's break, output would be so great that China and its allies' economies would grow exponentially without the need for trade. Although the "84 hours provision" was eventually scrapped, excessive work remains a core tenant of Centralism, and countries such as China, India, and Korea have the highest rates of work-related death in the world.

Centralists believe that environmental and labor oversights of any variety are inherently damaging to economic output and growth. To stop this, centralists argue that the state must be operated by a strong, dictatorial, leader and a council of corporate owners and experts to advise said leader. Centralism rejects the notion that war or general violence are always damaging, and instead promotes them as a means to increase the size of a country's industry and pave a path to autarky.

Over time, centralism in practice has become less totalitarian than it once was, and has dropped the pursuance of ideas such as eugenics and direct economic interventionism to distinguish itself from fascism. Today, seven countries, most of them in Asia, describe themselves as having centralist regimes. As of 2018, the only state to have ever transitioned to centralism from a liberal democracy then back was Argentina, which was considered a centralist nation under the leadership of Juan Perón until 1976, when a coup restored democracy.

 

[GBehm]

Sorry to make you guys wait so long for anything at all. I may put up a poll to see where interest is for my next graphic.

 

[GBehm]

New Zeeland (Dutch: Nieuw Zeeland; Māori: Aotearoa), officially the Republic of New Zeeland (Dutch: Republiek van Nieuw Zeeland), is a sovereign island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Geographically, the country is comprised of two main islands, often referred to as the North and South Islands, along with around 320 other smaller islands. New Zeeland sits approximately 900 miles east of Australia and 600 miles south of New Caledonia, Tonga, and French Fiji. As a product of its isolation, New Zeeland's islands were among the last to be settled by humans. Additionally, the islands have developed extremely bio-diverse environments of animals, plants, and other organisms not found anywhere else on Earth. Topographically, New Zeeland is most defined by its sharp mountain peaks, which can be seen in the Alps of the Southern Island and some smaller ranges on the Northern Island. New Zeeland's capital is the city of New Almere, located on the North Island, and its largest city is Haaderwijk, located on the South Island.

During the late 13th to early 14th centuries, Polynesians landed on New Zeeland's north island. From there, these Polynesians began to differentiate themselves from the generation that had initially landed on the islands, and formed their own culture, which would become the Māori culture of today. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to ever report sighting New Zeeland. European activity on and around New Zeeland was extremely minimal for nearly 200 years after Tasman's sighting of the islands. However, after the Fifth Anglo-Dutch war of 1832, the Netherlands seized claims to the islands from the United Kingdom as part of the treaty of Maastricht and began settlement in 1839. The Treaty of Mangonui, signed in 1842 by Dutch colonial authorities and several Māori chiefs, acknowledged a state of "co-ownership" of the islands in which ten of the islands' most influential chiefs would be permanently involved in all decision making relating to internal law and trade. This rule is still in full effect today, and ten Māori chiefs currently sit in the New Zeeland senate.

New Zeeland existed as a colony under, for the most part, direct Dutch rule until 1862, when the dominion was given a wider degree of autonomy by the Declaration of Zandvoort. A greater step toward independence was taken in 1891, when New Zeeland's colonial government petitioned the Dutch for the right to form its own parliament, an action that it could not take before then. With the Dutch acceptance of the formation of the New Zeeland Tweede Kamer, or House of Commons, and Senate, the country became almost entirely autonomous. All laws within New Zeeland were decided by the dominion's own government, but Dutch envoys still accompanied New Zeelander diplomats during negotiations and meetings with neighbors in order to ensure the decisions being made did not negatively impact the Netherlands' interests. By the turn of the century, the common sentiment among New Zeelanders was that the Netherlands was acting too restrictively, and that the colony would be better off diplomatically and economically as its own country. In 1901, Governor Joan Röell, the New Zeeland Colony's head of state and representative to the Netherlands, personally wrote to Dutch prime minister Johannes Willem Bergansius expressing concerns about the future of New Zeeland under Dutch rule, and suggested that the colony be released within the following three years. After several months of negotiating, Bergansius agreed to rush the independence process for completion in December of 1902.

On December 1, 1902, the Röell-Bergansius Statute was signed, acknowledging the full independence of New Zeeland and the inability of the Netherlands to represent the country at diplomatic, legal, military, or economic function. From 1902 to 1940, New Zeeland underwent an era of isolation and introspection known today as the "Period of Internal Prioritization," in which the country's government focused on infrastructure and defense improvements as opposed to accepting foreign assistance or attempting to grow via immigration. At the dawn of World War II, New Zeeland reopened itself to the world in order to, as then prime minister Adam Leeuwarden said; "defend the principles upon which [New Zeeland] was founded and upon which the oppressed peoples of the world hope to found their own [nations]..." in reference to supporting liberal democracy in Asia and Europe. New Zeeland declared war on the Soviet Union in February of 1941, and gave a significant number of troops to reinforce the strength of Operation Zamora, which resulted in an allied naval landing in and liberation of Spain. At the war's end, New Zeeland was economically strained and in need of relief; a condition which led to the first center-left Republican Party government and the creation of the modern welfare state operating under the New York Model of "light-socialism."

Today, New Zeeland ranks third highest in the world on the Democracy Index due to its respectable treatment of its native Māori population and for its effective judicial system, which has worked with extreme efficiency in cracking down on political corruption and rights abuses. New Zeeland's current prime minister is Willem Engels, who serves alongside president Hanke Bruins Slot, both of the Christian Democratic Party (PvCD). In the country's most recent election, the PvCD lost a large number of seats to the right-populist Party of the Liberation of New Zeeland (PvNZV), led by Geert Wilders. This result led to no single party holding control of the Tweede Kamer, and the PvCD currently operates a minority government.

 

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China, officially the Centralist Republic of China, is a sovereign state located in east and central Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with 1.1 billion citizens. Governed by the Fascist-Republican Party of China, it is a one-party state with a centralist economy and holds control of three semi-autonomous cooperative states which act as devolved governments that remain directly subservient to the central government operating out of Nanjing. Additionally, the state operates jurisdiction over the special administrative zone of Macau, a former Portuguese port city located on the southern Chinese coast.

China emerged as one of the world's first major civilizations out of the region of the Yellow River Valley along the Huang He and Yangtze Rivers and the coast of the East China Sea. For most of its history, China's government had operated on the basis of inherited familial monarchies, or dynasties. The first of these dynasties was the Xia, in the 21st century BCE. After several changes in dynastic rule, the Qin Dynasty unified what is considered core China, and saw (through its successors) some of the most sophisticated technological advancements of the ancient era including paper, gunpowder, and the compass, all of which the Chinese would become famous for inventing. Chinese culture spread through greater Afroeurasia by way of the Silk Route, through which China opened itself to the civilizations of Europe, the Middle East, and East Africa. Dynastic rule continued for another 1700 years before ending in 1912 due to the Xinhai Revolution, in which revolutionaries overthrew the ruling Qing Dynasty and replaced it with a republic. Sun Yat-sen sat as the republic's first president and led the Kuomintang, or Nationalist, party. In 1931, general Chiang Kai-shek fully unified the country under military rule. As part of World War II, Chiang carried out a war against the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) and their self-proclaimed Peoples Republic of China, which aligned itself with the Soviet Union. With the help of Japan and Alaska, Chiang's China defeated the Soviets on the Eastern Front, and Chiang himself vouched for the Alaskan proposition of splitting Russia in two.

With most, if not all, communistic opposition to the Kuomintang government eradicated, Chiang ruled unopposed and consolidated the Nationalists as the sole legal party, a move which resulted in nations such as France and the United Kingdom withdrawing diplomatic representation from China. In 1949, a small group of militias operating out of the country's south armed themselves with the goal of either overthrowing Chiang or creating a separate and sovereign South Chinese Republic. Despite being one of the "Big Five" and a founding member of the United Nations, China quickly became an international pariah as it forcefully expanded, annexing Tibet in 1950 and Bhutan in 1954, and started enforcing the ideas of Centralism, a totalitarian ideology founded by Chiang in 1952 and inspired heavily by fascism as implemented in countries such as Italy and Yugoslavia. China's alliance with Japan and Italy grew firmer, and the national constitution was redrafted entirely in 1960, leading to a codification of worker's rights abuses and hypercorporatistic deregulationism. Despite how certain these alliances seemed, China quickly became the world's only authoritarian superpower after the Italian Civil War of 1969 and the establishment of the Republic of Japan in 1989. With the decline of its allies, China and its authorities sought to begin a series of "Wars for Order" which could establish a number of satellites friendly to China itself. In 1954, after the Korean War for Independence, the Chinese-funded Army of Cooperating Classes (ACC) overthrew the country's democratically-elected government and installed one friendly to the Chinese. The Indian Civil War of 1959 resulted in India being divided in two, with North India existing as a Chinese-aligned Centralist totality and South India (soon renamed to Dravidstan) becoming a democratic republic. Finally, the short Indochina war of 1968 to 1970 saw the division of Vietnam much in the manner of India.

In 1973, China, under the rule of President-General Hsieh Tung-min, attempted to instigate a transition to Centralism for Mexico by way of political and economic favors, with the goal of undermining the growth of North America's collective influence. This resulted in the initiation of the Mexican War, an armed conflict which began as a small-scale civil war and escalated to a point where foreign states such as California, Louisiana, and New York sent troops in order to overthrow the Mexican government, which had grown friendly to Hsieh's China. The expansion of Centralism stalled after 1980 with the end of the Mexican War, and the ideology's reach began to shrink in 1984 when a peaceful change of government in Kenya became the first instance of any country shaking Centralism off since Argentina, just over 20 years prior. Today, China has nine nations that it considers to be part of a group of close allies, all of which are located in Asia or East Africa.

In the 21st century, China has eased its domestic enforcement of Centralist doctrine. Workers are no longer forced to comply with internationally-condemned rules and labor time frames, and are instead granted a minimum of one full day a week without work as well as a minimum wage. Regardless of however much it's modernized, however, China's government faces international scrutiny for its intense wealth gap and the maintenance of its still powerful corporatocracy by way of the Council of Corporations, which advises the president-general. At the same time, China has become a growing market, and serves as a way of accessing western goods for nations such as India and North Vietnam, which suffer from international sanctions.

While dissent is heavily discouraged and consistently illegal, a growing number of China's youth have made attempts to force the country's government to acknowledge demands for change. Most notable among them is Chang Wan-an, an underground republican dissident who has avoided arrest for the past nine years and is the great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek himself, stealing a large amount his inherited wealth and using it to fund the group Young Republic, which spreads information critical of the government and commits cyber attacks on government infrastructure. In 2017, Chang was spotted in an unmarked helicopter being flown by an unknown pilot, from which he dropped a crate of firearms and explosives through a skylight window in a textile factory, shouting repeatedly at laborers; "You are freed!" Even after this event, which resulted in the death of one factory worker, authorities were unable to locate Chang or the helicopter, which was presumably destroyed to prevent identification. Members of Young Republic who have either been captured by government authorities or who successfully defected to neighboring states such as Kazakhstan and Bengal, have stated that the movement is very much inspired by dissidents in New England, but that Young Republic seeks to achieve its goals from cover, rather than in the open.

 

[GBehm]

What's Obama doing?

Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961), is a Danic attorney and politician currently serving as Dana's secretary of state. A member of the Civic League Party, he is the first African-Danan to serve as secretary of state. He previously served as a member of the Danic Senate, representing the state of San Pablo Bay, and as a member of the Provo City Council.

Obama was born in Honolulu, the largest city of the Republic of Hawaii, to Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan emigre and former government economist, and Ann Dunham, a Louisianian anthropologist. Raised for the most part in Hawaii, he also spent several years in Oregon and Indonesia. After his family moved to Dana, Obama attended and graduated from Bay City University in 1982, and worked as a secretary to the mayor of Salt Lake City, Ted Wilson. During his time in Salt Lake City, Obama discovered the Mormon religion, and quickly gained interest. In 1989, one year after enrolling at Harvard Law School in New York, he converted religions and became a member of the Danic Church of Latter-Day Saints. After graduating, he became a professor of Law and Theology at Dana National University in Bay City. Returning back east in 1997, he was elected as a member of the Provo City Council and served two four-year terms before moving yet again back to the bay area to run for senate. In the 2006 legislative elections, Obama won in a close race against incumbent Christian Democrat John Seymour. During his tenure, he was one of seven Civic League-affiliated Mormons in the senate, as well as one of only three black senators. Obama won reelection twice, and was the second member of either house of the legislature to endorse Gavin Newsom for president, doing so after deputy Jerry McNerney. After Obama did several weeks of campaigning alongside Newsom, the candidate contacted him about serving as secretary of state in the event of Newsom winning the election. Obama accepted, and was sworn in as Dana's 46th secretary of state on September 9, 2016, one month after Newsom's landslide victory against Wally Herger.

In 2017, Obama was awarded the Haanderson's Prize in Diplomacy under the subcategory of Defense of Democracy in Both Foreign and Domestic Settings for his handling of the Chinese attacks on Danic electoral infrastructure in 2016 and his support of president Newsom's retaliatory measures against the Chinese. Obama has also been crucial to Danic trade negotiations with the Japanese, the thawing of relations with California, and the further integration of Dana into the American Union. He has had a long standing concern with environmentalism, and considers climate change to be a serious threat to international relations and stability, as well as a national security threat for Dana.

Obama also currently operates the Obama Foundation, a humanitarian aide organization funded both from out of Obama's own pocket and public donations. The foundation is known for infrastructure projects, and as of August of 2018, has been most recently dedicated to building homes for the poor in Nigeria and Hausaland.

 

[GBehm]

Throwing out a request here, could we get something on the politics of Tecumsia, just to see how the government is and who the major players are?

Also, what are these people up to in this universe: Jerry Brown, Sherrod Brown, Joe Kennedy III, Tim Kaine, Kamala Harris, and John Hickenlooper.

I'll get to making an infobox on Tecumsia later, probably within the week. And this should answer four of those.

 

[GBehm]

I'll get to answering your questions tomorrow. Here's this in the meantime, since having your own timeline is the perfect excuse for making your favorite band exceedingly popular.