Try to do better than present day 2017

Mao Zedong dies in 1948. The CCP vanishes and the Chinese Republic stays around.
For China...I'd say the Nationalists winning is really not as good as one would think. Sure, Mao was terrible, but that doesn't mean Chiang was anywhere near the adjective "good"; nor was the Chinese Republic democratic in any way, having held but 1 election (with 4% of the population voting!) in 1912. Perhaps a better POD would be a less successful Hundred Flowers Campaign that doesn't provoke a strong reaction from the Communist Party, followed by Mao dying in say, 1956? Jiang Qing sidelined, Lin Biao never rising to prominence and a moderate Zhou Enlai-Zhu De clique ruling over China witha reformist movement stemming from the Hundred Flowers Campaign, ie: Deng 20 years early.
This China, as per OTL breaks with he Soviet Union (there was already antagonism with the Soviets in the Korean War), but not to the extent of OTL, eventually becoming a power in its own right.
Along with economic reforms, China and the Soviets also engage in democratic reforms, and the world is soon dominated by 3 democratic (2 of them arguably semi-democratic) powers and China rising to hegemony but not becoming a rival to the Soviets or the Americans.
Other developments may be:
  1. North Korea remaining sane but dictatorial
  2. India reconciling with China early
  3. India modernizing early with help from doth China and the Soviet
"Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?"
 
For China...I'd say the Nationalists winning is really not as good as one would think. Sure, Mao was terrible, but that doesn't mean Chiang was anywhere near the adjective "good"; nor was the Chinese Republic democratic in any way, having held but 1 election (with 4% of the population voting!) in 1912. Perhaps a better POD would be a less successful Hundred Flowers Campaign that doesn't provoke a strong reaction from the Communist Party, followed by Mao dying in say, 1956? Jiang Qing sidelined, Lin Biao never rising to prominence and a moderate Zhou Enlai-Zhu De clique ruling over China witha reformist movement stemming from the Hundred Flowers Campaign, ie: Deng 20 years early.
This China, as per OTL breaks with he Soviet Union (there was already antagonism with the Soviets in the Korean War), but not to the extent of OTL, eventually becoming a power in its own right.
Along with economic reforms, China and the Soviets also engage in democratic reforms, and the world is soon dominated by 3 democratic (2 of them arguably semi-democratic) powers and China rising to hegemony but not becoming a rival to the Soviets or the Americans.
Other developments may be:
  1. North Korea remaining sane but dictatorial
  2. India reconciling with China early
  3. India modernizing early with help from doth China and the Soviet
"Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?"
I mean, there are other benefits to no Communist China. A united Korea, most likely, a lessened or even averted Red Scare over in the United States. Iran's democracy continuing, ETC...
 
I mean, there are other benefits to no Communist China. A united Korea, most likely, a lessened or even averted Red Scare over in the United States. Iran's democracy continuing, ETC...
  1. N Korea: Well, a reformed Communist China means that there is no way that the Soviets can prop up the Norks without Chinese support in the long term. With a stronger reformist movement across the Communist bloc, the Norks would most likely reform and even reunite with the South. Moreover, the POD was during the period of time when the North was doing better than the South.
  2. Red Scare: well of course, but that's nothing before an averted cultural Revolution or White Terror, is it?;)Imagine the Green Island Prisons, but on a scale of all China.:hushedface:
  3. Iran: the Iranian Revolution is most likely butterflied, being 20 years after the POD. Even if it isn't (which is very unlikely), there's always the chance that the secularists sideline Khomeini.
 
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José Rizal secretly wrote a series of books on comparing Philippine languages while living in exile in Dapitan. After his death, the books were found by the surviving members of the Rizal family. In a seemingly bizaare series of events, Pedro Paterno acquired those books in exchange for a sum of money and published the book for the leading vernacular writers in the country. By the first three and a half decades of the 20th century, comparative linguistics became the favorite pastime of the leading figures in Philippine vernacular literature, to the point of forming of restoring the proto-Philippine language and using it as a potential lingua franca
 

samcster94

Banned
  1. N Korea: Well, a reformed Communist China means that there is no way that the Soviets can prop up the Norks without Chinese support in the long term. With a stronger reformist movement across the Communist bloc, the Norks would most likely reform and even reunite with the South. Moreover, the POD was during the period of time when the North was doing better than the South.
  2. Red Scare: well of course, but that's nothing before an averted cultural Revolution or White Terror, is it?;)Imagine the Green Island Prisons, but on a scale of all China.:hushedface:
  3. Iran: the Iranian Revolution is most likely butterflied, being 20 years after the POD. Even if it isn't (which is very unlikely), there's always the chance that the secularists sideline Khomeini.
Where does Cambodia fit into this? Pol Pot was loyal to Maoist China and he was extremely dangerous(even more brutal than OTL North Korea arguably).
The Shining Path would probably do even worse than OTL.
 
  1. N Korea: Well, a reformed Communist China means that there is no way that the Soviets can prop up the Norks without Chinese support in the long term. With a stronger reformist movement across the Communist bloc, the Norks would most likely reform and even reunite with the South. Moreover, the POD was during the period of time when the North was doing better than the South.
  2. Red Scare: well of course, but that's nothing before an averted cultural Revolution or White Terror, is it?;)Imagine the Green Island Prisons, but on a scale of all China.:hushedface:
  3. Iran: the Iranian Revolution is most likely butterflied, being 20 years after the POD. Even if it isn't (which is very unlikely), there's always the chance that the secularists sideline Khomeini.
MY comment was referring to Mosaddegh, not the Iranian Revolution.
 
Where does Cambodia fit into this? Pol Pot was loyal to Maoist China and he was extremely dangerous(even more brutal than OTL North Korea arguably).
The Shining Path would probably do even worse than OTL.
Dunno, Indochina will probably still be a clusterfuck.
 
Avoid the Great War. You get to avoid the war, the worst of the Spanish flu, the worst excesses of Communism or fascism, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the Second World War.
 
I'm less knowledgeable on this period of Iranian history, but why would the ROC lead to him not being couped by the CIA?o_O
With no Red Scare, no Domino Theory, and, probably, a Democrat-controlled government in the 50s, America will probably be a lot less willing to go along with another British plot.
 

missouribob

Banned
Are there any POD surrounding the French revolution? Namely that it somehow is successful? Maybe not just a nationalistic movement but a international one for freedom?

A movement that wins?
 
Are there any POD surrounding the French revolution? Namely that it somehow is successful? Maybe not just a nationalistic movement but a international one for freedom?

A movement that wins?

It was successful to an extent. Though the Coalition won, no French monarch was ever again able to exert the same level of absolutism as before. The problem, I think, was the excesses of the revolution itself and its habit of eating itself alive before Boney. If you can somehow get a unified vision in government that doesn't carry out mass executions and doesn't go imperial, which I'd argue is exceedingly difficult if not impossible, that could be the first step to a France without a restoration and a revolutionary Europe.
 

missouribob

Banned
which I'd argue is exceedingly difficult if not impossible, that could be the first step to a France without a restoration and a revolutionary Europe.
Damn. Is it really border line ASB? There can't be a stable Revolutionary France that exports freedom and democracy like the Soviets exported communism?
 
Lincoln lives.

Rule #48 of the Presidency: People respect a martyr a heckuva lot more than a survivor. If it weren't for Booth Lincoln's legacy might have been too far caught up in the politics of the time to be idolized like he is now.

A good chunk (but far from the sole contributor) of the Apollo program's survival was based on presidents and Congress not wanting to dishonor the legacy of JFK, which the nation would have recognized as shameful.


As a side note it's amazing how many people's plans to make the world 'better' inadvertently make it worse in some areas.
 
For me the no Columbus timeline is a better one and the no majapahit is also a better one..however the no majapahit scenario is the one that I am making now..
 
For me the no Columbus timeline is a better one and the no majapahit is also a better one..however the no majapahit scenario is the one that I am making now..

What did the Majapahit do and why would nixing them make the world a better place?

I'd actually considered wanking them to the point that they enter the Polynesian cultural sphere and introduce writing, advanced mathematics and masonry, metallurgy, etc.
 
What did the Majapahit do and why would nixing them make the world a better place?

I'd actually considered wanking them to the point that they enter the Polynesian cultural sphere and introduce writing, advanced mathematics and masonry, metallurgy, etc.
See my tl Gers on the Pacific..
 

samcster94

Banned
I'm less knowledgeable on this period of Iranian history, but why would the ROC lead to him not being couped by the CIA?o_O
Wait, this POD is after he's out of power. Still, however, 20 years can stop a revolution that had low odds before the mid 70's from happening. The Tudeh political movement, given the Sino-Soviet Split is different, would be VERY different(they were Russian backed).
 
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