With a POD not before 1800, how to make a scenario where the two main powers today are the UK and China, and they are in a Cold War situation.
With a POD not before 1800, how to make a scenario where the two main powers today are the UK and China, and they are in a Cold War situation.
Welll...
A) China
Tricky parts. We must have the Qing industrialise eartly, or 'pull a Meiji'. Especially humiliating defeat causes unrest, suddenly Emperors/rebel Emperor/Taiping? decide on course of industrialisation. Taiping would actually work... Though Emperors would too.
Japan is vassalised, as is Korea, Russia is stunted. Indo-China might end uyp Chinese. Then, we have China growing...
B) UK.
Easy. Keep the Empire. However, how to keep it?
Taiping? Weren't their quasi-Communist policies doomed to fail?