What if Hong Xiuquan was able to overthrow the Qing Dynasty and replace it with his Christian-oriented regime?
You know what happened to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge right?That's gonna happen on a much bigger scale.
Totally serious here.The Taiping rebels were batshit insane.Hong Xiuquan for the most part was nuts and there will most likely be civil war once the guy kicks the bucket.lol huh?
You know what happened to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge right?That's gonna happen on a much bigger scale.
The Taiping rebels tried to stop sex at one point--even between married couples(although the big shots have massive harems)....Private property was abolished........ Why?
... Why?
... Why?
uh...uh.... I....In many ways, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was the bastard child of North Korea, early Mormonism, and ISIS. Not only did you have an aggressive cult of personality that worshipped Hong Xiuquan as the literal younger brother of Jesus, but also massive large-scale land reappropriation, "reeducation/religious conversion camps", mass killings of villages that rejected Hong Xiuquan's divinity and/or Christianity, the destruction of centuries old landmarks, and the burning of any "non-Christian" literature, which in the context of 19th century China, was more or less everything the revolutionaries could get their hands on. The list goes on and on.
Then you have the weird heterodox teachings of Taiping Christianity, the polygamy of Hong Xiuquan and his inner circle, the massive paranoia, and the unrestrained religious fanaticism and devotion to the "King of Heaven" that would make even the Imperial Japanese cringe.
Had the Taiping been successful even in Southeast China, expect the Cultural Revolution to come very early, with a large chunk of pre-Taiping literature and culture destroyed in it's entirety. Unfortunately for the Taiping, their rampant anti-intellectualism (which also manifested itself in the similar Boxer Rebellion several decades later) meant that any modernization program would be strangled in the crib. Doubly so thanks to European revulsion at Taiping theology, which they saw as blasphemy in the extreme, so expect little European support outside of fringe movements. If the Europeans do come, it will be with the intent to occupy, stabilize, and colonize Southeast China, as a successful Taiping Kingdom will cripple trade in East Asia, forcing the British to act (they backed the Qing for a reason - they were sane and still willing to trade).
Don't get me wrong, the Taiping introduced many policies that were decades ahead of their time, such as equality of the sexes (in theory) and proto-communism, but these policies would inevitability be upended by the Taiping state's desire to maintain power by any means necessary. Add in a pervasive cult of personality, genocidal religious fanaticism (death to the Manchu heathens!), and heterodox economic system, and you have a regime that will turn very ugly sooner or later.
I'm going to post a detailed response to this, probably this weekend, but suffice to say I think the Taiping get a very bad rap.
People are getting way sensationalist over this. Sure, by our standards, the Taiping were weird, but not really moreso than past Chinese millenarian movements, like the White Lotus/Red Turbans; however crazy and bloody the origins of the Ming, their dynasty turned out alright for a while. People are also overstating how much Chinese culture they'd destroy; even setting aside the general syncretism involved in the Taiping project, Hong Rengan joins up at Tianjing and reintroduces Confucius onto the Taiping examinations anyway. Plus, Hong Rengan was a great advocate of modernization and normalized relations with the Western Powers; his vision of China's future had banks, steamships, factories, insurance companies, and railroads at its heart, and there were Europeans who understood the dynastic cycle the Chinese had imposed on their history, and observed that in Taiping domains that were not the seat of war, the ground was in fact well cultivated.
Taiping as sectarian crazy people seems to be the default view, though, ever since the 1860s.I think people are reacting against the pro-Taiping bias that used to abound on alt-history forums and newsgroups in times past.
Hong Rengan might have put the Taiping on a more productive track, but I seriously question how able he'd be to do so while Hong Xiquan was alive.
fasquardon