What will China look like if the Nationalists won the civil war?

loughery111

Banned
My point is that "not-PRC" is a pretty low bar.....

You'll meet no argument there. It's not the kind of bar I'd try to limbo with. The ROC would not, by modern first-world standards, be an effective, democratic, or transparent government. But it just might be better enough than the PRC to leave TTL's China in the position of OTL's Brazil or South Africa, rather than OTL's China or India.
 
You'll meet no argument there. It's not the kind of bar I'd try to limbo with. The ROC would not, by modern first-world standards, be an effective, democratic, or transparent government. But it just might be better enough than the PRC to leave TTL's China in the position of OTL's Brazil or South Africa, rather than OTL's China or India.

I'd agree with that if we take South Africa as a model, the GMD's got a lot of problems, though it can win the Civil War even in the late phase if it does things differently.
 

loughery111

Banned
I'd agree with that if we take South Africa as a model, the GMD's got a lot of problems, though it can win the Civil War even in the late phase if it does things differently.

Does things differently meaning, for me, one of two things:

1. Don't invade Manchuria at all, rather hunker down and start bleating for US aid to build domestic industry and keep the Communists penned in, in which case they might just look like OTL South Korea. This is the less likely option.

2. Invade and don't listen to the US, in which case they don't halt, probably win the war, and then get the USSR to give them at least passing support as the rightful government of China. They don't really get support, and no northern threat means little focus on economic development and little US support, so they look like South Africa, with islands of urban or rural prosperity with lots of poverty surrounding them. This is the more likely, IMO.

Your thoughts?
 
Does things differently meaning, for me, one of two things:

1. Don't invade Manchuria at all, rather hunker down and start bleating for US aid to build domestic industry and keep the Communists penned in, in which case they might just look like OTL South Korea. This is the less likely option.

2. Invade and don't listen to the US, in which case they don't halt, probably win the war, and then get the USSR to give them at least passing support as the rightful government of China. They don't really get support, and no northern threat means little focus on economic development and little US support, so they look like South Africa, with islands of urban or rural prosperity with lots of poverty surrounding them. This is the more likely, IMO.

Your thoughts?

I think that what changes things is more that the GMD decides to negotiate more with the USSR in the period immediately after WWII when the USSR considers a GMD victory inevitable, this increasing the strategic dilemma for the PLA and meaning it has to attack, but has to do so on GMD terms where the GMD can most effectively crush it. Stalin initially expected the PLA could not win, and if the GMD manages to avert the Huaihai campaign or alternately to win that campaign and crush the PLA instead of the other way around then the Chinese Communists lose the conventional war phase, increasing Jiang's prestige from the WWII victory.
 

loughery111

Banned
I think that what changes things is more that the GMD decides to negotiate more with the USSR in the period immediately after WWII when the USSR considers a GMD victory inevitable, this increasing the strategic dilemma for the PLA and meaning it has to attack, but has to do so on GMD terms where the GMD can most effectively crush it. Stalin initially expected the PLA could not win, and if the GMD manages to avert the Huaihai campaign or alternately to win that campaign and crush the PLA instead of the other way around then the Chinese Communists lose the conventional war phase, increasing Jiang's prestige from the WWII victory.

Ah, you and I have a different cut-off for "late phase" I suppose. But yes, that would work better...
 
Yes, but none of this happens in a vacuum. The US shunned China in 1949 and assisted the rump ROC on Taiwan because "China went communist." The US has a long history of seeing itself as China's protector. So while the US never really cared for Chang Kai-Shek at least he wasn't a commie. I think once it began to look like the GMT could actually win the US would step up so as to have foot in the door once the communists were defeated.

With that in mind a GMT victory would create a who different dynamic in Asia. Sure, Chang Kai-Shek would try to play the US and USSR off each other, but that only goes so far. Unlike with a communist victory, no ideological bonds would tie this China to the Soviet Union. And that coupled with china's historic fear of Russian expansion at China's expense would move China ever closer to the US. US combined with no exceedingly bad misrule by the Communists can only help China in both the short and long run.

Benjamin
 
YAnd that coupled with china's historic fear of Russian expansion at China's expense would move China ever closer to the US.

Doesn't this go both ways? ISTR that Russia (and previously the Soviet Union) had a certain fear of "teeming Chinese masses" overrunning "sparsely populated Siberia". Presumably, if this sentiment existed IOTL it would be much more powerful with a more ambiguous China to the South, instead of one which is at least ideologically fairly close.
 
One thing no one is considering is the effect of having no regime capable of enforcing the "one-child" policy the Communist regime did OTL. But without such a policy, China's population will surely continue to grow from its very high 1949 base--until they hit some absolute limits that is.

The notion that the ROC could hardly do worse than the PRC assumes that China doesn't get entangled in any major foreign wars, or get torn apart by yet another round of civil wars. Given the polarization of the world between the Soviet bloc and the western capitalist one, the former seems easy enough to avoid, particularly if the ROC is seen as a core member of the Western coalition.

But rising population on an underdeveloped and severely disrupted economic base seems like a formula for generating monkey wrenches never imagined OTL. Perhaps the regime feels compelled toward an imperialist path, and to facilitate this imposes a command economy to put Mao to shame? Or it just can't hold it together, China disintegrates (and the population is cut down again with misery that again makes Mao look both shrewd and humanitarian by comparison, One Child Policy and all?)

If we can imagine China very quickly evolving toward both economic development and prosperity and something like a Western notion of civil rights, including the rights of women, I suppose there is a libertarian path to reining in population growth, as I believe that women allowed the freedom to govern their own reproduction will tend to choose to have fewer children in an overpopulated situation. But I'd be the first to admit that such sweeping changes in Chinese society are quite ASB!

And even if the KMT had the political will to seek to slow down Chinese population growth, I don't believe they could possibly have the leverage to impose such a policy.

Thus, I doubt there is any possibility of a non-Communist China having attained anything like OTL per capita economic development. And if they by some ASB miracle do, they'd be a larger population thus consuming an even larger portion of world resources and churning out even more pollution; I don't see how they can do it without either outright conquest of large regions overseas or rising to play a very powerful and interventionist role in world politics, securing access to resources and markets that way.

Much more likely--even if they do attain some large fraction, or even surpass, OTL gross economic growth, they do so on the basis of a much larger population that is per capita much worse off than OTL, with resulting political repression and yet withal, instability.

Or of course we could have a scenario where some huge dieback, tens of times worse than anything the Maoists ever caused, slashes back their population and China as of 2011 evolves from that devastated state.
 
Yes, but none of this happens in a vacuum. The US shunned China in 1949 and assisted the rump ROC on Taiwan because "China went communist." The US has a long history of seeing itself as China's protector. So while the US never really cared for Chang Kai-Shek at least he wasn't a commie. I think once it began to look like the GMT could actually win the US would step up so as to have foot in the door once the communists were defeated.

With that in mind a GMT victory would create a who different dynamic in Asia. Sure, Chang Kai-Shek would try to play the US and USSR off each other, but that only goes so far. Unlike with a communist victory, no ideological bonds would tie this China to the Soviet Union. And that coupled with china's historic fear of Russian expansion at China's expense would move China ever closer to the US. US combined with no exceedingly bad misrule by the Communists can only help China in both the short and long run.

Benjamin

Er, Jiang chose alliances with both Stalin and Hitler and would likely remember that Stalin was a good little ally to him while Generals Slim and Stilwell were condescending pricks and consider US support to have been half-hearted at best. I'm not sure he'd decide that the rhetoric would outweigh action here.
 
Er, Jiang chose alliances with both Stalin and Hitler and would likely remember that Stalin was a good little ally to him while Generals Slim and Stilwell were condescending pricks and consider US support to have been half-hearted at best. I'm not sure he'd decide that the rhetoric would outweigh action here.

Agreed, but as the crisis on the Korean peninsula worsened I could see Truman going to China to smooth things over with Jiang. This of course is not something that did not/will not happen if China is communist. Offers would be made and the US might even be willing to hold Japan back in return for a closer relationship with China. Even small gestures and a moderate increase in trade would go a long way towards making China a better place at a far faster pace.

As for China's population. It will boom but open trade with the US, and no disastrous communist crop policies, will ensure that no massive famines occur. Once China begins to modernize birth rates will fall as has been the case in all nations that industrialize and gain wealth. Today's population will be higher but no real detriment as trade within that region will make up any domestic shortfalls.

Benjamin
 
Agreed, but as the crisis on the Korean peninsula worsened I could see Truman going to China to smooth things over with Jiang. This of course is not something that did not/will not happen if China is communist. Offers would be made and the US might even be willing to hold Japan back in return for a closer relationship with China. Even small gestures and a moderate increase in trade would go a long way towards making China a better place at a far faster pace.

As for China's population. It will boom but open trade with the US, and no disastrous communist crop policies, will ensure that no massive famines occur. Once China begins to modernize birth rates will fall as has been the case in all nations that industrialize and gain wealth. Today's population will be higher but no real detriment as trade within that region will make up any domestic shortfalls.

Benjamin

Truman could definitely go to China, he had a history of strong anti-communism.
 
The bolded part is hardly up for debate, but it's also not the comparison we're making. I highly doubt that the ROC will be much more of a disaster than previous Chinese governments had been, as those too were effectively the same thing as you describe. Almost by definition, that means it's less of disaster than the PRC was. It's economic growth, even under a corrupt form of benign neglect, WILL be higher, earlier, than the PRC's. It will not semi-intentionally kill 50 million of its own citizens, nor will it stand in direct opposition to the United States, which means that it will probably get some aid. My belief is essentially this: it would be very difficult for them to do WORSE than the PRC, and not hard for them to be A LOT BETTER.

I can't agree with your supposition that ROC would mean less dead people than PRC. Yes tens of millions died in as the result of a failure of economic policy, but arguably as many people were saved through the successful immunization programs, the barefoot doctors campaign, and through the investment in rural education and food welfare programs. An ROC government which neglects the rural poor may not cause a massive famine, but it would mean millions of people dying from malnutrition related diseases, from infant mortality, and so on. It wouldn't be spectacular, and there wont be books written about it, but people will still die prematurely.

Furthermore, despite China having close ties to the US earlier, the economy wouldn't take off until the government has made the necessary investment in education and infrastructure, and favorable economic policies to take advantage of closer ties. India has had close ties to the West since Independence, but its economic reforms actually took place a decade after China.

From what I can see, there should be two policies where having the ROC surviving would make a real difference. The first is there wouldn't be the Cultural Revolution. Although this did not cause anywhere as many deaths as the Great Leap Forward, in many ways it did more damage as it targeted China's intellectuals. China's national spirit would be different, more traditionalist, the merchant class more "old money" than today.

The second major difference would be the One Child Policy. Back in the late '50s, the idea of population control first surfaced, but was rejected by Mao because he personally favored the idea of a more populous country. Had Chiang Kai-shek been in charge I suspect he would be in favor of population control since it limited the birth rate of the peasants, people who were nothing but trouble for him. An earlier population control policy would probably mean a more relaxed policy. But even so it would probably be extremely difficult to enforce due to the KMT's traditional lack of control over the rural population which made up the overwhelming majority.

This means one of two things. Either the population control program is ultimately abandoned, resulting in hundreds of millions more people, or the KMT would evolve to become a lot more authoritarian and efficient to carry this out. In that eventuality the KMT would evolve to look very similar to the PRC of today. If they fail and China becomes even more populated, the country would have a lower standard of living, more pollution and more malnutrition. The ultimate toll could be well in excess of the Mao years.

As for international relations, I expect the ROC to have good relations with both sides in the Cold War but inclined to be more friendly with the US, as it would be in a far better position to invest in the country than the Soviets.
 
There would be two superpowers in the world today, China and the United States, with China being in every respect the biggest of the two. China would be a democracy and its standard of living, on average, would be about two-thirds that of the U.S. and Western Europe. India, prodded by China's development, would have also developed more rapidly, and would be about twenty years away from superpower status. With all these countries being democracies, and with massive Chinese investment in Russia, the world would be a much more peaceful place.

Tibet would have autonomy within China, its unique culture intact but modernizing rapidly. The Tibetans would be getting rich off American and European tourists seeking enlightenment a/k/a the wisdom of the East. The Tibetans will make sure they get it, along with hot tubs, massage, mudbaths, and French wines for dinner. Oxygen masks optional.
 
Agreed, but as the crisis on the Korean peninsula worsened I could see Truman going to China to smooth things over with Jiang. This of course is not something that did not/will not happen if China is communist. Offers would be made and the US might even be willing to hold Japan back in return for a closer relationship with China. Even small gestures and a moderate increase in trade would go a long way towards making China a better place at a far faster pace.

As for China's population. It will boom but open trade with the US, and no disastrous communist crop policies, will ensure that no massive famines occur. Once China begins to modernize birth rates will fall as has been the case in all nations that industrialize and gain wealth. Today's population will be higher but no real detriment as trade within that region will make up any domestic shortfalls.

Benjamin

I'm not sure Jiang would like a hostile force on the Yalu any more than Mao did, or that as a Nationalist he could afford to ignore it and give it his blessing any more than Mao could. That'd put him in a pretty tight bind.....
 
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