Balkanized/divided into: independent Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, Yunnan, with Inner Mongolia going to Mongolia, Taiwan to Japan or another power, and a few more cities to Western powers, and China itself divided into Communist in the West, Republican/nationalist in the North, and Imperial in the south. I was thinking, perhaps, that Yuan Shikai or some other warlord who declared himself emperor only loses power in North China, which still remains republican, and later communists manage to take power in the west from several warlords but neither one of these sides can defeat one another and China remains divided a la Korea or Germany.