The problem with that is that is that Chinese nationalism was still deeply rooted in Hong Kong during British colonial rule, even after developing a localized form of Cantonese culture. The debate over reunification with China wasn't whether they should do so at all. It was whether the ruling communists are going to impose their draconian laws on them. If given the choice, they would probably prefer the ROC, which would eventually emerge from martial law and restore their democracy. But being just off the coast of the mainland mooted this point. Perhaps with more time and China remaining in a shitstorm without Deng would change their perception eventually, but the mythos of foreign invaders imposing their will on Chinese civilization is a pretty strong historical memory to overcome, and one where the British had to prove by a great deal they're not raging racists towards them anymore.
When is the latest that China could balkanize and undergo European style ethnogenesis
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I would have to stress that there wasn’t any real alternatives if you were a city state the size of HK. A lot of the Chinese nationalism was also promoted from folks who fled from mainland China.If you are bigger, like encompassing the whole of Guangdong for example, British rule would have to be a lot more accomodating to a native ruling class, and there would be far greater self-sufficiency for total independence. With time, would the native ruling class really prefer being ruled over by some random bloke in Nanjing or Beijing who wants to govern you with another language?Mind you, even to this day there are a lot of HKers who are not fluent in Mandarin.
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Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Why? Taiwan only exists because it is an island, so it can both maintain some level of population separation and some level of actual physical safety.
Hong Kong only survived because it was small enough that the CCP preferred to simply run out the 99 year lease.
No, they don't. They have a separate political history and have absorbed foreign influences under British rule, but they do not regard themselves as a separate ethnic group / culture. Neither is there a single wider Guangdong ethnic group that can secede from China in one lump without bloody Balkans-style wars with their neighbors over where to draw the borders.
In that light, trying to tie those separate ethnic groups together into a single separatist identity seems a lot like Yugoslavism. At least in a united China, there is an overwhelming majority ethnic group (Mandarin) backed up by an army capable of suppressing any southern dissent. In a southern separatist state that's trying to be its own thing, there's no such majority and disagreements over who is on top can't be clearly resolved. And if there are multiple such states, the fuzzy ethnic borders will mean that there is a lot of room for wars akin to the Iran-Iraq War or the breakup of Yugoslavia.
For reference on what a nation without a clear ethnic majority can look like, look at Yugoslavia, Iraq (Shi'ite Arabs vs Sunni Arabs vs Kurds) or Lebanon (Christians vs Muslims).
They still didn't believe themselves to be non-Chinese or had any separatist ambitions. They thought the existing government, or lack thereof, was garbage and their best chance was to sit in the few places that were sheltered from the shitstorm. They were not interested in declaring independence or of becoming foreign.
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If the area was bigger and more such colonies are developed, ie French Guangxi, Japanese Fujian, British Guangdong etc, and they all get independence during the decolonisation wave, it would be far harder for a ‘China’ to take over all of them by force alone.
They likely will if they are under extended British rule like Hong Kong. Do note that even before the 2019 protests, the majority of HKers saw themselves as HKers instead of Chinese or both. OTL Hong Kong was basically a melting pot of people from different parts of China, but a common identity separate from Chinese did emerge eventually.
Vast majority of ex-colonies were like that to be honest. Vast majority of non-‘Cantonese’ spoke Cantonese. I’d imagine industrialisation and urbanisation will eventually render the differences irrelevant as in HK.
Perhaps it will end that way but that is not the topic of discussion. The topic at hand is whether non-pan Chinese nationalism can develop in potential foreign colonies.
Refer to the case of Hong Kong. Vast majority of people didn’t actually believe themselves to be Chinese. Most people in Macao took up the Portuguese grant of citizenship. People of China are not distinct in not wanting a separate or foreign identity if they believed the government to be shit should the opportunity arise.
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Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Why? They're just large enough to make it impossible to ignore them as "just an island", they're not on a 99 year lease, but they're not actually large enough to prevent the CCP from just rolling in with tanks anywhere except Taiwan.
As of yet, that identity seems to be "Fuck the CCP, we want democracy!", the way Taiwanese identity has thus far been "Fuck the CCP, we want West Taiwan back!" Beyond that, there is little separating them from Cantonese outside Hong Kong, and at least half are bilingual in Mandarin.
And how many of them have a strong national identity today?
How is that working out in South Sudan, for example? They rebelled against Sudan over sharia law being imposed on them... and yet, beyond that, they have nothing binding them together and a lot of tribal grievances to boot. Same goes with (North) Sudan, as recent news has shown.
It might be astroturfed by the colonial government, but it is highly unlikely to survive beyond their departure.
Vast majority of people want their democracy back and hate the CCP. Culturally, most of them are a subset of Cantonese.
The fact that Portugal's government was benevolent enough to give Macanese people a legal option to flee if they couldn't stand living under the CCP regime does not make them distinct from other Cantonese peoples, aside from their Catholicism.
Because warfare is not a number game, and if the Europeans take enough bites out of China, whatever left of it’s gonna be extremely weak. Furthermore, if other ex-European colonies are of any indication, they are probably gonna be independent with credible militaries and international recognition.
Apart from having greater personal freedoms and having a rule of law, Hong Kongers had no real experience democracy even in the British era. Even before then however, Hong Kongers have consistently viewed mainlanders with a lens of suspicion and a degree of xenophobia.
I don’t understand your point of cherry picking failed examples and then try to generalise such a state as destined to collapse. For counter-examples, India, Malaysia, Botswana etc are relatively stable countries.
Refer to above.
Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Enough bites = clearly more than you think, because removing the north alone clearly isn't enough.
Credible militaries are a lovely idea, but more provinces = more industry = more military.
As long as enough of China is one nation, it is not exactly crippled enough to make it incapable of destroying the separatists.
Or, as GoT would put it, one fist > five fingers.
Hong Kongers have viewed the CCP as a tyrannical organization and suspect anyone associated with it, same as how Americans viewed Russians as dirty commies. However, in most regards, they are still no different from other Cantonese people.
Edit: or for a better comparison, how South Koreans viewed North Koreans.
India has two things going for it: it was entirely under British rule and released as one unit (minus Muslim territories), and it had a notion of Indianness backed up by religion (and religious enmity with Pakistan). There were several times where it could definitely have fallen apart further, but was saved by astute politicians and the military. Finally, India has been battling insurgents on and off since its inception, so it's by no means a perfect score.
Botswana is 80% Tswana. Having an ethnic supermajority is rather conducive to stability on its own.
Malaysia is supermajority Malay and has a unique and rather weird royal confederacy political system that seems to work.
More to the point, the vast majority of examples are not anywhere near as stable. Most of them lean more in the direction of Sudan.
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Again you are buying the numbers game. A China that tries to conquer independent ex-colonies by force will likely run into sanctions and perhaps even military intervention by foreign states like what the British and the Commonwealth did in Malaysia when Indonesia decided that Malaysia must be part of the greater Indonesian state. That is not getting into potential guerrilla warfare that will bog down an invasion force. Furthermore, a China that is without it’s southern provinces would be heavily crippled. The South is where most of it’s $$ and food supply comes from.
It was far more than that from personal experience of having lived there and have relatives who lived there in the previous generation. They view the mainlanders as inferiors who are coming to steal their jobs, unsophisticated bumpkins who speak a foreign language with no appreciation of Western culture etc.
An independent Guangdong for example would be far more ethnically homogenous than both India and Malaysia. Most of the minorities like the Hakkas for examples are essentially assimilated into mainstream Cantonese society already. Other provinces like Fujian, Zhejian etc are similar. The dicey ones are further West like Guangxi, Yunnan etc. At any rate, most of these colonies will likely be released as single units instead of say deliberately balkanising Guangdong. The regional armed revolts in India are not a major threat to it’s security at any rate. A post-colonial Southern China would basically be similar to post-colonial Indonesian archipelago, with ethically similar people deciding their destinies based on those they shared a common colonial experience with instead of actually grouping together to make a gigantic state.
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Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Indonesia, a massive archipelago, is noticeably more vulnerable to foreign military action, and British naval action in particular, than China would be.
Sanctions are ineffective to a country that's presumably like Maoist China in that it conducts almost no foreign trade. So China today would be in a much more vulnerable situation than it was 60 years ago, for sure.
Any military intervention short of nuclear is not likely to end in the intervener's favor.
Nowadays. 80 years ago, the majority of its economy was solidly in the north, as was most of its industry.
Everyone hates immigrants, especially those damn pigfucking hillbillies from the sticks.
Especially if they take your jerbs.
A little under half of Guangdong's territory is non-Cantonese and there are minorities on the borders, which would be a problem if other provinces also become independent nations. I recall the Iran-Iraq War for that reason, or perhaps the current war in [REDACTED].
A united South China is ethnically non-homogenous to the point where it's in danger of ending up like Yugoslavia or Iraq. It could get lucky and end up like India if it has something extra to bind the regions together. Also, it might own enough of the southwest and center that it's still majority Mandarin, even if only 50% instead of 80%+, so I suppose it's more likely than I first thought.
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Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Uh... Indonesia is 40% Javan and no other ethnic group even comes close. They also dominate Indonesian politics to the point that there has only been one non-Javan president in Indonesia's history. Same with Indonesian economy and infrastructure.
For comparison, the Russian Empire was around 40% Russian, so this is somewhere in that ballpark.
There's even a genocide ongoing in the Indonesian half of New Guinea, just to complete the tapestry.
Ngl sounds like it will strengthen China national identity even harder.
So many ppl forget that OTL HK pro China sentiment was a thing in the 1950s it was only PRC that fucked it up so throughly that HK now near unanimously hate mainland china lol
And Maoist China's military is also noted to be inferior in terms of weaponry and overall quality. If they go around invading other independent Chinese states, who likely have access to foreign weaponry and training, it is entirely plausible that they will end up as they did when they invaded Vietnam, notwithstanding actual military intervention by foreign powers. Also, note that much of the intervention during the Konfrontasi was by Commonwealth ground and air units.
The North built most of its industry using money it extracted from the South. No south= no money/food to build up that industry.
Yeah, but how often would someone from NY for example hate someone from Massachusetts who came to NY as a 'migrant' for taking their job?
Many of those 'non-Cantonese' can speak Cantonese too. Whether the Min speakers from Chaozhou for example become the target of a potential Fujian state is another question.
40% Javan is hardly a very homogenous state. It still worked mostly. Nevertheless, the point I was trying to make is that the Indonesians, Malaysians etc essentially have the same official language but are nonetheless divided because they have a different colonial history. The fragmented states(and ethnicities) that make up these nations based their individual identities on having the same colonial master rather than similar cultures. It was the experience of working together under the same master that caused the different peoples to overcome their differences and live together.
Refer to above.
Pro-China sentiment was largely the result of refugees from the mainland fleeing to HK in the 1950s who were certainly anti-CCP as opposed to anti-China. Prolonged separation eventually leads to separate identities.
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Especially as such a Guangxi could develop a Zhuang-based national identity, especially as there are enough Zhuang for the PRC IOTL to make it an “autonomous region”.
Which is why I think a Ukraine/Russia/Belarus scenario is more likely where the various Chinese ethnicities all claim to be the only legitimate heirs to Ancient China much like how Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all claim to be the only true heirs to Medieval Rus yet are very much different peoples despite their similar languages and cultures.
Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Inferior or not, numbers still count for a lot (ex. Korean War).
Unless every European power has a similar tech lead and numbers as 1950s America, I think the Chinese will do better than you think.
Also, the war in Vietnam lasted all of 3 weeks and was more a PR show than anything else because the Chinese feared that anything more serious would actually get the Soviets involved in the north. So I wouldn't count it as indicative of what a proper war would look like (unless, of course, Russia is allied with one of the separatist states). Also, the Chinese won all three battles of the war and the Vietnamese forces are reported to have been in poor condition by the end, so I'm pretty sure they would've actually 'won' given another 3-6 months.
Ground units which were ferried to the place by sea, and air units which were relayed there by aircraft carriers.
Had the British decided to send the Royal Navy down to fight a proper war, they would've been landing on Java, Sumatra and Borneo for certain.
I don't think the Japanese and later Soviets built up Manchurian industry with proceeds from their non-existent holdings in South China.
No, but a guy from NYC will despise an Appalachian, mock his speech relentlessly and treat him like he's stupid. I've seen it.
Neither is the Russian Empire / USSR, and we all know how they ended up.
40% seems to be the lower limit for safe, stable empires.
Get down to or below 30%, like in Yugoslavia, and you start to get problems. And frankly, I doubt India will be in one piece by 2123 AD.
For that to happen, you need South China to all be under one master's rule, which is much more difficult to achieve than with India, both because all the European powers were vying for control and each took a slice, and because it would be rather hard for one European empire in particular to manage to hold all that territory down and/or be willing to do so. Barring a few horrific examples, 19th century empires were mostly about prestige and were built to be administered as cheaply as possible with as little fuss as possible, and Qing China is more urbanized, more mercantile and more populous than any of their other colonies save India, so it would definitely not be cheap or easy to run.
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Most of them did have a similar tech level as Korean War era America, and they will be aided by locals who, if they underwent an ethnogenesis as proposed, would fight tooth and nail. They will likely also have a geographical advantage in knowing the terrain better. Rump China without Southern China, possibly without even Manchuria(given how much foreign powers wanted that land) will likely have trouble feeding itself let alone launch the kind of invasion you propose. Where is it going to find the men to overwhelm individual states when it's gonna garrison a much longer border with so many individual states around with a much-reduced population, tax base and industry? What you are proposing is Northern China with less than half of OTL China's GDP, population, and industry(probably a third) going against a coalition of newly independent Chinese states who may be backed by foreign powers in the form of weapons and men. Odds are really stacked against this ‘China’.
Much of this discussion is pure speculation, but there are many factors to warfare other than numbers. There are more than enough wars where people have lost despite the superiority in men and materials. Achieving territorial conquests in modern wars in particular required sustained will power post-territorial conquest.
The Chinese lost massive amounts of men and material for the few inches of ground they got. It's a good indication that they would be screwed if they actually went for the whole country. War is a lot more complicated than we have more men and we will win. Assuming you actually conquered the land, you will somehow have to eradicate the guerrillas.
The navy is inapplicable in this war scenario as we have already established. It would mainly be a ground and air war.
And you somehow still think that they would have access to what limited industries Manchuria had given how screwed they are in the scenario proposed, and that the individual ex-Chinese colonies somehow would not have industries of their own? Assuming Manchuria isn't taken and developed by a foreign power, where is this Northern China gonna fund its' industries from? Traditionally the Northern economy was very much subsidized by the South since the Song Dynasty.
Do they speak a different language most people don't understand a word of though? Most HKers don't even want to speak the mainlander language.
A state like an independent Guangdong certainly will have your 40% Cantonese. It's not really that essential however given the cultural similarity of the people there, and how most people can speak Cantonese anyway. Like I have been saying, the joint colonial experience will likely bind people together as they have in the Indonesia archipelago.
Your opinion. Have to disagree with this.
I don't think you are getting the point I was trying to make..... Indonesia and Malaysia were both ran under the 'cheap' model you proposed, with most civil servants being local elites or even royalty. Unlike singular territorial units like Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejian etc who were ruled as unified territorial units for nearly a millenia, places like Indonesia, Malaysia etc were territorial units constructed by colonial powers. Yet, the elites of these regions learned to work with each other despite more pronounced cultural differences and a history of fragmentation because they went to the same schools and underwent similar colonial experiences. Despite actually sharing the same language however, Malaysia and Indonesia did not unite because they did not share the same colonial experience, most notably because the elites of these two countries went to completely different schools. Elites from Guangdong, Fujian,Zhejian etc will likely have a longer history of working with each other given them have served the same provincial government for over a millenia, and if these regions are colonized by different foreign powers, their different colonial experiences will likely segregate them. That is the real point here. Nationalism will be based on joint history under different masters instead of purely language differences.
I have to disagree. In my personal opinion, it is precisely because they are more urbanized and mercantile that will make them cheaper and easier to run. Being more urbanized meant that most of the population is concentrated in select areas. Less need to spread out security units to patrol areas. Being mercantile meant that the economy is sufficiently developed to tax.
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Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
It's alright, you can say "Japan and Russia." I won't mind.
Which a hypothetical North China can obviously be assumed to be desperately short on, since its two most likely forms are either as a communist state bent on spreading the revolution no matter how many gulags it takes, or as a nationalist empire attempting to reunite China and claim the Mandate of Heaven.
That makes sense.
63k Chinese casualties vs. 62k Vietnamese, by Western estimates.
Not exactly a horrific ratio, especially given the fact that China has a lot more more men and Vietnam does not. Again, numbers really do play a big role here. Yes, war is undoubtedly more complicated than raw numbers, but it's not like they can be ignored as hard as you're attempting to, or that they don't influence other factors of the war like military production.
And yes, the guerrillas are a pain in the ass, but so were the Forest Brothers and they were dealt with too.
Do tell me where that one came up and quote it for me, because up until this post I had no idea that was a given for this thread.
I'm too lazy and I'll be off to sleep soon.
Why not? But more land/people for industry = more industry.
Also, why do you assume the colonial powers will let them develop industry? The British sure didn't with India!
More industry = less colonial dependence on the motherland + less market for European finished goods.
And since southern/coastal China is more exposed to colonial powers, I would expect (much like IOTL) for the south to be divided among several different colonies, whereas the north is one (with maybe a few areas like Manchuria chewed by the Russians), so they have more land/people for more industry.
Simple as.
No, only a mere half do. The rest don't care to because they live in a society where they don't/didn't have to.
The elites in Malaysia were a class of Muslim Malay nobles who'd existed long before the British took over.
The elites in Indonesia were a class of mostly Javan students with European educations who took over the country after Dutch power was broken by Japanese occupation, and whose party ruled Indonesia by military force. They were not the local aristocracy, and they hadn't had any power in the running of the country prior to independence. Again, they were not representative of the many Indonesian islands, but one in particular (Java), and they imposed its will on the other islands in large part to benefit it at their expense.
Malaysia was a limited Malay confederacy, and Indonesia was an expansionist Javan colonial empire. The Malays, especially the Malay kings, had no interest in being subjugated by some eastern foreigners. That, more than anything else, was why they called upon the British for aid in resisting them.
And the fact that they've had a history under mostly one government spanning over a millennium is not going to have any lasting impact, such as the idea that maybe the whole what is broken must unite idea is true and that these foreigners are ultimately just chains keeping them down?
And if the southerners really are the richer half of China, why can't they just unify China under their own banner? It might've never happened before, but there's a first time for everything! Let's get a-conquering!
No, just the opposite.
Less urbanized/mercantile = weak organization = nothing above the level of tribes to worry about, and certainly no well-funded rebellions to fight = just stick a flag in the area, take a selfie with it, and draw lines on a map, and your claim is good to go.
More urbanized = strong organization = you actually have to send administrators to the area + treat local elites with less condescension = more fuss.
Taxing the locals for big profits is not usually part of the plan. Listening to local demands for X and then having to comply because the locals have the economic power to actually make life suck until you give them their wish certainly isn't.
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And they typically correlate with high levels of efficiency and success against opponents that outnumber them in terms of population, GDP and industries.…….on top of having foreign support.…….right... We all saw that happening in the current [redacted] war, right….[Redacted] totally won because they were nationalistic and had greater amounts of men, industries and war material compared to [redacted]…..
…….[redacted] earlier, I can only oblige. Also, the type of communist/nationalist empires totally wouldn’t cause the democracy/capitalist vs autocracy/communist tensions you yourself said initially drove the wedge between HKer and Chinese identity in the first place…..
A guerilla movement over the size of Southern China would be something that's unprecedented. That is if you can deal with the conventional armies of the various Southern States and their foreign backers in the first place.
I was comparing it to the rest of the world. The Soviets also infamously ransacked the fuck out of Manchuria and carried a crazy amount of industrial equipment back to the USSR during their occupation of it. Kind of irrelevant given this rump China would be so broken that they wouldn't have the money to develop Manchuria like Japan did even if they somehow retained it.
This rump China won't just be fighting a couple of Southern Chinese states but foreign powers as well who most certainly have much higher industrial capacity than the Japanese Empire at its height( possibly said Japanese Empire as well).
Southern China would be where most of the industry is if we are going by more people for industry=more industry. You are somehow assuming that the various Chinese states will not band together nor would the foreign powers get involved. If either of them happens, it would be a really nasty fight. If there is ethnogenesis like we proposed, they will also be fighting guerrilla movements. To begin with you need the leader of rump China needs to be confident that he/she is able to avoid all of this or actually being capable of overcoming all of them with rump China’s limited resources.
A lot of British war material from both world wars originated from India......
Where is the money to develop the industries? The North was infamously dependent on Southern foodstuff/money during the late Qing era. This Northern China would also presumably be extremely closed off in order to be invulnerable to sanctions (in your own words), so how does it get the foreign funding and expertise to develop its’ industries?
It's still a point that nobles from previously warring states somehow found it amicable to work with one another following common rule by the British. Politics based on regionalism is a cornerstone in traditional Chinese politics as well. Political factions were typically based around the politicians' province of origin. Why would the elite of Zhejiang for example want to be ruled by those of Fujian, Beijing etc?
It happened before under the Ming Dynasty. Imperialistic projects are typically very expensive. The main reason why it only happened once before had to do with the fact that the elites didn't want to be taxed to do it. Look at the various Southern Dynasties during the Northern-Southern Dynasty period and Yue Fei's Northern expedition, they had the momentum to reunify China at various points, but the Southern elites typically left promising campaigns unsupported because they didn't really care about the North.The Southern elites were mainly interested in defending their provinces of origin instead of going on an offensive.
Much of the colonial empires' difficulties were around fighting uprisings in rural areas. In general, they had little difficulty controlling the urban areas. In the anti-colonial uprisings after WW2 for example, the cities tend to be the last places the colonial powers controlled.
Taxing locals for big profits is very much part of the plan in places like India. Taxes from Bengal etc for example were a major part of John company’s revenues. There is a good reason why India is the cash cow of the empire and everything else is built around it.
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Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Which typically correlate with the ability to continue trading 1:1 in a fight, viz. ~60k Chinese casualties vs. ~60k Vietnamese casualties in 3 months, or the ability to survive trading lopsidedly in a fight.
Edit: as for all the stuff you added in the meantime, I wonder why you're leaning on the most incompetently-waged war in living memory, which had all the skill and planning of "we'll be back home in time for Christmas" in 1914, to make your case.
A guerilla movement over the size of Southern China would be a figment of your imagination, because it's simply never happened before.
Resistance of any meaningful scale is rare when the entire country is overrun, as the example of the French Resistance in WW2 shows.
In cases where there is such resistance, like in WW2 Serbia, that resistance has not been pivotal to the course of the war.
Funny, I didn't know this area had more people in it than this area.
If this map is any good, the ratio between these was around 8:5 in the 1930s, and 11:6 in the 1950s. So the north was actually almost twice as populous.
And if you're thinking "Aha, but the south has all the industry, so it will definitely win!", just wait until you get to the bottom.
The south in that time had much lower population density than the north(*) and all their dynasties suffered from chronic political instability, coups and infighting among the aristocracy and usually within the royal families as well. That was the true reason why they continued to fail. In fact, the latter reasons are also why the northern dynasties constantly failed as well. Never-ending coups do not make for stable conquests.
What you are doing is beyond charitable, it is actively trying to distort early events to suit your narrative of later events.
(*): during the Sui era, the north-south ratio was 3:1, and would remain that way until the introduction of Champa rice in the Song era raised the local population density in the south versus the wheat-growing north.
Whereas you seem to assume that the south Chinese states are stronger than the north and that foreign powers are guaranteed to get involved.
If that is what's required for your scenario to occur, then I suppose your southern nations must also be suffering from political instability like the Southern dynasties were, in order for them to not just conquer the north.
Mostly food, then cotton/jute/etc, then simply raw manpower (with inferior weapons, ofc).
All the industrial materials coming to Britain came from America.
This is incorrect. The vast majority of Africa was very easy to control, in part because it didn't require anything more than light control.
For example, the British made a deal with the emirates of Northern Nigeria that they would not intrude on their internal affairs and keep missionaries out of their lands in exchange for their continued submission after the British defeat of the Sokoto Caliphate. They accepted, which meant that the British didn't have to keep a large military presence there.
In fact, in 1900, all of British West Africa combined required around 10k troops to police around 450k square miles and ~15 million people.
By contrast, the British Raj required around 260k troops to police around 1.8 million square miles and ~290 million people.
In other words, there were x26 troops in India for x4 land and x19 people. Reason: a more organized population, lesser tech disparity and a lot more cities.
Might that have anything to do with this idea?
1. Get the local economy to produce cheap raw products to send back home.
2. Motherland processes raw products into finished goods, its merchants sell back the finished goods to the locals at prices that drive local artisans out of business, thus hooking the colony on the motherland's goods. Deindustrialize the area to make sure local stuff can't compete in prices.
3. Keep the locals in an internal trading loop where they can't buy anything from your competitors, and anything they buy has to first go through your hands.
4. Profit for you, misery for the natives.
This economic model was what the Swadeshi movement was fighting against, and why the act of spinning one's own cloth was a major focus of the Indian independence movement.
Where in that process does the southern coast acquire any meaningful industry? That's the neat part: it doesn't. The colonizer nation really doesn't want that, because it will mean the locals will have alternatives to just buying their overlord's goods at cost to their own economy. And this has long-term consequences for the economy even after the nation gets independence. That's why Nigeria and India, two of the wealthiest postcolonial nations, still base most of their economy on resource exports and textiles.
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They traded that for the 3 months for a small amount of territory. How long would China be willing to CONTINUE trading that? The Vietnamese have no problems continuing trading that ratio as evidenced in their war with the US. Communism does not mean that the public will continue tolerate such exchanges when you are the invader. The Soviet union had to bail out of Afghanistan despite losing far less and killing far more Mujahideens.And TLDR, 60k Chinese casualties in 3 months shows that they sucked. They lost more men in 3 months than the US/France lost over years.
So tell me, which other Imperialist nation since 1945 has successfully waged a war of conquest when the defending nation has foreign support?
Vietnam? Afghanistan? Algeria? Indonesia against the Dutch?Keep cherry picking your data. In your own examples, how long would the Germans have been able to keep staying for years to decades without being attacked? They would have to exterminate the population if they have to stop the bleeding ulcer.
By your own 1933 map’s calculation, the South had a population of around 268.42 mil while the North had a population of roughly 165 million.I was being generous by counting outlying areas like Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia,Machuria, Tibet etc as part of the North. In your second map, the Southern population was around 338.53 vs 238.36 million.The South was not exactly twice as populous, but the North was certainly dwarfed in terms of overall population.I strongly suggest you actually run the math first before writing.
**Disclaimer I calculated the Huai River regions and Sichuan as part of the South in alignment with traditional definition. I wonder if that is the difference in our calculations?
You do realise that for a significant part of the period, few of the Northern regimes actually controlled the entire North? The Sixteen Kingdoms period saw multiple kingdoms throughout Northern China and in the actual Southern-Northern Dynasty itself, Northern China was divided between Northern Zhou and Northern Qi whereas the South was relatively united compared to the North? There were several occasions during the period where the South could have potentially retaken the North. Zu Ti’s expedition saw the Jin General Zu Ti retaking and holding Henan with a handful of volunteers raised in Henan until his death(while the rest of the South refused to grant him substantial aid). Liu Yu’s expedition retaking all of China except for Hebei and Shanxi, with the expedition stopping because nobles to the south were causing trouble. To say nothing of Yue Fei’s expedition when the Southern Song Dynasty was already wealthier and more populated than the North combined. What was the source of the coups and political instability? It was the aristocracy’s unwillingness to be taxed or controlled by the crown.
Because the Southern states would be on the defence. In the Age of Nationalism, it is far more difficult to conquer and occupy territories, especially with the kind of modern international order where such behaviors are typically punished.`Furthermore, if your communist/nationalist empire takes over, the various foreign powers' interests and investments in their former colonies likely would be seized.
And ammunition, artillery etc too.
“Author and researcher Madhusree Mukerjee, who has served on the board of editors of Scientific American, writes in Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II, that the “colony’s entire output of timber, woollen textiles and leather goods, as well as three quarters of its steel and cement, were diverted to the defence of the British Empire. India was, next to Britain, the largest contributor to the Empire’s war”.
During the war, India provided 196.7 million tonnes of coal, 6 million tonnes of iron ore and 1.12 million tonnes of steel. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, Volume 2, says: “35 per cent of India’s annual cotton textile production, amounting to about 5,000,000,000 yards, went into creating war material.”
The United Nations’ Food & Agricultural Organisation concurs: “The first era in deforestation was shortly after absorption into the British Empire. The second major deforestation was in the 1940s with demands of World War II.” As for armaments, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, Volume 2, says: “During World War II, India produced more than 50 kinds of arms and ammunition and supplied 75 per cent of its own wartime requirements.”
As per the source here:
http://www.indiandefencereview.com/spotlights/how-india-bailed-out-the-west-in-world-war-ii/ “
Refer to above. The world wars forced the British to eventually build up war industries to help support the war effort.
The idea that rural areas are easier to control is false. Look at the French, Dutch and British decolonization wars in Indochina, Malaysia, Algeria etc. The Europeans controlled the cities to the very end, it was the rural areas that they could not control and were forced to eventually leave. On the paper, the British may have looked like they kept fewer troops to control Nigeria compared to the Raj, but how much profit did they actually get from Nigeria as opposed to the Raj? Having fewer personnel automatically means that your control is MUCH lower. You are effectively outsourcing your control to local power brokers like you mentioned in exchange for a lower share of profits. If you actually want to profit, you need stronger control.Lower population=less people to tax. Being mercantile and urbanized as opposed to rural also meant that people have far more money to buy European trade goods.
Once again, you are also refusing to explain how Northern China is gonna remain afloat after losing its’ most profitable breadbaskets or build up industries assuming they somehow remained afloat.
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