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From Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule:

[There were many] alternatives to the Ming regime that ultimately prevailed in 1368. At the one extreme lay the possibility of continued Mongol rule that would have frustrated all the efforts of all the regional power holders to establish a new order. No doubt there was considerable sympathy for the Mongol cause among the privileged classes. Defection of Yuan officials to the rebel cause were few and cases of loyalty to the Yuan court common.

Scarcity of experienced and educated administrators was a marked feature of the rebel ranks, and the leaders of the insurrections were almost uniformly from modest backgrounds. This fact as much colored the opposite extreme, the possibility that China could fragment into a lattice of small parochial states headed by unsophisticated leaders of limited ambition and perspective. Such interregnums had occurred before in Chinese history, lasting more than three centuries between the Han and Sui, but a mere five decades from the Tang to the Song.

Ming Yuzhen and Zhang Shicheng represent two intermediate possibilities of Han-led imperial states that would have marked a clear break with Mongol rule and a reassertion of the political power of the Chinese heartland. The two regimes differed markedly in their ideological and social orientations. Ming Yuzhen tried to integrate elements of the radical Manichean movement with enough of the Chinese elite tradition to legitimize the Xia [his empire] in the eyes of both the upper and lower strata of society. Had the Han state triumphed, the White Lotus-Maitreya doctrine might have been built into the ideology of the new state.

Zhang Shicheng, by contrast and despite his own modest beginnings, was located in the most developed center of Chinese elite culture among the educated and wealthy families who had fallen from a favored position in the Southern Song to the lower end of the social spectrum in the Yuan. Had Zhang Shicheng prevailed, China might have witnessed a revival of the civil and commercial culture of the Southern Song.

Geographically, and to some extent ideologically, Zhu Yuanzhang was caught between these two alternatives. The formula he developed for rule lay somewhere in between.
Which of these five possible Chinas would have been the most interesting?
  1. Continued Mongol rule: It would certainly be interesting to have even one of the Mongol khanates to linger on as a major power. Several centuries of Mongol rule, I imagine, would also have major effects on Chinese culture, society, and self-perception. Not to mention that the Genghisid Great Khan in Beijing would find it much easier to deal with the nomadic threat...
  2. Fragmented China: Balkanized China is always interesting. Will the war between the small post-Mongol kingdoms lead to China not falling behind militarily, or maximizing fiscal capacity like European states?
  3. Manichean China under Ming Yuzhen: Traditionally, the Three Teachings of Chinese civilization have been Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Ming Yuzhen wanted to get rid of Buddhism except for the worship of the Maitreya Buddha and get rid of Taoism except for the White Lotus cult, and have China accept Four Teachings: Confucianism, Maitreya worship, White Lotus, and freakin' Manichaeism. Extremely interesting.
  4. Mercantile China under Zhang Shicheng: Zhang Shicheng's policies basically sought the restoration of a rich, peaceful, mercantile China like under the Song. Things like foreign trade would have been fully encouraged under Zhang. Possibly a Chinese Industrial Revolution?
  5. Ming China under Zhu Yuanzhang: The insanely crazy China of OTL.
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