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This of course refers to People's Republic of China, mainly during the cold war years. In OTL while they were a major power (if only numerically), their nuclear arsenal was tiny compared to USSR and US, and at the same time their military was hopelessly oboslete due to disastruous maoists policies, which set China back (at least militarily) at least 20 or 25 years.

But what if things are done differently and China's CP leadership adopt a more realistic and technically well anchored development path, and between 1960 and 1980 they rapidly develop their nuclear arsenal in the thousands of warheads, they have large numbers of ICBMs, dozens of SSNs and SSBNs, a more technologically advanced air force, navy and army? This development of course continues into the 1980s, but the major change is the 1960-1980 period.

To jumpstart all this they presumably need better relations with USSR into the fifties and sixties in order to benefit more from soviet technological help, but could they maintain more pragmatic relations with USSR AND benefit from a thaw with the americans and the west into the seventies and eighties, at least as far as the economy is concerned? Would they still get the UN seat, and would they be a part of the START negotiations (actually i can see them asking for the seat if the americans want them in the START treaty)?

What would happen to Taiwan, given that China is far more powerful earlier and one of the big three in this TL? And given this jumpstart, how would China look today, would they be even more powerful militarily and economically, perhaps even surpassing the US in GDP? What this more powerful China could have changed around the world?

No nuclear wars of any kind to be considered of course, don't want to go into that madness.
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