WI: China was never communist or the kouomingtang won?
- Thread starter Karlmarx900
- Start date
I think the general consensus is that it would be pretty awful but not as bad as Mao through until the 1970s. You're not likely to see an economic boom like Japan at least until then, and there's a strong risk that China just ends up a semi-industrial country like India after that rather than getting into the big money. For instance, I can imagine that if the Americans sunk their teeth into the Chinese economy like they were always planning to (the Open Door Policy reaches its end-state if the Nationalists win on the back of US support) you could have English getting popular in China way earlier and there being loads of Chinese call centres instead of Indian ones. If Chiang doesn't get his act together, he may end up reliant on Western backing and investment to hold on, leaving China a peripheral power come the 21st century primarily preoccupied with Indian (and Russian) rivalries.
Then there's the idea, which would make a pretty interesting scenario, in which Nationalist China basically takes over the nonaligned movement and plays the US and USSR off each other while building its power via a mixed economic model which is more or less a precursor to OTL Chinese state capitalism. In this scenario, you might see the Viet Minh getting Chinese backing anyway, just to insulate Indochina from foreign influence while making America really uncomfortable. Think an ideologically flipped version of Yugoslavia, right down its baptism of fire in a homegrown resistance movement and a general running the show. It might even collapse in an especially grisly style once Chiang dies.
In any case, Kim Il-Sung probably isn't sticking around for long.
Then there's the idea, which would make a pretty interesting scenario, in which Nationalist China basically takes over the nonaligned movement and plays the US and USSR off each other while building its power via a mixed economic model which is more or less a precursor to OTL Chinese state capitalism. In this scenario, you might see the Viet Minh getting Chinese backing anyway, just to insulate Indochina from foreign influence while making America really uncomfortable. Think an ideologically flipped version of Yugoslavia, right down its baptism of fire in a homegrown resistance movement and a general running the show. It might even collapse in an especially grisly style once Chiang dies.
In any case, Kim Il-Sung probably isn't sticking around for long.
In regards to being reliant on western support, I don't think so. Assuming the Nationalists won they are not going to turn the clock back to the early 1900s. The Century of Humiliation was well Humiliating. Which obviously leads to your point about China being the leader of the non-Aligned Movement working well. I figure that Jiang would go that route. Not just to avoid being reliant upon the West again but also as a way to avoid angering the Soviets too much as with China not Communist that would indicate a change in priorities for the Soviets who now have a threat to their southern Border. This of course could lead to conflict and tension with the Americans as the Chinese play the Soviets and Yanks off one another.
As for Korea, it will be united under the South. Since Mao sending soldiers to reinforce North Korea is the entire reason why they remained divided. I can see Tibet being annexed again if they won the conflict or turned into a puppet state. I am not sure on Turkestan though, since I can see it becoming independent as a soviet backed puppet state in the region or conquered.
I don't think China would explode into violence with the death of Jiang though since most of that violence had already occurred. I don't think that there are many who wish to relieve the Warlord era again in the 70s. There wasn't such an outburst of violence following Mao's death in 76, I can't imagine when Jiang died in 75 that would change things he was leader.
One thing I do wonder though what difference would there be in cultural movements inside China with a Nationalist Victory? I like the idea of their being more Chinese call centers and tech industry compared to OTL but what else. I wonder if we might see an earlier Hanfu Movement come about, no idea how popular or successful it would be though in this timeline(or in our own)
This seems doubtful. The Chinese just defeated the Communists in TTL, backing the Communists elsewhere seems begging for trouble. He would play the two superpowers against each other no doubt but actually backing a Communist faction is probably a bridge too far for Chaing.
My guess is he would back an anti-colonial and anti-communist group or at least noncommunist. Who they would back if anyone, in Vietnam, is anyone's guess but I doubt it would be the Viet Minh. There were more than enough noncommunist anticolonial movements out there in the world for them to back to gain influence.
Would the nationalists implement a one child policy like the communists did? If not Chinas population would be around 1.8B today instead of 1.4B
kernals12
Banned
Political instability was probably the biggest barrier to China's growth in the interwar years, with the communists out of the way, China would probably take off.
The Korean war ends in December 1950 with no Chinese assistance to North Korea, and Syngman Rhee gets to rule over a united Korean Peninsula.
Life is much more difficult for North Vietnam without assistance from China. Instead, China will provide training and arms for anti-communist guerillas, and if they don't make it possible for Saigon to take over the North, they will wreak havoc.
Democracy would probably arrive by 1990, as it did IOTL in South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
The Korean war ends in December 1950 with no Chinese assistance to North Korea, and Syngman Rhee gets to rule over a united Korean Peninsula.
Life is much more difficult for North Vietnam without assistance from China. Instead, China will provide training and arms for anti-communist guerillas, and if they don't make it possible for Saigon to take over the North, they will wreak havoc.
Democracy would probably arrive by 1990, as it did IOTL in South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
kernals12
Banned
The one-child policy only applied to urban families, of which there weren't a lot of. People in the countryside could have 2 kids.
Nationalist China sees no Korean War, no economic stimulus to Japan which happened due to American investment in Japan as a base for said war and as a bulwark against China and Korea slowing Japan's ascent, no Vietnamese War likely preserving trust in government and very likely aborting Nixon's comeback as well as distrust in government, stunting hard drug use (due to soldiers returning from Vietnam), the American military-industrial complex never kicks off as, with no Korean War the US military believes air power and missiles are enough allowing more money for domestic projects while stunting the American military...
It'd be a corrupt technocratic oligarchy. Probably still bans winnie the pooh references online.
THe big differences would be 1) no one-child policy 2) China as a source of immigration for the west/other places from the 50s instead of wha,t the 1980s and 1990s
THe big differences would be 1) no one-child policy 2) China as a source of immigration for the west/other places from the 50s instead of wha,t the 1980s and 1990s
Also no Great Leap Forward and no Cultural Revolution and no idiocies like trying to make backyard steel mills. Chiang might not have been the best leader out there, by a long shot, but he was still miles ahead of Mao.
IIRC isn't Macao basically China's Vegas or Monaco filled with lots of casinos? I can easily imagine that staying the same in this scenario.
Hong Kong is a different story. IIRC didn't it get quite a number of refugees from the PRC following their victory? Obviously that wouldn't be the case, so maybe its not quite as rich as it is in our time line? I do imagine that assuming China democratizes here then there wouldn't be any conflict between Mainland China and Hong Kong.
How did they deal with Goa?
kernals12
Banned
That's an interesting thought. It would have a big impact for the economies of Washington state (Boeing), Connecticut (Sikorsky), and Southern California (Douglas and Lockheed).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Goa
Hong Kong could be justified as a bulwark against communism in the cold war. If the US is cultivating China as a postwar ally, I think it's very likely that Portugal and the UK would be encouraged to speed up the pace of return to native rule quickly. If not, China could force the issue rather easily, and it's not going to be worth the fight to defend a few city-states when Chinese markets are already open to foreign trade.
So how might that affect the cities development? as I mentioned above, I can still see Macau being the casino city and china's vegas but what about Hong Kong how does that change?
Hong Kong has always existed as a gateway to China with competent administration so you don't have to deal with the clowns on the mainland. When the clowns become competent the reason for Hong Kong goes away.
It would still be an important port, and a good interface point for China and the Anglophone world. But I doubt it receives any special treatment. Frankly, the corruption problem that the city suffered from historically probably doesn't get resolved.
No Kowloon Walled City? Better for the residents, though I am fond of Kowloon as a historical curiosity.
I'd say it would be just as bad as Máo, but for different reasons - less the Great Leap Forward and more of the Cultural Revolution-era Máo. My main suspicion, because of how the GMD under Sun thought it would be a good idea to copy the Soviet model of government but in a model appropriate to China's circumstances, is that the more of the Mainland the ROC retains during the Civil War, the more it begins to resemble the PRC, with the GMD in the role of the CCP. Yet even that does not begin to capture the essence of the GMD during the Nanjing decade, where the Nationalist regime was just as bad as the Beiyang government in having direct control over part of China and in its factionalism, which the GMD would want to re-emulate. Among other things, though not as obviously fascist-looking as before, the New Life Movement could come back with a vengeance as a way of cementing Jiang's control, and it is here that I'd find my Cultural Revolution analog as a way to prevent the young from becoming attracted to Communist temptation. Furthermore, a ROC that wins the Chinese Civil War would have a triumphalist streak (probably bordering on arrogance) that would basically lead the Party to believe that doing nothing to resolve the underlying causes as to why people were discontent with GMD rule. I'd expect more of the same of the purges and trying to eliminate any challenges to Jiang's rule. In that case, Jiang would ITTL basically be a variant of a Qing dyansty Emperor until his death, with Jiang Jingguo as the obvious successor in this case. (But of course how would the head of the secret police try to justify his claim of being President of the Republic of China?) The 1947 Constitution - the period of "constitutional government" under the GMD's ideology - would just be a figleaf for a de facto dictatorship similar to Mexico's 1917 Constitution and the reality of the bad old days of the PRI, or the dictatorships of Salazar or early Franco, or for that matter something similar to Pakistan considering how Jiang's real power base was in the Army. It would be justified with the doctrine of dǎnnguó, or the party-state, which could define everything including its particular its particular brand of socialism and its harassment of Shanghai merchants.
As a corollary to this line of thinking is my response to this post:
Since the ROC was similar to the PRC in denouncing the unequal treaties and demanding that all former colonies eventually come back to Nanjing's control, as well as an extension of the elimination of any challenge to Jiang's rule, Macao and Hong Kong would be doomed. Of the two, HK would be the top prize, considering that it was the territory itself that was emblematic of the Century of Humiliation as a result of the Opium Wars. Retaking HK thus would be a top priority of a triumphalist ROC, damn the consequences - and no special status for Hong Kong for you, with any resistance to GMD rule treated much like how the GMD treated any other challenges to its authority (with Taiwan's White Terror instructive in this case, up to and including suppressing Cantonese). Macao, OTOH, is a different kettle of fish - since Macao in the grand scheme of things was a backwater after HK's ascendance (there's a reason why Macao is better known for its gambling), and is under a similar dictatorship under Salazar, it might get away with more than Hong Kong. In that case, more of Macao's "Meditterasian" culture, up to and including Patuá (aka the Macanese language) and the territory's particular version of the Guangzhou dialect of Cantonese (with minor differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, primarily from Portuguese and Malay), could be retained. As a result, Macao's handover to Nanjing's rule, similar to OTL, would be smoother since Macao - despite also being a major beneficiary of unequal treaties (despite existing prior to them existing) and hence a target for reclamation - is not as much a perceived "threat", though after the Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution) it might be seen as such (unless Salazar finds a way, à la Franco, to bring back the Portuguese monarchy as a continuation of the Estado Novo - though even then, much like Juan Carlos in Spain, that would probably not be the actual result - which would mean the Carnation Revolution would not exist in the first place).
Hence, it would ultimately in the 1970s and 1980s that things could change, but more like how democratization on Taiwan IOTL (and, if he was correct, what Zhao Ziyang's ideas were for the Mainland) was supposed to play out, which would be basically Singapore writ large, with a heavy dose of "Asian values" rhetoric, hence the GMD as the party who would win election every time. An opposition would be permitted to exist, but it would be marginal and unable to mount any effective challenge to GMD rule (though not without attempting to try), at least during the 1980s and 1990s - the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis would be the force that creates a genuine democratic opening, or one of the first opportunities to do so, so it would only be in this century ITTL that the GMD would finally be forced to cede power to a democratic opposition (and without HK as a safety valve for all that pressure, it would have to be in this manner since the GMD basically would monopolize all access to power - you could almost take OTL criticisms of Chinese Communist rule, change some minor details, and pass it off as a carbon copy of TTL's criticism of Nationalist Chinese rule). China as a whole would recover, but it would take a very long time to unpack the GMD's long shadow and legacy.
Possible, but I don't see English becoming that popular in China ITTL, even with US backing.
That definitely makes sense; the ROC under Jiang before the move to Taiwan was not really all that enamored with the US, so this would be something totally within Jiang's character.
In that case, the Việt Minh would be forced to merge with the VNQDD - the GMD's satellite party in Vietnam - as a way of neutralizing Communist influence. The GMD's influence would even reach as far south as Malaysia.
Makes sense.
Macao's reputation as the "casino city" is probably not assured in this case, given that it only happened as a reaction to its marginalization by Hong Kong (and even then it was very recent - the STDM (Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau), the former gambling monopoly, was only formed in the early 1960s IOTL) and because after gaining power IOTL the PRC banned gambling (under the ROC gambling was largely the purview of the Triads). In this case, Macao would probably remain a backwater, until the ROC invades Hong Kong Goa-style, then merges it back into Bao'an County (though not without a White Terror of its own), in which case Macao could slowly regain its former importance as an economic center and a center for Cantonese language and culture (albeit as one part of Macao's unique society). It could therefore benefit from refugees from Hong Kong as a result of the ROC invasion.