WI: Communist Albania survives to present day and remains in China’s client state?

Just an idea I thought might be fun to explore:

OTL, Hoxha’s Albania split from the USSR camp over Khrushchev's de-Stalinization and instead choose to partner up with Mao’s China in economic and military matters.

Then in 1970s when China’s relations with the West improved Albania and the PRC drifted apart until Beijing finally cut off economic ties in 1978.

Now let’s look at an ATL scenario:

Hoxha breaks off ties with the USSR and makes nice with China but is removed from power/dies before the 1970s. The new leaders continue their ties to China. When Deng Xiaoping starts his reforms in China a similar movement is started in Albania. Obviously, Albania never sees the kind of financial success that China does but a continued influx of Chinese economic & security aid + improvements in the economy men’s that the communist one-party state still retains control over the nation. So Albania never joins NATO and remains an island of communism (even if it’s “Communism with Chinese Characteristics” type) on the Mediterranean.

For China, I don’t think there would be too many changes until we get to 2010s when the nation developed enough reach to set up large-scale projects & military installations in other nations. So instead of (or maybe in addition to) a Chinese naval base in Djibouti you have the PLA set up shop in European Albania.

How would this scenario impact the Yougoslav Conflict in 1990s/early 2000s? Does a “Denganist” Albania have any aspirations for Kosovo?

What does crime in Europe look like with no/much reduced Albania Mafia (which OTL arose from Albanian security personnel having training & access to weapons but little economic opportunities & social upheavals back home)?

How does N.A.T.O./the E.U./America respond to this situation?

How does Russia react to the situation in the Balkans?
 
This makes me shudder. Mao was a moron that lacked realism and overestimated China's strength and status. Being big and populous means squat on the world stage when your country is backwards and decades behind the West and the Soviet bloc. I obviously understand why PRC was isolated from the West but isolation from the Soviet bloc was pure stupidity. Mao needs to swallow his pride, acknowledge China's current weakness, accept Soviet aid and tech transfers, and work quietly to build China up. 1949-1976 was a poop show for China in general.
 
Shadow:

I'm not sure how your post relates to the OP, which is not about what China does or does not do in regards to the Soviet bloc, but rather about what Albania does in response to that.
 
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As for China/Albania, if they stay together, Albania doesn't become the refuge for anti-revisionist marxists disillusioned by the Sino-US alliance that it became in OTL, and we are thus deprived of some highly entertining stalinist fratricide.

re: foreign-policy, I'm not sure what this does to China's Balkans positioning. OTL, Albania in its death rattle still found the energy to polemicize against the Serbs and other antagonists of Albania/Balkan Muslims in the late 80s/early 90s(I read their aligned newspapers at the time; hilarious stuff), but one wonders how far China would be willing to go in backing them up on that score. Russia of course was pro-Serbian, and if China was already back cosying up to Russia at that early a date, they might have balked(pardon the pun) at being identified with that sort of rhetoric.
 
This is from the Trotskyite link in my post above...

There had always been a shading of difference between the foreign policies of Albania and China. Thus Hoxha attacked the Soviet Union not only for its explicit policy of peaceful coexistence with U.S. imperialism, but also for its tacit approval of the Shah’s repressive internal policies in the early and mid-1960’s and for Soviet complicity in the destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965 because of its confidence in the “anti-imperialist” Sukarno. However during its 18 years as a Chinese client the Albanian leadership remained discreetly silent about Mao’s support to Iran’s butcher and the equal responsibility of Peking for the disaster in Indonesia. In a letter addressed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the cessation of Chinese aid last July, the Albanian leadership suddenly revealed that the Chinese have “joined the dance of imperialist alliances and rivalries for the redivision of the world.” The leadership of the CCP is charged with “instigat[ing] imperialist world war,” attempting to extend its influence in the so-called third world and uniting “with the US imperialists and the monopolists of Europe, with fascists and racists, kings and feudal lords, ” etc. , etc. Yet in their letter to the CCP Hoxha & Co. don’t venture an explanation of their repeated oaths of “solidarity” with the counter-revolutionary bureaucrats in Peking who were committing the atrocities which they enumerate.
 
New Zealand's Communist Party split from Moscow over Khrushchev, then split from Beijing over Deng, and throughout the 1980s was insisting that Albania was the One True Socialist Paradise. In TTL, it would denounce Albania too, and just shrivel into its own little weirdo cult.
 
New Zealand's Communist Party split from Moscow over Khrushchev, then split from Beijing over Deng, and throughout the 1980s was insisting that Albania was the One True Socialist Paradise. In TTL, it would denounce Albania too, and just shrivel into its own little weirdo cult.

Yeah, I've read about the kiwis being the outliers among Communist parties during the splits. The more typical path was for the main Communist party to stick with Moscow, with a breakway faction forming a smaller party aligned to China/later Albania.

One interesting aspect of all this was that, in some ways, it was the anti-revisionists who had the more coherent view of reality, since they started with a set belief system, and went along with whoever was continuing to preach that gospel. Whereas the Soviet-fanboys just said that whatever was coming out of Moscow at any given time was the correct line, no matter how much that contradicted the previous Moscow line.

But despite having the more coherent view, the anti-revisionists were definitely the bigger whackjobs. You could actually have a somewhat reasonable conversation with a member of the Communist Party Of Canada; taling to a CPC-MLer, however, was a trip into another dimension.
 

elkarlo

Banned
New Zealand's Communist Party split from Moscow over Khrushchev, then split from Beijing over Deng, and throughout the 1980s was insisting that Albania was the One True Socialist Paradise. In TTL, it would denounce Albania too, and just shrivel into its own little weirdo cult.
But NZ has tons of bunkers being built, so they are the true heirs of Albanian communism.
 
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