What if the chinese communists accepted the defection of the 19th route army, and Mao Zedong got killed by some reason (from assassination or by accident, it doesn't matter), and with some oportune events they manage to defeat the kuomitang after it suffers a general lose of support among the peasantry. With a communist China holding most of Mainland China (minus Tibet, mongolia, Tuva, Hong Kong, Macau, Shangai and Manchuria), but with a higher support than the kuomitang had from it's people and having effectively crushed the warlords, the chinese communists begin to rearm china to face japan, the sino japanese war happens mostly as otl (but japan advances less) and China finally is unified after japan loses the war against the US
The question is: With a Earlier defeat of the kuomitang, and without Mao and his Greap Leap "forward", how strong would china be in the cold war, and today?
And is those PoDs and butterflies plausibe?
Would this also result in a earlier sino soviet split?