WI: Japan in the 50's...

Say that the Kwantung Army never invaded Manchuria. Also say that Japan, although realizing it would never reach the self-sufficiency needed to become a true great power, decided to forgo campaigns of expansion in Asia, limiting itself to what it had in Korea, its economic interests in Manchuria and the other territories it already held before the OTL invasion of Manchuria.

So then, no war with China, no occupying European colonies, no Pearl Harbor.

However, events in Europe go on much like OTL, though the United States gets in on the war slightly later. Without a Pacific Front, the U.S can use her full might on the Germans, so the Allies defeat her somewhat sooner than OTL (I can't think of an exact year really. 1943-4 maybe?)

Anyway, what I'm really wondering is this: It's the end of the Second World War. Europe is in ruins. China is in civil war. The U.S is now unquestionably the world's superpower, with the U.S.S.R not far behind. What does Japan do now? Where does she start looking for friends and allies? How will she respond to decolonization in Asia? Where would her economy turn?

And she still has an amazingly strong navy and army. What happens to them?
 
I am thinking that, worried about the Soviets and the Chinese communists, Japan seeks an alliance with the US. Such an alliance would be controversial in the US, but the strategic advantage offered by the Japanese empire would be attractive.
 

abc123

Banned
Well, that POD offers a lot of new questions:

1) what will happen in China? Will KMT be able to crush CCP and take control of China? What will be Soviet policy towards China and Mao?

2) Will Japan be able to keep Korea under their rule? This is connected with previous question- because if China manages to take control over their territory, they will anull any Japanese economical interests in Manchuria, and also Japanese rule over Korea is also threatned. Also, will Soviets attack Japan in Korea?

3) Will colonialism in Asia last longer because of absence of war there?
 
Without the Japanese invasion Chiang would have been able to concentrate all his resources on fighting the Communists. Whether the KMT can have eventually achieve a decisive victory is a good question, they came close at several points, most notably in the encirclement campaigns but Mao and the other leaders always managed to get away and pop up elsewhere. I certainly doubt that Mao could have beaten the KMT without the Soviet invasion of Manchuria so the Civil War may have dwindled into an insurgency but with the government holding the upper hand.

Without a Pacific Theatre and the humiliation in Malaya Britain is going to be stronger post war, this means a later start to decolonisation, continued supplies of Burmese rice probably prevents the 1943 Bengal Famine reducing the pressure on Britain to leave India. They will eventually go by about perhaps 1950 but given more time to reach a political settlement between Congress and the Muslim League partition may be avoided. IIRC Chiang wanted SE Asia to be a Chinese sphere of influence but as some of the nations in that region have long running spats with China and with longer lasting colonialism, things could have been rather interesting.

Also if China grows stronger more quickly without the insanity of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution to hold it back then it is going to want to re-establish dominance over Korea and there could have been a war with Japan at some point.
 
For all the faults of the communists, one thing they did manage to solve was the cronyism and regional warlord problem that had been plaguing China ever since the end of the Qing Dynasty, if not earlier.

While I don't think that Mao will be able to win, because of the fact that Mao has a seemingly attractive ideology that is geared toward peasants it'll be hard for the KMT to eliminate them, if at all. Thus, these problems will remain for China in a world without a Pacific war.

Japan will most definitely stay in Korea throughout the 1950s. One way they could counter Chinese moves for influence in Korea might be to secretly continue to support the CCP in Manchuria, not enough to give them the ability to overthrow the KMT but enough to keep the KMT focused inward.

If the Soviets underwent a long, brutal war with Nazi Germany like OTL, and with Japan having not faced imminent destruction by 1945, the Soviets probably would hold off. Again, an uneasy Japanese-US Alliance is the result since the US would need Japan as a bulwark to hold off against communism. However, that would also mean that they'd have to somehow arrange the KMT and the Japanese to become allies, which would be a fundamental contradiction, and since Chinese nationalism in general was based a great deal upon anti-Japanese rhetoric, it would weaken the political strength of the KMT and only help the communists.

As for Great Britain, I think Indian Independence is more or less inevitable by the 50s at the latest, or else they'll face a massive revolt, and the fact is that they'd still be weakened by fighting Nazi Germany. Once India falls, Southeast Asia becomes untenable for the British, open to both Chinese and Japanese influence.

Vietnam is also a point of contension, if we're working on the assumption that France was still defeated as in OTL. Again, both Japan and China will be working for influence and trying to overthrow the French colonial government. Both Japan and China could offer Vietnamese independance as a price for their cooperation with the US in the fight against the USSR.
 
I don't think that the Soviet-Japanese war is possible ITTL. After all, there's China between them.

That said, to prevent Japanese attack on Manchuria, you'd need to curtail rise of militarism in Japan.
 
Communism would not win in China short of a Soviet invasion, but it might stick around and cause a whole host of problems for quite awhile. Without the war in Manchuria, Zhang Xueliang might continue his father's legacy as the strongman of the North and if he is still able to build the good relationship with Jiang Jieshi like in OTl, this could form a good starting point for peacefully integrating the entire northern part of China into the RoC.

As for long-term problems with the KMT such as corruption and cronyism, they won't just disappear, but as more obvious, elephant-in-the-room issues get cleared up, the KMT will inevitably be there to stay. Making no real ground, Mao will find himself either unable to maneuver endlessly (both in a political or military sense) and get defeated by the Nationalists in the late 30s or spend the rest of his life in constant hiding while his group of radicals loses more and more support over time and becomes little more than an obnoxious political cult with guns.
 
I would think that Japan would want some influence in China, and would actively support one side or the other in the civil war. To support neither leaves her naked.

Maybe they would support someone ambitious in the KMT over Chiang, to undermine or remove him, and then be their friend?

With greater US involvement in Europe, the USSR may emerge with both fewer losses and fewer gains from the war. In this scenario, Germany's fate is less clear since it may never be partitioned or may be permanently partitioned under the aegis of the West

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
This would be a pre-1933 POD wouldn't it?

So there are really a lot of butterfly qustions to be setteld before this really can be discussed:

Will there even be Communists left in China as a millitarry force?
What (if any )involvement has the US in WW2?
-aid to China?
-aid to the USSR?
-aid to Britain?
-millitarry involvement in Europe/Aisa?
How long does WW2 last?
-Is the Wehrmacht able to take Moscow in 1941 if, without PEarl Harbor, Stalin has to keep troups in the East in case of a Japanese Attack?
Does Japan enter WW2 on the allies side?
and so on...
 
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