WI: Mao dies in 1956

Mort the Reaper

"Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?"

These are the famous words of Chen Yun. And they got me wondering. What if Mao really had died in 1956? Who might succeed him? What course might China take without him? Would China have avoided tragedies and disasters like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution? And what might China look like today?
 

Windows95

Banned
Zhou Enlai might succeed, and would probably make things moderate and not too doctrinaire of Maoist China. He might set moves towards partial privatization of agriculture and self-management in the nationalized sector, with marketization of consumer cooperatives and worker cooperatives in villages.
 

Diez Mil Cantos

Windows95 said:
Zhou Enlai might succeed, and would probably make things moderate and not too doctrinaire of Maoist China. He might set moves towards partial privatization of agriculture and self-management in the nationalized sector, with marketization of consumer cooperatives and worker cooperatives in villages.
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But wouldn't Enlai also have to deal with potential hardliners that still existed in the party?

If Mao died in 56, he would likely end up being seen as a martyr, and while Enlai or others like him would want to make changes (potentially similar to Khrushchev), there would still be Mao loyalists running around.
Additionally, what would China's demographics look like without the OTL famines? Or the lack of rapid industrialization? These would be challenges facing Enlai in 56 that would be really fascinating to examine.
 

GSD310

Mort the Reaper said:
Would China have avoided tragedies and disasters like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution?
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Yes. But on the flipside, no Great Leap Forward and no Cultural Revolution means the impetus is not there for China to try its OTL economic reforms. It would still be a major economy by virtue of size but it’s another question whether or not it will be challenging for superpower status.
 

Sam R.

Windows95 said:
Zhou Enlai might succeed
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Enlai would produce bourgeoisification like Bukharin would. As in he'd fail and a revolution by the peasantry or working class or nomenklatura against him would crush him.

>Enlai was a capitalist roader

Sure and so was Imre Nagy.

Its the 23rd of October and you're spouting this drivel about humanist socialism? The works are there. The CIA sponsored them: they actually wanted to know what was happening and so sponsored left social democrat and humanist socialist authors to write about just these topics. The content is out there, but instead we are provided with confirmation of biases instead of source based reading.

Thanks.

These contributions aren't Ranke: they're a-historical. We're allo-historical here.

yours,
Sam R.
Next tell me '89 wanted capitalism. Oh you've not read about Shanghai in '89?
 

Richard V

Liu Shaoqi was supposed to succeed him. Deng Xiaoping was his right hand man. Zhou Enlai probably sticks with foreign relations. I think the Sino-Soviet Split gets delayed 5-10 years. Economically they might move toward a hybrid system like Yugoslavia. Unknowns would be 1: would TTL Deng be inspired by Lee Kuan Yew to emulate Singapore in the late 70s as OTL, and would the rest of the establishment go along with it? 2: how bad would the power struggle with Maoists be? They’re not going to just roll over.
 
Chris Triangle

Chris Triangle

Richard V said:
Liu Shaoqi was supposed to succeed him. Deng Xiaoping was his right hand man. Zhou Enlai probably sticks with foreign relations. I think the Sino-Soviet Split gets delayed 5-10 years. Economically they might move toward a hybrid system like Yugoslavia. Unknowns would be 1: would TTL Deng be inspired by Lee Kuan Yew to emulate Singapore in the late 70s as OTL, and would the rest of the establishment go along with it? 2: how bad would the power struggle with Maoists be? They’re not going to just roll over.
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Would the Sino Soviet split necessarily happen at all?
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

Mayukh said:
Even if he died of natural causes?
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The Marxist line tends to be one of a victim for the cause, so the go to would be that he worked so hard for the revolution and the people that his body finally gave out.

Natural death is easy for the Communists to spin. Especially youthful death because it's poetic, romantic and dramatic. Marxist biased history is all drama and melodrama. Now, if Mao were eaten by a shark or something, that's a harder spin.

Actually, off topic but that could actually be a fun collaborative game on here: post a way to die and then the next person describes how that'd be worded in Communist propaganda. Or post some Monty Python-esque absurd scenario and likewise how propaganda would spin that.
 
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Richard V

Chris Triangle said:
Would the Sino Soviet split necessarily happen at all?
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I used to think the split was all Mao, but after reading more about it it’s clear both Deng and Zhou also despised Khrushchev. Mao or no Mao, the Chinese Communists would never accept the Brezhnev Doctrine. Mao made the split more acrimonious than it would have but it was inevitable imo. In Europe Yugoslavia, Albania and Romania split from Moscow. China has even more incentive to do so.
 
tonycat77

tonycat77

Banned
Without 60 million deaths, butterflies would be immense, every single one of those people or their offspring could change china.
 

Sam R.

Because Mao was the sole decision maker inside Chinese society, and the rest of the Chinese nomenklatura and Party bear no responsibility for mass preventable death during enclosure and proletarianisation.

Next tell me how the Prince Regent had no Arthur Wellesley and the British bourgeoisie didn't exist?
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Richard V said:
I used to think the split was all Mao, but after reading more about it it’s clear both Deng and Zhou also despised Khrushchev. Mao or no Mao, the Chinese Communists would never accept the Brezhnev Doctrine. Mao made the split more acrimonious than it would have but it was inevitable imo. In Europe Yugoslavia, Albania and Romania split from Moscow. China has even more incentive to do so.
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Deng and Zhou were making their own original unprompted judgments on Khrushchev in the 1960s? They were formulating positions on foreign policy within the CCP at that time? Where you been reading about this?

Funny about the Chinese never accepting the Brezhnev Doctrine. They did bitch and moan about the invasion of Czechslovakia and acted like it, and the associated Brezhnev doctrine was a bad, and relevant-to-China, precedent, but they had not opposed putting down Hungarian counter-revolution in 1956. Why the difference, if not for the bilateral relationship simply having gone to crap already in all other respects?
 

Richard V

raharris1973 said:
Deng and Zhou were making their own original unprompted judgments on Khrushchev in the 1960s? They were formulating positions on foreign policy within the CCP at that time? Where you been reading about this?

Funny about the Chinese never accepting the Brezhnev Doctrine. They did bitch and moan about the invasion of Czechslovakia and acted like it, and the associated Brezhnev doctrine was a bad, and relevant-to-China, precedent, but they had not opposed putting down Hungarian counter-revolution in 1956. Why the difference, if not for the bilateral relationship simply having gone to crap already in all other respects?
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From another thread:
Cregan said:
As others have stated, with Zhou at the helm extreme disasters like the GLF and Cultural Revolution will be avoided. As for the Sino-Soviet split, it might still happen but the viciousness of the break may be ameliorated and be more of a gradual separation.

Also, Zhou gave one of the all time greatest burns to Krushchev:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/6yw85s

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/10/poison-pen/305207/

Khrushchev: The difference between the Soviet Union and China is that I came from coal miners and rose to power from the peasant class. You are a descendant of the feudal privileged Mandarin class. We have nothing in common.

Zhou: Perhaps. But there is this similarity - we are both traitors to our class.

BOOM.
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As for Deng, he made it clear in a 1980 interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci what he thought of Stalin and Khruschev.

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In a separate interview Deng also referred to the Hungarian Uprising as an anti-Communist rebellion aimed at removing Hungary from the Communist bloc and therefore it’s repression was justified. Prague Spring OTOH was an attempt at reform by the Czechoslovakian Communist party. The two Soviet invasions were seen as having entirely different motivations.
 
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ordinarylittleme

ordinarylittleme

Zhou Enlai, Lin Biao or Hua Guofeng will succeed. Certainly the Great Famine is butterflied away due to no Mao terrifying the officials to the point of them lying about figures and putting grain in front of him when he traveled. Sino Soviet split might still happen but perhaps it's less acrimonious, and maybe China gets to keep the Soviet experts, that'll help a LOT later on. There will not be a Cultural Revolution so perhaps their economy develops more slowly.
 
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