WI: No "Popular Front" in China

Suppose that the Soviet Union and the Comintern decide to advise the CCP to avoid affiliation with the KMT and the Soviets stop supporting the KMT in 1926 or something. Would the CCP still succeed in seizing control of the mainland?
 
Eh, no popular front means a different Xi'an incident. No cease-fire from that affair gives Chiang another six months to crush the Communists, which would be quite possible.

To say the least that would make for an interesting post war world.
 
Suppose that the Soviet Union and the Comintern decide to advise the CCP to avoid affiliation with the KMT and the Soviets stop supporting the KMT in 1926 or something. Would the CCP still succeed in seizing control of the mainland?
Doing this completely changes the nature of the CCP. Without the affiliation with the KMT (which, by the way, was the United Front Against Imperialism rather than the Popular Front Against Fascism in Comintern lingo), and presumably have them oppose the Northern Expedition, which started out with a massacre of workers in Guangzhou, you have a CCP that retains its support among the urban workers in Guangzhou and Shanghai, rather than one that retreats into the countryside and ends up courting the peasants. To get this, you would have to either keep Sneevliet out of China, to have him have a totally different experience in Indonesia, or to have a different orientation from the Comintern whence came his orders: it was his council for the CCP to practice entryism into the KMT in 1921.
 
Doing this completely changes the nature of the CCP. Without the affiliation with the KMT (which, by the way, was the United Front Against Imperialism rather than the Popular Front Against Fascism in Comintern lingo), and presumably have them oppose the Northern Expedition, which started out with a massacre of workers in Guangzhou, you have a CCP that retains its support among the urban workers in Guangzhou and Shanghai, rather than one that retreats into the countryside and ends up courting the peasants. To get this, you would have to either keep Sneevliet out of China, to have him have a totally different experience in Indonesia, or to have a different orientation from the Comintern whence came his orders: it was his council for the CCP to practice entryism into the KMT in 1921.
Ah, I'm sorry. This is a good analysis, but I actually meant that the switch in policy would come around in 1926, after the establishment of the "First United Front." Rereading my original post, it's really not clear that's what I meant at all.
 
Ah, I'm sorry. This is a good analysis, but I actually meant that the switch in policy would come around in 1926, after the establishment of the "First United Front." Rereading my original post, it's really not clear that's what I meant at all.
Oh, well, if that's what you meant...

If the rest of Comintern history goes relatively similar to OTL, but the CCP ends up rejecting the United Front, you might actually see the CCP go over entirely to the Left Opposition. In this case, it will try to retrench in the cities, but will have been already been largely eradicated there by the KMT. You'll probably avoid the Jianxi Soviet Republic and have the CCP goes underground.

Then again, if by some stroke of luck and handwavium the CCP can take power, you could see a Trotskyist China opposed to the Stalinist USSR.

I do believe someone needs to write a timeline (I'd do it, but my next planned TL after WSS is a Red Confederacy).
 
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