WI: No Sino-Soviet Split

This is a POD with the death of Mao Zedong in 1956. A prominent Chinese Communist once famously observed:

"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?"

He was referring to the twin Gotterdammerungs which resulted from Mao's ideological dellusions. The first being the badly mismanaged agricultural reforms which starved to deah tens of millions in the late 1950s early 60s. The second being the white terror of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

However if the author of that statement got his wish, and Mao died of natural causes in 1956, what impact would it have on the Cold War?

The Sino-Soviet Split was largely the result of personality conflicts between Mao Zedong and Nikita Khruschev. Mao disagreed with Khruschev's de-Stalinization campaign and feared a Khruschev style reform in China after his own death. Indeed, the Cultural Revolution which he launched was aimed at getting rid of the "Chinese Khruschevs", especially their leader Liu Shaoqi who was Mao's heir apparent at the time.

With an early death of Mao, the split would probably have been reconciled before it became serious. It may be that the alliance could not sustain indefinatly due to other sources of tension, but the effect of a longer lasting alliance would surely have serious consequences for the Cold War. The Chinese would warm up to Khruschev in a big way and the Communist world would more effeciently coordinate their antagonism toward the West.

For starters in OTL the Soviets and Chinese keep over a million troops tied up on their borders facing eachother, costing untold amount of Rubles and Yuans. If their alliance continued into the 1980s the Soviet war in Afghanistan may also have turned out very differently.

The Soviet Union itself may still exist in some form. As for China, it would be unrecognizable. It was Mao's personal prejudice against population control which caused the population to explode to 1.3 billion today. Without Mao the Chinese population may be hundreds of millions less. Without his violent class struggle the Chinese economy and culture would be very different. But perhaps without Mao's excesses, the Chinese would also not have been as motivated to pursue economic reforms in the 1980s as they did and followed a less successful Russian reform pattern.

What a world it would be? :eek:
 
The great leap forward happened 1958 so Mao couldn't lead it clearly. But we are talking about communists. They will act as communists in one way or another. Thus things will happen in a different way but some that resamble the great leap forward will happen.
 
Whoever replace Mao (most likely Liu Shaoqi) would almost certainly make the same kind of mistakes typified in other Communist regimes. However the Great Leap Forward would not likely happen under someone with less clout and single-mindedness as Mao. China may become more like a giant Vietnam for example.
 
The great leap forward happened 1958 so Mao couldn't lead it clearly. But we are talking about communists. They will act as communists in one way or another. Thus things will happen in a different way but some that resamble the great leap forward will happen.
I think that is stereotyping, but I may be wrong...
I don't think the Great Leap will happen... Giant Vietnam is a bit farfetched.
 
I think that is stereotyping, but I may be wrong...

Communists acting as communists. :eek: What a shocking generalisation:D

I just can't see how China would roll over and become capitalist or something. All those *great leaders* would have been bums without followers and supporters and a lot of those would be potential leaders. It would just be different. Imagine a butterfly the size of a WV camper flapping his wings.
 
If you read mu post more carefully, this is not about China becoming Capitalist. It's about a Cold War with China and the Soviet Union on the same side. Both being Communist and both being very different as a result. China in particular would go down a very different road. I think politically it would resemble Vietnam a lot more than it does the PRC in OTL.
 
If you read mu post more carefully, this is not about China becoming Capitalist. It's about a Cold War with China and the Soviet Union on the same side. Both being Communist and both being very different as a result. China in particular would go down a very different road. I think politically it would resemble Vietnam a lot more than it does the PRC in OTL.


Which would be rather bad for the Chinese - sans the excessess of Mao and with a continued Soviet alliance, a whole-hearted embrace of capitalistic economic reform might be substantially delayed, leading to a rather poorer PRC by 2008 (although perhaps with more nukes and other Big Metal And Concrete Things). A Soviet Union unafraid of the Chinese may be more confident and feel more secure than OTL, but their economy is still going to tank by the 80's - the savings from fewer troops in the east isn't going to be enough to make up for the system's gross disfunctions. Of course, we may well have butterflied away Gorbachev, which means the endgame may play out rather differently than OTL...

Bruce
 

Hendryk

Banned
The great leap forward happened 1958 so Mao couldn't lead it clearly. But we are talking about communists. They will act as communists in one way or another. Thus things will happen in a different way but some that resamble the great leap forward will happen.
I disagree. The GLF was very much Mao's idea; most PCC members at the time were pragmatists who had embraced Communism as the fastest way to put China back on its feet--they were nationalists first and ideologues second. In fact, 1956 is a particularly good year for Mao to die as he had just approved Zhou Enlai's suggestion to launch the so-called "Hundred Flowers Campaign", aimed at collecting input from intellectuals and civil society about Party policies so far. Whether Mao acted in good faith or saw it from the start as a way to expose potential dissidents, in OTL he cracked down the following year on those who had expressed criticism; but in TTL, the campaign may well lead to something resembling a mild version of Czechoslovakia's "Socialism with a human face" of the 1960s.

Note, also, that Liu Shaoqi, as an advocate of the Soviet line, was in OTL unconvinced about the GLF and favored Deng Xiaoping's idea of incremental reform, which is the reason why he was purged during the Cultural Revolution.

The caption of this 1968 poster reads: "The renegade, traitor and scab Liu Shaoqi must be permanently expelled from the Party!"

Liu_shaoqi_poster.jpg
 
Nice poster.

I have a general aversion to the great leader WI's were they are removed. And this is a general response, not only to the Chinese WI but also similar questions on other leaders. My respose tend to be butterflies the size of WV campers. Different leaders will doe the details differently but the direction would be the same.

I think we can compare to the chance of Tom Crusce beeing elected president of the US. He has charisma, name recognition, wellspoken and has money. The things he need to get elected. I assume that he also fullfil the other, formal, requierments and this is a example so say he does. Despite this, there is no way he can get elected since he belives in E-meters, a space emperor and other crazy Hubbard stuff. The American people wouldn't support him.

Dictatorships doesn't work as democracies but the dictator need some kind of support from the powerful people behind him. The party, the military, the secret police, the stuff the establishment is made up of in dictatorships. And for that to happen, they would need a common vision, not nessesary agree on everything but some common ground.
 
Top