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Nationalists win Chinese Civil War

megrisvernin

megrisvernin

So a thought experiment occurred to me earlier. Assuming you butterflied changes in the Chinese civil war so the Nationalists win, and I'm afraid I lack in depth knowledge of that area to determine what a realistic change of actions that would change but assume that events play out that way Macrowise. Assume strong alignment with the US post World War 2, with a mutual alliance structure ala Nato(not part of Nato, just an agreement that if China was attacked by the Soviet Union the US would support them and vice versa each would support the other).

What would you see likely as possible repercussions like that? I feel like with the large chinese population swinging in favor of the US would strength the US alliance structure makes the communist block a lot weaker comparatively then our IRL timeline. I could see China getting the large economic buildup post World War 2 other of the 4 Asian tigers like Japan achieved.
 
I can also see this becoming into a wider fascist issue later down the line. There's still plenty of reason Nationalists in China to be untrustworthy towards colonial powers, but a China-US alliance against the Soviets is temporary at best. The US and China would likely try to slice up 'spheres of influence' as they tried overshadowing Russia. The Cold War would likely end sooner, but there would probably be an immediate tilt and fracture once the Soviet Union collapsed.
That being said, China would likely never become democratic similar to the way the US is today. China has historically valued community/society over individual rights, and the nationalist government could quickly evolve into a fascist-like government, not too different than the current totatalitarian Chinese government is too.
The difference would be that a Nationalist won China would be far more developed than China today is. Mao's cultural revolution and closed markets to westerners completely stunted China's development and growth for decades. A China-US alliance, or simply a nationalist government that avoids Mao's reforms, would greatly grow into an industrial powerhouse that could likely easily overshadow Us's economy.
I'd imagine in the long run it would lead to a China dominated Asia, US with fewer allies after a faster soviet collapse, and a second Cold War between China-US's scramble for world influence.
 
The relationship between the US and China would cool once the USSR collapses. The US and China would still be huge trade partners, as the Nationalists sought to implement a limited market economy with heavy government involvement as their plan, but as China grows economically it would cause friction.

Axle said:
China has historically valued community/society over individual rights,
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Unde that logic, the American people valued community over individual rights because people who burned the flag or anti-war activists were arrested before SCOTUS proclaimed their actions were protected under the first amendment.

There's a pro-democracy movement within China, it's just being brutally suppressed by the chinese government because democracy is a threat the political monopoloy of the CCP.
 
WildCan said:
Unde that logic, the American people valued community over individual rights because people who burned the flag or anti-war activists were arrested before SCOTUS proclaimed their actions were protected under the first amendment.

There's a pro-democracy movement within China, it's just being brutally suppressed by the chinese government because democracy is a threat the political monopoloy of the CCP.
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Protests aren't at all representative of a society. They're more often than not an anecdote of societal issues, not a representation of the majority of the country. Similar how crime rates aren't representative of an entire group, protesters don't necessarily represent the will of the majority of the people. In terms of values (Westbero baptists church is a good example of this).
America is much more individualistic than most. The same way you can't treat Europe and America as identical in terms of values. It's not fair to assume China would become as democratically liberal as the US is today, strictly by virtue of being non-communist.
It's important to remember: The nationalists of China were only a step away from being their own fascists in the first place, and Chinese fascists are only one step away from being identical to their imperial predecessors. Even if China were to adopt a democracy, it's still wholly possible that nationalist/fascist elite might decide to manipulate their own democracy into becoming more one-party system or oligarchical like other democracies today.
 
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Axle said:
America is much more individualistic than most.
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That's bullshit. The US's vaunted freedoms are very recent, have been won in the last seventy years after WWII. Even then the US government only grudgingly granted these privileges while seeking to dismantle civil rights groups through shit like COINTELPRO and later the War on Drugs. Also the US is also the largest surveillance state in the world and when the NSA spying scandal came out the reaction of the American people was apathy.

Axle said:
The same way you can't treat Europe and America as identical in terms of values.
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If you're talking about hate speech laws, then the only reason why the US doesn't have them is because of widespread racism not because the American people hold freedom of speeh as some sacred cow.

Axle said:
Even if China were to adopt a democracy, it's still wholly possible that nationalist/fascist elite might decide to manipulate their own democracy into becoming more one-party system or oligarchical like other democracies today.
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You mean like American oligarchs are distorting and corrupting American democracy into serving their own interest at the expense of everyone else?

Axle said:
Protests aren't at all representative of a society. They're more often than not an anecdote of societal issues, not a representation of the majority of the country. Similar how crime rates aren't representative of an entire group, protesters don't necessarily represent the will of the majority of the people. In terms of values (Westbero baptists church is a good example of this).
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Are you honestly comparing a political movement advocating democracy in China to a tiny cult from Kansas?
 
It would be better than the communist shit Mao got up to. Whether it's GOOD we don't know. After all while Taiwan was ruled competently it is still only a small island. Ruling ALL of China and bringing it out of poverty would be a monumental task. But still unless the Nationalists actively try to be as bad as they can they probably will do better then communists like Mao.
 
The Communists aren't going to completely vanish after being defeated. The Soviets have more than enough available border to keep a low level insurgency going. All the problems that strenghtened the communists are still there after a military victory.

China has a loooong road ahead and even if the Nationalists don't cause a disaster like the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution it won't be smooth sailing.

Chiang's regime is going to be plagued by terrorism, wealth disparity and a hostile USSR next door. The USA is going to prevent anything overtly hostile but the Soviets will use a lot of opportunities to destabilize the RoC.
 
Considering how vastly corrupt the Nationalists were and how weak was the central leaderships hold over the various warlords?

Decades of internal unrest, peasant revolts, openly or semiopenly seperatist regimes,dozens of communist backed local insurrections ?

Tibet would probably be left alone, Indochina would probably be a quieter place if all the civil war and slaughter was centered up north in Chinese proper...

Unless Chang tried to go full Junta-fascism.

Then shit would get real, really fast.
 
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Eliar said:
Considering how vastly corrupt the Nationalists were and how weak was the central leaderships hold over the various warlords?

Decades of internal unrest, peasant revolts, openly or semiopenly seperatist regimes,dozens of communist backed local insurrections ?

Tibet would probably be left alone, Indochina would probably be a quieter place if all the civil war and slaughter was centered up north in Chinese proper...

Unless Chang tried to go full Junta-fascism.
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Chiang would probably be able to strenghten his hold quite a lot of after winning against the Japanese and winning the Civil War. The effect of prestige isn't neglible in a scenario like this.

That being said: The Nationalists are in a much shittier position after victory. They can't just replicate the methods the communists used to foster loyalty and centralize power.

Worst case scenario is that ATL China tries to go full purge mode and ends up being a giant Vietnam. The USA could potentially lose a metric ton of blood and treasure in this ATL when they try to prop up Chiang.

Second worst case is an ATL China that avoids the big catastrophies but roughly sustains similar losses in a thousand small rebellions and insurgencies. At some point the regime liberalizes considerably and we end up in an alt-2018 where China has comparable wealth but is less centralized and more self-centered than OTL. Or the regime remains corrupt and autocratic and we have a giant and even more dysfunctional version of OTLs Russia.

Then we have some roughly equivalent to OTL outcome where the Nationalists get shit done more slowly but also more steady than the Communists. No explosive growth but also no Great Leap so to speak.

Best case is that the Nationalists quickly get their shit together and avoid the worst fuck ups. Extremely unlikely string of Nat20s would be this coupled with an early liberalization. This ATL China would be considerably more developed and would likely be a true third superpower in the late Cold War.
 
What's with all this pessimism? Like China under the nationalists might be able to bounce to it's current position much faster. It was the cultural revolution and Mao's insanity that led the China being one step away from a 3rd world shithole. Without groups of marxists trying to commit cultural suicide on China, there isn't anything stopping them from emulating modern China's success.
 
lotho said:
What's with all this pessimism? Like China under the nationalists might be able to bounce to it's current position much faster. It was the cultural revolution and Mao's insanity that led the China being one step away from a 3rd world shithole. Without groups of marxists trying to commit cultural suicide on China, there isn't anything stopping them from emulating modern China's success.
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Might.

If the Nationalists were that competent, the 20's and 30's would've gone very different. There's still so much that can go horribly wrong. For all we know, Nationalist rule will just lead to another Civil War one or two decades down the line, which does end with a final victory by the Communists. Granted, by then Mao is probably no longer alive, but still.
 
Random Member said:
If the Nationalists were that competent, the 20's and 30's would've gone very different. There's still so much that can go horribly wrong. For all we know, Nationalist rule will just lead to another Civil War one or two decades down the line, which does end with a final victory by the Communists. Granted, by then Mao is probably no longer alive, but still.
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That being said, if the Nationlists won and a civil war later eruopted, China would become another Cold War from for Russia and the US. Forget Korea and Vietnam, China would become a hot bed for Soviet influence to try and stir up an overthrow of the nationalist government.
 
I suspect when the Nationalists win the civil war would matter. The Nationalists rolling 20s from the 9th of August 1945 onward until the CCP is crushed seems a lot less likely than the Nationalists encircling and crushing the CCP's Red Army and capturing CCP leadership cadres in 1934, but the second means the KMT quite possibly might act differently in regards to Japan, and a different Sino-Japanese War would have knock-on effects of its own, especially if the timing is significantly thrown off in either direction.
 
LordInsane said:
I suspect when the Nationalists win the civil war would matter. The Nationalists rolling 20s from the 9th of August 1945 onward until the CCP is crushed seems a lot less likely than the Nationalists encircling and crushing the CCP's Red Army and capturing CCP leadership cadres in 1934, but the second means the KMT quite possibly might act differently in regards to Japan, and a different Sino-Japanese War would have knock-on effects of its own, especially if the timing is significantly thrown off in either direction.
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As well, before the full fledged civil war that happened after WW2, the KMT was Moscow's main ally in the region. A "30s KMT victorious" China would most likely end up as a "fellow traveller" of the Soviet Union.
 
Susano said:
As well, before the full fledged civil war that happened after WW2, the KMT was Moscow's main ally in the region. A "30s KMT victorious" China would most likely end up as a "fellow traveller" of the Soviet Union.
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Nah, I think it'd end up more like Super India-playing both sides against each other before too long.

This is assuming an outright win, of course, rather than some weird scenario like "the KMT doing better leads to a revision of the KMT-CPC anti-USSR unity government idea that George Marshall was trying to push." I think either way though, one of the issues is that China absolutely would retain a major threat perception against both the USSR and NATO, which would likely lead to a tripartite Cold War before long.

An interesting scenario is if the KMT government doesn't see as much interest in Tibet, which leads to no Sino-Indian fracture and possibly leads to a really interesting tripartite scenario where you have NATO on one side, the USSR on the other, and a Sino-Indian alliance as a third side.

And of course, three body problems are inherently unstable...
 
LordInsane said:
I suspect when the Nationalists win the civil war would matter. The Nationalists rolling 20s from the 9th of August 1945 onward until the CCP is crushed seems a lot less likely than the Nationalists encircling and crushing the CCP's Red Army and capturing CCP leadership cadres in 1934, but the second means the KMT quite possibly might act differently in regards to Japan, and a different Sino-Japanese War would have knock-on effects of its own, especially if the timing is significantly thrown off in either direction.
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That's an interesting scenario. If the CCP is crushed or becomes an apendage of the KMT, that would have an effect on WWII. A more unified China, at least by the standards of Warlords Era, would be able to push back more strongly against the Japanese.

What other knock-off effects could you say would happen? I mean, the Japanese would be probably more desperate and thus they might decide to still do Pearl Harbor.
 
WildCan said:
That's an interesting scenario. If the CCP is crushed or becomes an apendage of the KMT, that would have an effect on WWII. A more unified China, at least by the standards of Warlords Era, would be able to push back more strongly against the Japanese.

What other knock-off effects could you say would happen? I mean, the Japanese would be probably more desperate and thus they might decide to still do Pearl Harbor.
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Say that, with the KMT feeling more confident and therefore likelier to take stronger lines in some of the incidents between 1934 and 1937, and Japan perhaps feeling they might need to strike sooner rather than later with the KMT growing stronger, things escalate into what is undoubtedly a Sino-Japanese War by 1936. Even if we assume that for the purposes of China and Japan that simply pushes the course of events in the war a year early (the lack of the CCP's contributions balanced by the greater strength and prestige of the Nationalists, and Japanese collaborationist government encouragement in northern China not having progressed as far by the start of the war) and that butterflies outside the two countries are minimal, then that puts events out of track - there'll be a year more of fighting before the USSR cuts down on its support for the KMT as part of non-aggression negotiations with Japan, a year more of fighting before the Fall of France (which means either Chinese supply lines to the outside world are kept more open longer relative to the start of the war, or Japan escalates matters into what would likely be a conflict with France and Britain before OTL, with less of the creeping aggression that helped the invasion of Burma and conquest of Malaya) and as a result (assuming the earlier escalation with the Western Allies doesn't happen), a year more of fighting before Japan faces an oil embargo and the Strike South logic that lead to Pearl Harbor kicks into effect.
I don't feel confident saying who'd come out better from that, although I suspect Japan would come out worse, but it definitely seems like it could affect what happens in China after the war. And that's just assuming the Sino-Japanese War follows the premise I set. Perhaps Hitler elects to keep up support of the KMT with them looking stronger. Perhaps the KMT doesn't take a stronger line on Japanese aggression, instead focusing on reining in warlords while Japan goes for a more cautious approach in China in response to the KMT's seemingly greater strength, and the Sino-Japanese War instead begins later rather than earlier. Perhaps an earlier Sino-Japanese War leads the USSR to moving forces from the Far East to Europe, leading Japan to opt for a Strike North strategy... you get a lot of moving parts with a war of WW2's scale.
 
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