What if the Republic of China stayed in control of the mainland after heavy Western support?

[Blue3]

What if the Republic of China stayed in control of the mainland after heavy Western support?

[Kamala's side hoe]

From a 2022 thread on the topic

Nationalists, duh.

Even if a KMT victory still resulted in an authoritarian China, we would at least have had a milder Cold War, a unified Korea, no Vietnam disaster, and possibly the cherry on top, no massive Red Scare resulting in more left-leaning politics here at home! Not to mention the possibilities of no (or less antagonistic) Sino-American conflict, a more open government in China, and said more open government not genociding the Uyghurs, cracking down on Hong Kong, and/or responding more effectively to COVID (though the last one might be a wishcast considering how we're doing RN)!

I don't think any of the bolded parts would have turned out much better or different than our timeline if Chiang had had his way in the 1930s. Post-Mao China more or less ended up the way Chiang would've wanted, minus the Cultural Revolution and the KMT being exiled to Boba Island.

Yeah I’d agree in the short term. It’s possible after Chiang’s death that some more liberalization may have occurred like in Taiwan, though the vastly different scenarios make that, admittedly, not a certainty.

Deng liberalizing China after Mao’s death didn’t stop Tiananmen from happening, and the Chiang-era KMT was organized along a Leninist party structure, so I’m not convinced the most likely human rights/civil liberties outcome of a KMT victory would’ve been much better.

I buy that Uyghur human rights atrocities might not occur under KMT rule given that they wouldn’t have been as aggressively atheist as the CCP, but that doesn’t factor in demographic and cultural pressure from the Han majority (and Hui being used as a culturally “model minority Muslim” wedge group), which I don’t think would be much different from OTL.

Hong Kong (and Taiwan for that matter) would probably be quite different if the KMT won the Civil War, but I still think the KMT would’ve been politically authoritarian for several decades afterward. I don’t think a post-handover transition under the KMT would’ve been much less impactful for average Hong Kongers- even if China had transitioned to a liberal multiparty electoral democracy by then- since I think a lot of the socio-cultural pushback is due to the emergence of a local HK identity under 99 years of British rule.

As requested, I will link my TL on this subject.

Nationalists, duh.

Even if a KMT victory still resulted in an authoritarian China, we would at least have had a milder Cold War, a unified Korea, no Vietnam disaster, and possibly the cherry on top, no massive Red Scare resulting in more left-leaning politics here at home! Not to mention the possibilities of no (or less antagonistic) Sino-American conflict, a more open government in China, and said more open government not genociding the Uyghurs, cracking down on Hong Kong, and/or responding more effectively to COVID (though the last one might be a wishcast considering how we're doing RN)!

I don't think any of the bolded parts would have turned out much better or different than our timeline if Chiang had had his way in the 1930s. Post-Mao China more or less ended up the way Chiang would've wanted, minus the Cultural Revolution and the KMT being exiled to Boba Island.

The KMT would certainly have a lot more in common with the PRC than most people think, but I do think the situation for Uyghurs would be a lot better under the KMT.

The causes of KMT losing the war to the CCP are many and complex.  Losing public opinion was a fact but by no means the most critical.  I think in 1947 some NGOs did a survey of KMT ruled areas and found 20% backed KMT, 10% backed CCP, and the rest wait and see.  So KMT support has fallen a lot by the time of the civil war it as not that there was massive support for CCP.

The defeat was mostly military and the causes are found in military and political factors

1) Chiang planned a short war that will last from 1945 to 1947 at the latest and failed to build a logistical plan to deal with a long war
2) KMT overconfidence meant that they failed to absorbed the well-armed and well-trained Manchukuo puppet forces into their ranks.  Most of them went over to the proto-PLA in 1946 (The CCP 8th Route Army and 4th New Army was not named PLA until 1947.)
3) Old Manchuria warlord Chang Shu-Liang was under house arrest due to the Sian incident of 1936 was fairly popular in the Northeast and Chiang failed to use him to gain support for the KMT in the Northeast
4) KMT lost the intelliegnce war.  KMT intelligence kingpin Dai Li (the elementary school I attended back in ROC was named after him) died in a plane crash in 1945 and so much of the KMT intelligence operation was so centered around him that the KMT intelligence service broke down and was not reconstructed until the early 1950s when it was too late.  In the meantime, the ROC armed forces' high command was completed infiltrated by CCP agents.  The most obvious example is 郭汝瑰 (Guo Ru Huai) was a Chiang favorite and involved in all military planning during the Civil War was a CCP spy. Due to him, the PLA had copies of the tactical plans of ROC armed forces operations before the ROC generals on the field got them.  The CCP did not really acknowledge the full extent of Guo's role until the 1990s.  There were many others like Guo
5) Of course why would people like Guo support CCP?  Here the CCP did have what many considered a superior vision. The war against Japan showed what collective action can achieve despite clear technical inferiority.  The CCP's vision of organized collective action vs the KMT vision of a confederation of local vested interests was appealing to many in the intellectual class many of whom were in the KMT or were relatives of key KMT officials.  Of course, many of them will get their just deserts in the Cultural Revolution for their betrayal of the KMT.

[jaichind]

I think a very large Brazil.  In many ways, the PRC is converging toward what the ROC would want to achieve if it had won and been successful.  I am just not so sure how successful ROC would have been if it had won.  The ROC vision is superior but the CCP might end up being better at implementing the ROC vision.

One signal would be textbooks. The PRC elementary and middle school textbooks are now pretty much what the ROC textbooks looked like in the 1980s.

Another signal would be
https://twitter.com/TG_R_TM/status/1756181674227044597

To be fair the videos are cherry-picking a bit but the trends are clear.  If Chiang Kai-Shek came back to life and saw these videos it is clear which side he will back.

[jaichind]

In many ways, the current PRC system is converging back toward the old pre-1911 Imperial system.  Chiang in the 1930s was also thinking along the same line and would have implemented something like that if he could completely win.

The old imperial system is based on the rule of local landed elites PLUS a local caste of educated merit-based elites called 舉人 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juren) that can pass a series of exams.  The 舉人 are then able to attend imperial exams at the central level to get promoted to higher office.  But even if that fails this caste of educated elites will dominate the political process along with local landed elites.

The current PRC system is similar.  Instead of 舉人 we have something called CCP party member.  It is not easy to become a CCP party member which has heavy filtering based on merit and service (think Starship Trooper's "service guarantees citizenship")  The CCP party members plus local business elites dominate the political process which makes the entire system look like the pre-1911 system.   And just to show the CCP is not kidding around the male/female ratio for CCP party members is something like 80/20 so there is no room for political correctness and is purely based on merit and service.

Will not surprise me if ROC under Chiang the Elder would have evolved something similar had he had a free hand to run things after a total victory of CCP and various warlords.

[PSOL]

How anyone can read jaichind's comments and support an alternate history KMT China or the irl Dengist one is beyond me.

[i can imagine what will be unburdened by what was]

Feel like people here are underselling how different things might be - the Chinese Revolution was one of the most consequential events of the 20th century and it only looks like a bigger deal the further we get away from it and more important Asia becomes in our lives. The trajectory of East Asia is totally different with a postwar China that isn’t hostile to the US. In our TL, you can argue that US didn’t really win the Cold War in Asia. In this timeline, the Cold War in Asia basically doesn’t happen and implications of that are massive.

Just off the top of my head, the Korean War turns out differently, if it even happens. And with no Korean War and a significantly diminished communist threat in East Asia, it becomes more of a question whether Japan’s economic development is on the same trajectory since the war was a major kickstarter.

SE Asia would also be extremely different - instead of the Vietnamese communists having a supportive partner in China, it has an actively hostile one instead. Decolonization goes differently, and that obv has a major downstream effect on US domestic politics.