Why didn't the ROC (or more specifically the Kuomintang) attack Communist China during the Great Leap Forward/Great...

Fuck you're dumb.

KEKTUS

They angered the Burmese tribes themselves by trafficking drugs and were promptly driven out by the locals.

They also contributed to the arming of the Shan ethnic minority.

Burma has a hilarious number of ethnic separatist movements

>fuck America
>implying that Crazy Chiang's Nationalist Nightmare would have been better

Mao was absolute shit for the Chinese but he left the rest of the world alone, more or less. A resurgent Nationalist China, even if they somehow won, would be either a domestic clusterfuck (communist guerillas up the wazoo, everywhere, no mass industrialization/modernaization capacity of the Commies, overpopulation due to no One Child Policy, strong chance of warlords popping up again and again, etc.) or, even worse, it would become an expansionist power. Taiwan is nice because they've been dependent on the US for a long time and gave up on Chinese irredentism and autocracy after Kai-shek died, but had he reconquered the mainland and overcome internal issues he would have been a fucking eternal culture hero to the Chinese. Chinese Nationalism would have become dogma, and you'd see China become a very outward-looking autocracy, with an eye for conquering any strip of land or sea they hold the smallest claim to.

So Scenario 1 China becomes IRL Afghanistan right now, a statesman's worst fear, and Scenario 2, China becomes a poorer, more backwards IRL Russia right now.

Mao sounds good, thanks.

You're a fucking retard. One child policy came about after Mao's death.

Mao wanted as many chinese as possible so the Chinese would survive a nuclear war. He is a primary reason for China's modern day over population.

Wat my dude. It would have become a huge autocratic nightmare. An easy influence for the USA and a constant thorn in the soviet side.

Also its a huge fucking leap (kek) to assume chiangs influence could be worse than that of Mao.

China would become POO IN LOO 2 under Chiang.

>An easy influence for the USA and a constant thorn in the soviet side.
Not really. Well, the USA thinks it would be.

The Soviets thought so as well, and look what happened: Sino-Soviet split.

Also user is spot on with expansionist claims. Remember: the ROC operates on getting the EXACT territory of China as the Qings left it.

>Not really. Well, the USA thinks it would be.

The Soviets thought so as well, and look what happened: Sino-Soviet split.

Thats a pretty easy and wrong assumption my dude. Just because in the communist camp a split happened its not predetermined for a different china to go the same route. There would be no ideological split and maybe most importantly no border friction.

>Also user is spot on with expansionist claims. Remember: the ROC operates on getting the EXACT territory of China as the Qings left it.

We can´t know if they would have followed all these claims. Also: Not like the POC wasn´t expansionist and imperialist in OTL.

>you're a fucking retard
Nope, just didn't feel like explaining things I thought were self-evident. I know that the policy came after his death and was a reversal of one of his many hare-brained schemes, but it's outright ridiculous to claim that the CCP hasn't had a net negative impact on birth rates. Look at India as a comparable case in terms of area and population size, and look at their growth in the past 70 years. India has grown tremendously and continues to grow, while China had a brief explosion under Mao and has been leveling off. Under Chiang, it's reasonable to assume China would face a similar scenario as India - less explosive, but longer and ultimately greater growth (India is poised to overtake China as #1 most populous country soon).

But please, call me a retard for not treating you like one.

>huge autocratic nightmare
That was exactly my scenario 2. And as wee see with huge autocratic states with unresolved imperial tendencies (00s Russia), they tend to stop being easily influenced by foreign powers. America would have been an influence for a while, but soon after the Soviets fell or stopped being a threat, the two would likely part ways over a strongly different worldview. Note I didn't say Chiang reconquering and successfully integrating Mainland China was likely (it wasn't), just that he would either rule a failed state like Afghanistan, or his legacy would be one of 'reclaiming stolen lands' and similar BS like Russia is doing right now with Crimea.

What's with the guys with sandwich boards and dunce caps?

you need an army to attack senpai

The Red Guards shamed people they deemed unworthy like this.

>That was exactly my scenario 2. And as wee see with huge autocratic states with unresolved imperial tendencies (00s Russia), they tend to stop being easily influenced by foreign powers. America would have been an influence for a while, but soon after the Soviets fell or stopped being a threat, the two would likely part ways over a strongly different worldview. Note I didn't say Chiang reconquering and successfully integrating Mainland China was likely (it wasn't), just that he would either rule a failed state like Afghanistan, or his legacy would be one of 'reclaiming stolen lands' and similar BS like Russia is doing right now with Crimea.

You make bold assumptions from a thing that would happen decades after our point of divergence. I strongly doubt China would end up like afghanistan given its confucian tradition and population. Even if your china would act like russia it wouldn´t be more of a thread than todays china. The POC is much more dangerous than todays russia, sabble rattling and pointless wars that bancrupt your country aren´t pretty but not as dangerous as a the POC expansion and influence.

Oh, of course they're bold, that's what makes them interesting. When doing the whole 'what-if' you're always more drawn to the more extreme solutions, which is what I presented. Realistically, it would have been somewhere along the middle - major internal divisions yet still functioning, noticeably irredentist yet not waging wars of conquest willy-nilly.

I'm not sold on Confucianism as a panacea for alt-China's ills, though. Regular China had a massive problem with warlords during the 1920s (even known as the Warlord Era), and the KMT struggled to keep the country unified even in the face of external (Japanese) and internal (Communist) threat, and that was when they were in power. I struggle to see alt-Chiang somehow doing better after he had been deposed and exiled for years and coming back to a markedly different country, economically, politically and even ideologically. That's what I meant with the Afghanistan parallel - a moderate central government facing rebels of various stripes and struggling to enforce its power in areas of the country: I didn't imagine Islamic terrorism of a comparable scale or some sort of Confucian Taliban (as interesting as that would be to consider).

I get where you are coming from but i think its unfair too blame chinas ills in the thirties on Chiang and the KMT alone.

I know what you meant but i would disagree. After the cultural revolution communism would be pretty much discredited. Of course therewould be hardcore redguards, seperatists etc. and China would be more unstable than IRL for a while BUT there would be massive western aid and the nationalists would actually go the same route IRL china did in my mind. Economic liberalization, some hefty nationalism but not too much and a strong bureaucracy. I think corruption would be more of a problem though.

Intellectuals being publicly shamed during the cultural revolution