Chiang Kai Shek

And is 60+ million dead due to lolcommunism an acceptable cost for everything up until Deng Xiaoping? A pragmatic nationalist like him was able to rise out of the mess that was Maoism, whose to say something similar couldn't happen out of the Republic of?

Taiwan is prosperous today though, I know it's on a smaller scale but it worked out in the end. His rule over China coincided with the Japanese invasion and his forces bore the brunt of the fighting, economic/social development surely took a secondary importance.

It'd be better than India for sure.

But it is so hard to know "what if".

It was highly likely the Soviets would have continued cucking him over for decades leading to heavy instability.
Eventually, maybe in the 60's, they'd invade and conquer a still weak China.

America probably wouldn't have intervened and started WW3 over that.
It may have led to the Soviets being eventually more powerful than America with 600 million more people.

Academics usually agree on about half that number. But let's not into a statistics battle.

The difference is that the KMT had absolutely zero popular support outside generals and wealthy entrepreneurs.

The CCP however had enormous rural support (2/3 of the Chinese population) and actually had a party which was unified with very few factional problems.

The KMT however had incredible fights between left and right factions, they couldn't control warlords or even trust them to turn up to the fight and they also had made no attempts to address poverty in China.

Chiang couldn't even rule Taiwan properly. It only became a decent country when his son took over.

Taiwans success is due to his son. Not Chiang.

Let me interject.

1. The RoC Taiwan v. PRC argument is really inaccurate to say the least.
2. The Japs invaded Manchuria in 1931. Something Chiang didn't touch. The real war didn't start till 1937.
3. Chiang was in power 1920-1937 before the Japs invaded.
4. Chiang had the relative success of the Nanking Decade in that he temporarily stopped the constant warfare for long enough to establish some semblance of government.
5. He was still a really shitty leader 1930-onwards. He made bad choices, was paranoid, and corrupt to say the least.

>Chiang couldn't even rule Taiwan properly
and this was even with MASSIVE American support
a larger china would have been a mess, the fact that he lost even with overwhelming Western support is testament to this.

DESU anything is preferable to communism, especially if they managed to ruin china. Might have stopped them becoming so powerful and wrecking the environment. Also, being a shithole would've been nothing new to the chinks.

China has produced far less pollution than America.

Furthermore, China is 1.4 billion people while America is 320 million.

Look in the fucking mirror before criticizing others.

Sure he was corrupt and paranoid, but still preferable to the communists. A better successor could have arisen out of the KMT, one that actually could address the issues of the peasantry without going full great leap forward. I know there are a lot of 'what ifs' in this discussion.

>China has produced far less pollution than America.
Epic

Preferable to whom? To you maybe. Not the Chinese. Even with 30 million deaths the Chinese still largely support the Communists. KMT was simply a continuation of Imperial abuse of the Chinese.

>implying I live in america
silly chinks don't know that many countries speak english

Then they're fools to support that government. it's a human rights nightmare that's acting increasingly belligerent towards its neighbors, with a GDP per capita lower than Iraq.

I don't think you're quite understanding just how fucking shitty life was for the average Chinese under the Qing and Warlords. No matter how bad the CCP is, it's still a huge step up over what came before.

And the KMT could have been even better still if it wasn't ousted.

lolno

There's no proof either way desu.

True enough but we can look at the complete lack of support for the KMT and the rampant corruption to get a good idea of what it'd be like. Someone earlier in the thread suggested it'd be like India and I'm inclined to agree

I find it interesting that Chiang laid the foundations for the PRC in a way. He unified the country so that the CCP didn't even have to, which is ironic.

I'd say more than anything it was hating the Japanese that unified China

Plus the Northern Expedition. It centralized power.

Yeah def

Just came across this book online, I think I've found a goldmine on this topic. It's criminally understudied in the west.

>unified warlords
>no support from farmers and labourers

Naw dawg

He honestly only had reluctant support from warlords as well. And there was that little incident at Xi'an

True. Most warlords during the war against Japan refused to help and actually fled the battlefield rather than fight with Chiang.

Or did the "Sure we'll help you , unless it involves actually fighting or spending money." thing which was one of the reasons the Indo-China expedition was such a fiasco.

Chiang is great leader I love Chiang. I read all the biographies and visit all memorials. Sexy Chiang kills Communists and Japanese while protecting the innocent Chinamen. I would do anything for Chiang.

t. RO"""""""""C"""""""""

Kek

Now we had a country made by this demon.