What is Veeky Forums opinion on Mao winning the Chinese Civil War?

China would probably look like Taiwan/SK in the major cities and Thailand in the countryside had the KMT won.

So overall better

2 things won the civil war for Communists

1.) The US abandoning the KMT

2.) The Soviets giving the Communists all the weapons they had captured from Japan in Operation August Storm

>It would have been hard to surpass the Cultural Revolution in terms of death and destruction.
Another round of civil war would easily do the trick, and would seem likely given the KMT's rather backwards methods of governance and administration, being more like a tribute-exacting overlord than a governing body.

Both of those are tiny next to the real thing that lost the civil war for the KMT, namely their inability to actually administrate areas even after they've won battles and conventionally occupied them. Even after the Encirclement campaigns, they were never able to bring the Southeast to heel, which is why they were no great loss (at least to the KMT) when the Japanese overran them later.

They could never really win unless they gained an ability to systematically administrate China, which didn't seem in the cards at least as long as Chiang was at the helm.

Yea, that was basically my next sentence after the one you greentexted...

and I suppose the hyperinflation, massive income inequality, powerful landlords, imploded economy, and KMT leaders feasting every night during a famine were all invented by Edgar Snow too?

oh also, forgot to mention the KMT got over FOUR BILLION in military aid from the US which was vastly more than what the CCP got from the soviets. Chiang just really was that bad and wasted half of that on the manchuria airlift that accomplished literally nothing and left him without enough troops south of the great wall.

Didn't Stalin support Chiang Kai Shek in the 1920s?

Wonder what a USSR-KMT China alliance would've looked like

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I thought what you were aiming for was that if the KMT was in charge, they'd resort to similarly brutal methods to bring China up to speed technologically with the rest of the world.

Personally, I think in the unlikely event of a KMT win, you wouldn't get to a cultural revolution esque thing, or advancement at all. You'd probably have another 20ish years of relative stability, and then all bets being off when Chiang died, and another round of civil war to see who comes out on top of a really horribly devastated China.

>Living standards possibly higher with KMT as the communist period doesn't destroy infrastructure
What infrastructure did they destroy?
For what purpose? I'm not implying that didn't happen btw, I'm genuinely asking.

>Didn't Stalin support Chiang Kai Shek in the 1920s?
Yes

>America said hitler was evil because he killed a bunch of people
>supported Mao

What did they mean by this?

>the communist period doesn't destroy infrastructure
except it didn't. they built a lot more of it. for all their flaws ccp wasnt that fucking stupid

Mao Darkest days could not compare to Hitler's Brightest days

yes but only because he forced the communist party to merge with the KMT in hopes that the communists would infiltrate it and take it over from within. That hope ended when Chiang massacred the communists in shanghai

both the US and Mao were anti-Soviet by the 1970s

I think CCP ripped up lots of things and even had people tear apart their own homes for other building projects and materials

A ton of the Great-Leap Forward "reforms" ended up being worse than what they replaced. Like when he enforced terrace farming techniques nationwide, or the whole "we don't need to build steel mills, backyard smithies will work" idea of his.

My fanfiction counterfactual

>through some miracle, the CCP loses the Civil War
>The KMT wins but being bordered next to the USSR, communist resistance continues
>Instead of the Korean war China descends into Civil War Part Deux with full commitment of support from the West / Iron Curtain.
>Probably a split of the country into North and South

How realistic/10?

>China's population is potentially lower as Mao never tells the people to have as many children as possible so China's population is probably more reserved though still very high.

You don't think the Great Leap Forward never happening might have resulted in China's population being the same it is now if not higher?

>Without Mao China never sees Deng Xipang's economic reforms which set it on the path of being a world power so China possibly does not rise up like it has today.

This is just flat-out bullshit. Deng Xiaoping's model of "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" with strong one-party rule was basically how Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT envisioned how China should be run. If anything, China's economic rise would have happened faster since Chinese wouldn't have wasted 30 years like they did under Mao.

>Britain (which freed it in the first place due to MUH GREAT GAME antics), Mongolia (under Soviet influence), and Japan (anything that weakens China Japan likey).

Britain never actually recognized Tibet's independence; they merely declared that Tibet was under Chinese "suzerainty" rather than Chinese "sovereignty" (and they repudiated that statement after recognizing the PRC). You're right about Mongolia recognizing Tibetan independence, but I never heard of Japan recognizing Tibetan independence. Do you have a source for that?

All of you are correct. While the US abandoning the KMT while the Soviets continued to aid the CCP certainly didn't help matters, the KMT were overall so incompetent that it really isn't a surprise they lost the civil war.

We can say now that China may have turned out better if the KMT had won, but hindsight is 20/20. Anyone who wasn't affiliated with the KMT in someway probably viewed the Communists as a welcome change in 1949.

>Mao never tells people to have as many children
The CCP's earliest policy was inflating population. This happened for few decades and then slowly transitioned towards a 1 child policy in early 80s.

To be even more fair, Mongol and Tibetans were tied together since the Mongol dynasty's adoption of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetans being the religious/spiritual leaders. The whole Dalai Lama concept was born from mongol/tibet relationship.

>yes but only because he forced the communist party to merge with the KMT in hopes that the communists would infiltrate it and take it over from within. That hope ended when Chiang massacred the communists in shanghai

I've always found it hilarious how wrong all of the Soviets advisors advice to the CCP turned out.

>Soviets: Industrial workers are the key to revolution! Organize worker's uprisings in the cities!
>KMT crushes all Communist revolts in the cities

>Soviets: Form a temporary alliance with the KMT!
>KMT turns on the CCP and nearly wipes them out

>Mao: The peasantry is the key to achieving revolution in China!
>Soviets: That's fucking stupid, your "caveman communism" will never work
>Mao wins over the peasantry, takes over the countryside, surrounds the cities, and subsequently wins all of mainland China

After how much the Soviets fucked up, why Mao still proclaimed the Soviet Union as being worthy of study up until the Sino-Soviet split is beyond me.

because despite that the USSR was significantly more developed than China and their only source of advisers for industry, military, infrastructure projects, etc

The best timeline is the one where Dr Sun Zhongshan doesn't die of cancer.

Because holy fuck Jiang Jieshi was just ludicrously incompetent in everything he did, the fact that Taiwan succeeded just shows that a tiny ass island was about the limits of Jiang's ability to govern.

This. People always think China will just end up as a giant Taiwan if the KMT won while forgetting how fucking difficult it would be to govern the giant mainland that had seen huge amounts of bloodshed, with a population of hundreds of millions of people, different ethnic groups and the imperial territories who now want their own independence.

Great leap forward was a drop in the bucket when were talking about china. In the worst year of the famine popilation was a net zero meaning the amount of people born equaled the amount that died. During any other year chinas population continued to grow

Population growth

>The best timeline is the one where Dr Sun Zhongshan doesn't die of cancer.

I'm not sure that would have helped considering he already fucked up everything when he decided to make Yuan Shikai president.

>The best timeline is the one where Dr Sun Zhongshan doesn't die of cancer.

I'm not sure that would have helped much considering he already fucked up everything when he decided to make Yuan Shikai president.

Sun Zhongshan was actually a pretty shitty revolutionary. Every uprising against the Qing he tried to organize failed horribly, and he had no role whatsoever in organizing the Wuchang Uprising, which actually succeeded in bringing down the Qing. He only learned that the Qing were overthrown by reading the newspaper, and then he promptly returned to China to piggy-back off the success of other revolutionaries.

The guy really doesn't deserve the title of 国父

The Tibet thing is the most overblown issue out there.
It has population of not even 0.01% of China and is pretty much worthless unless you're in an area from Bangladesh through Indochina to China that actually gets water from there.

It is extremely resourceful and has links to many of asias major rivers. China keeping it is extremely strategic and important to them which is why they're so harsh to it.

Control of water resources is just a side reason really. The reason why Chinese are so protective of Tibet is really nothing more than "muh clay" and a belief that letting Tibet go would be the Century of Humiliation all over again.

Why should they let go of it? There's not reason for that in the slightest aside from western hippies getting butthurt.
It's no different from Russia having Siberia or America having Hawaii.

>Every uprising against the Qing he tried to organize failed horribly
to be fair it's more about persistence than failure in the end

>he decided to make Yuan Shikai president.
he didn't decide anything. even if he didn't "make" yuan president he had absolutely no power to stop Yuan, who had a monopoly on military force, from taking power for himself

>he only learned that the Qing were overthrown by reading the newspaper
true, but ironically Lenin was in switzerland and never in a million years predicted that russia would have a revolution in 1917. when he found out in the newspaper he made his way to russia with german help and, you guessed it, "piggy backed off the success of other revolutionaries"

i do agree the guy was flawed and not the most effective politician, but he was dealt a shitty hand to begin with

Well China has sunk billions into developing the Tibetan economy and infrastructure and it still hasn't made the Tibetans like Chinese. Seems like a waste of money imo. I would also argue it would be better for Tibet to serve as a buffer state between China and India.

Besides water, Tibet doesn't have anything of value. It's poor and sparsely populated, like Mongolia.

But unlike Tibet, the Chinese actually let Mongolia go. But for some reason, you never see Chinese sperging out over the loss of Mongolia like they do over Tibet.

>to be fair it's more about persistence than failure in the end

That still doesn't change my point about how Sun Yatsen played no part in organizing the Wuchang Uprising, and yet he seems to get most of the credit for overthrowing the Qing Dynasty.

>he had absolutely no power to stop Yuan, who had a monopoly on military force, from taking power for himself

So then would it have mattered if he hadn't died early like the previous poster suggested?

>but ironically Lenin was in switzerland and never in a million years predicted that russia would have a revolution in 1917. when he found out in the newspaper he made his way to russia with german help and, you guessed it, "piggy backed off the success of other revolutionaries"

Yes, but the difference between Lenin and Sun was that Lenin was able to seize power, wipe out all political opposition, establish the Soviet Union, and hold on to power up until his death. Sun on the other hand, never held power for long and was unable to stop China from turning into a giant Somalia.

You have a point that Sun was dealt a shitty hand, but my point was, what did Sun accomplish that is deserving of the title of 国父?

Mongolia served as a buffer zone between it and Soviet Union when it was the hot shit.
There's no real reason to do that in Tibet. Why would they give up so much land for no reason? And Imagine how the Chinese would feel about that.
Also the costs of upkeeping Tibet are miniscule compared to its worth, especially in a centralized state capitalist system.

not very out of 10, since if KMT wins, North Korea is not going to last very long , since it's sandwiched by American allies on both sides.

>There's no real reason to do that in Tibet.

I would argue that the Sino-Indian rivalry is entirely a modern phenomenon that is a result of the border dispute in South Tibet. China and India traded and had cultural exchange for centuries with no animosity. So if Tibet is an independent buffer state, there's no border dispute between China and India, and thus China and India can focus on growing trade with each other and allying against the West.

>Why would they give up so much land for no reason? And.

Never said China HAS to give up Tibet, but a case can be made that Tibet is actually not that valuable to China. And your statement of "imagine how the Chinese would feel about that" sorta proves my point that Chinese desire to control Tibet is more about feels and "muh clay" rather than a rational assessment of Tibet's worth.

>Also the costs of upkeeping Tibet are miniscule compared to its worth, especially in a centralized state capitalist system.

Again, besides control of water resources, what does Tibet have to offer? Tibet is such a miniscule part of China's GDP that the costs of subsidizing Tibet's economy and permanently stationing massive amounts of troops there arguably outweighs any economic gain.

Are you really not seeing why it's insane for such country of such iportance to just drop parts of its territory unless under threat? It's unprecedented.

Again, I completely understand why China would not suddenly allow Tibet to become independent. Nation-states, of course, generally aren't cool with parts of their territory declaring independence. But what we're mainly arguing is Tibet's worth. You're making a case that Tibet is valuable beyond reasons of "muh clay" and I'm making a case it's not.

But actually, this situation does have a precedent. When the PRC was established, Stalin allowed Soviet aid to the PRC on the condition that the PRC recognize the independence of Outer Mongolia. So the PRC basically renounced its claim on Mongolia in exchange for Soviet gibmedats, not due to military threats from the Soviets.

Modern China has a pathological refusal to back down from anything territory related, thanks to the "Century of Humiliation" that sat large chunks of the country broken away/ceded and the following Japanese invasion.

Even if the CCP would like to back away from certain territorial disputes, the Chinese Nationalists wouldn't, and they'll make domestic trouble if the CCP doesn't take a hard line stance.

"muh clay" is a pretty valid reason. The most important for any country, dare I say that

>Well China has sunk billions into developing the Tibetan economy and infrastructure and it still hasn't made the Tibetans like Chinese.
Is the Free Tibet movement large and popular in Tibet, or is it a combination of assblasted monks and CIA agitprop?

China will grow larger
I build for China
China has been generous
We have big plans

It's got moderate support among the Tibetans. To combat this, China is populating Tibet with Han that are loyal to the central government. The influx of Han has made Free Tibet more popular among the Tibetans but less popular as a percentage of the total population in Tibet.

Hail the KMT, hail the Chetniks
DOWN WITH MAO, DOWN WITH TITO

>it still hasn't made the Tibetans like Chinese

Maybe because they never want to completely Sinicize Tibetans? They just want them to submit and accept they're also part of China. This whole "Chinks genocide Tibetans" shit is made up by the West, mainly US, when CCP took in chatge back then.

>but unlike Tibet, the Chinese actually let Mongolia go. But for some reason, you never see Chinese sperging out over the loss of Mongolia like they do over Tibet.

Perhaps you should study more, Chinese were never really fine by this, the ROC regime never let outer Mongolia go until 1946 in exchange for stopping Soviet supports for CCP, but did Soviet stopped supporting CCP after the agreement? No! Which is why there are still many Chinese nationalists upset about this. Even in mainland China, there are still quite a few nationalists hope to get Mongolia back, although they/we all know that's impossible in reality.

*took in charge

Well first off, we can't really measure how popular the Free Tibet movement is popular inside Tibet because China doesn't exactly allow researchers in to conduct opinion polls.

Second of all, while a lot of the people doing the protesting, rioting, and self-immolating are indeed assblasted monks, there's still been riots, protests, and self-immolations by lay Tibetans. So there's clearly a good amount of discontent, even though precise opinion is hard to measure. There's also no hard line between monks and lay people since many Tibetans will be monks for a time before becoming lay people again.

Third, blaming everything on the CIA is a Chinese meme. Tibetans in Kham had already been revolting against the Chinese for years by the time the CIA started arming them. The CIA didn't manufacture Tibetan resentment against Chinese, all they did was arm guerillas, which China was also doing during the cold war.

>MUH GLF

I would agree that "Chinks are genociding Tibetans" is a meme, but there's sinicization going on to a certain extent. One Tibetan guy was imprisoned for protesting the marginalization of Tibetan-language education for instance nytimes.com/2017/01/18/world/asia/china-tibetan-education-advocate.html

Second of all, China still seems to have trouble getting the Tibetans to acknowledge they're a part of China. Hence, why you see government directives that order monks to undergo "patriotic education", force Tibetans to hang PRC flags outside their homes, giving Tibetans portraits of Chinese leaders to hang in their homes, etc.

>Even in mainland China, there are still quite a few nationalists hope to get Mongolia back, although they/we all know that's impossible in reality.

Besides the occasional ROCboo such as yourself, most Chinese nationalists seem more preoccupied with Taiwan, Diaoyudao, the South China Sea, etc. than Mongolia. For instance, when the Philippines arbitration decision was announced, I never saw a 中国一点不能少 pic in my WeChat Moments like the one you posted. I've posed the question "why don't Chinese care about Mongolian independence" to Chinese before, and I usually just get a shrug.

>I usually just get a shrug
Because there really is not too many things they can do about it. Unless you want China doing a full scale invasion to Mongolia and risk the full scale war with US and Russia.

Well I guess what I'm trying to get at is, if China was able to let a scarcely-populated region of little value like Mongolia go, and since Mongolian independence evidently did nothing to stop China's subsequent rise, why do Chinese act like the independence of another scarcely-populated region of little value like Tibet would cause immense damage to the nation?

And while there is some resentment towards Russia due to their role in Mongolian independence and stealing Outer Manchuria, why do Chinese nationalists tend to have less resentment towards Russia compared to say, the US, the UK, or Japan?

Because Russia is their ally and it's a powerful force right next to them.

If Chang Kaishek won,we might be like India now.

>Because Russia is their ally

Nice meme. Russia and China have never signed a treaty making them allies because China has had a consistent policy of not forming alliances and disparaging alliances such as NATO as a form of imperialism. Russia is also deeply paranoid that the Chinese will fuck them up one day, and has been more and more reluctant to sell the Chinese weapons.

The US is also a much more powerful force with numerous bases on China's doorstep, and yet the Chinese don't care about pissing them off.

Isn't that worse?

Exactly

That's what I mean.

Side question: why can't the Chinese flag have a badass dragon on it like in OP's pic?

Dragon was on the flag of the Qing Dynasty.

Well why can't it have a dragon now?

The PRC flag is gay.

Too hard to draw and not enough symbolism.

Dragon is the symbol of son of heaven and emperor of land.But PRC is a republic now.

I hope in the future China goes back to a dragon flag.

Maybe after they stop being fake commies.

pic related

Funnily enough, last time I was there, I've met more than a couple people who thinks China should leverage Russia's geopolitical weakness right now to get Outer Manchuria back in exchange for a bailout.

They don't claim to be communist. They never did.

There would still remain sizeable chunk of cultured Chinese who would not publicly spit, poo and snivel and who may have taught masses good manners

Hilariously enough the one person people think is in support of Free Tibet, the Dalai Lama, does not support independent Tibet. He only supports increased autonomy and religious freedom.

that doesn't stop the chingchongs from labelling him public enemy numero uno

That is such a huge what-if that no one here actually knows. All these responses are literal fanfic.

>Tibet is possibly free

LMAO

[Citations needed]

Very funny.

They stick to 'muh first phase of socialism'

Mao was bullshitting for that soviet aid

>how KMT envisioned how China should be run

Ummm no honey, that's not true.
Although I do think Modern China is more Chiang than Mao.

>In August 1923, after introducing Chiang as his "most trusted deputy", Sun had sent him as head of a delegation to Moscow to study the political training techniques of Red army officers and the principles of Leninist political organization. In 1927 when Chiang turned on the Communists in the "white terror", the Nationalist party had ironically already become deeply imbued with these Leninist organizational ideas and practices. Chiang was even reputed to have said in an off-the-record 1932 speech, "If we want our revolution [to be] a success, we must create a party dictatorship"
books.google.com/books?id=Qe6MDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA192&ots=UuigX-1nIL&dq=chiang was deeply inspired&pg=PA193#v=onepage&q&f=false

>In 1924 Sun Yat-sen said: "During the Russian revolution, political dictatorship was used, everything else can be discarded, the only aim was the success of the revolution... its success was due to the party (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) being on top of the state. I suggest... we should reorganise, by putting the party (Kuomintang) on top of the state (ROC)".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dang_Guo

Gee sempai, it sure seems like this rhetoric resembles the current rhetoric of the CCP

China rn seems to be pursuing Sun Yat Sen's model, which is something both chinas can agree on

Some smart journalist recently remarked that modern mainland China reflects Chiang's technocratic concerns much more than Mao's.

That said, both peas in a pod.

However, it doesn't really reflect the reality of Chiang's administration, with large portions of the country only haphazardly under his control and the real power bloc being independent warlords.

you're misreading that post: he's stating *without* Mao, i.e. had there been Mao.

KMT = corrupt AF, no doubt about it. Just the same as every other Chinese regime when you think about it so no surprises. Hardly need to be a commie to say it either, user, just observant.

Not the poster, but yes, see Serguei Kuzmin's articles, up on Academia.edu. (he's the Ungern specialist by the way)

that's because you seem to be unaware that the Russians supported the KMT, not the CCP, since they believed that a peasant rebellion would not lead to communism as predicted by Marx, reliant as his vision was on the urban proletariat. That's where Mao proved him wrong, or rather adapted the doctrine to a rural, peasant milieu.