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Personally, I love the idea of a separate Siberia, since it may actually allow the Russians to govern the land more instead of taking orders from St. Petersburg and Moscow.

I got a question though. I have an AAR in my signature about Russia (in MDS), and I was wondering how China in your AAR could compare to Russia in my AAR?
 
Hopefully those federations can avoid being Yugoslav analogues ITTL.

The brain gain bit, and the treatment of German industry, is a worrying signal that China may not be as interested in promoting the economic development of postwar Europe and former Russia as it should be. I hope China has the foresight to come up with a Sino Marshall Plan, especially to stabilize the new nations and federations growing in the rubble of the USSR. China should basically be bribing those states, getting stability in return. You could even have economic aid contingent on demographic "stabilization": Russia only gets aid if it encourages and accepts refugees from now-nonRussian territories; the new states only get aid if they encourage Russian migration out of there territory and into Russia proper. That'd go a long way to defusing what, right now, seems like a revanchist time bomb.

Loving this AAR, by the way.

Why would China be interested in this? There is no ideological confrontation, they don't really need allies. The only nation capable of rallying an alliance in opposition to China is the US, and they are very much on China's side right now - committed to free trade, and the full development of the economic potential of China and the other formerly exploited nations of the world.

China perceives herself as still having a lot of catching up to do, before her own prosperity is anywhere close to that of even Poland or Bulgaria. They want to grab what they can get, and the relationship with her European clients is one of pragmatism and mutual (temporary) benefit. They can afford to be casual about it because the most aggraved parties (UK, France) are deeply mired in their own problems and likely busy enough coping with the breakup of their own colonial empires and worldwide trade relations. The US, who were not much involved in the war besides running the Chinese logistics and selling them arms, stood by smiling gleefully, while China forced through the reordering of Eurasia, knowing that the technological and economic disparity between the two will for the time being chain China to the US anyways.

Chinese history since the 1830s is one of very inequal relationship with the west. I doubt they'll suddenly become philantropic overlords (US-style) just because they gained deeper insight into some cosmic order... they want to pull even first and foremost and will enjoy the most lasting alliances with those European nations that share this sort of "first we need to get even" outlook. I see as natural Chinese allies the following nations: Poland, Czechoslovakia, the new SSRs and ex Russian states obviously, as well as the former colonies of UK/France.
 
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Why would China be interested in this? There is no ideological confrontation, they don't really need allies. The only nation capable of rallying an alliance in opposition to China is the US, and they are very much on China's side right now - committed to free trade, and the full development of the economic potential of China and the other formerly exploited nations of the world.

China perceives herself as still having a lot of catching up to do, before her own prosperity is anywhere close to that of even Poland or Bulgaria. They want to grab what they can get, and the relationship with her European clients is one of pragmatism and mutual (temporary) benefit. They can afford to be casual about it because the most aggraved parties (UK, France) are deeply mired in their own problems and likely busy enough coping with the breakup of their own colonial empires and worldwide trade relations. The US, who were not much involved in the war besides running the Chinese logistics and selling them arms, stood by smiling gleefully, while China forced through the reordering of Eurasia, knowing that the technological and economic disparity between the two will for the time being chain China to the US anyways.

Chinese history since the 1830s is one of very inequal relationship with the west. I doubt they'll suddenly become philantropic overlords (US-style) just because they gained deeper insight into some cosmic order... they want to pull even first and foremost and will enjoy the most lasting alliances with those European nations that share this sort of "first we need to get even" outlook. I see as natural Chinese allies the following nations: Poland, Czechoslovakia, the new SSRs and ex Russian states obviously, as well as the former colonies of UK/France.

But they haven't been so petty so far, have they? The dismemberment/liberation of all the Russias is really the first massively punitive action they've taken against former oppressors. My read of the Chinese here is that they've exemplified enlightened self-interest. Every step has balanced short-term gains against their long-term interests, their history notwithstanding.

When it comes to rebuilding Europe and the Russias, they've got a long-term interest in keeping the situation stable, and in creating trading partners. Impoverished, revanchist states won't be great for either. Besides there's also a lot of money to be made for Chinese leaders and industrialists in speculating in such a rebuilding.
 
It will be interesting to see how these changes stand the test of time.
 
Whoa, Russia really has been torn apart. In a way, it's the delegate's own fault; they should have agreed on a compromise sooner and that way they would have preserved more Russian territory. That's something the Chinese can point to in the future to create a bit of scandal if ever a Russian government starts getting uppity.

The Akmolinsk conference does seem like a rather mixed bag. A large number of artificial countries based on the Soviet system, and land that isn't even part of ethnic claims going to states that never had it before... On the other hand, those nations will be spared the effects of long-tern Soviet exploitation, giving them more time to establish a working order and a less traumatic transition to functioning states. Let's see how this goes!
 
I should explain the odd aesthetics of the FCA border. It's based on this map.

ussr_ethnic_1974.jpg


This map is from 1974. I halfway edited it before giving up and moving to the political map seen in the update. I put the Germans back into their location pre 1942 and added the political borders before I stopped. Besides that this map shows why the borders of FCA and Transcaucasia are where they are (though I think the Chuvash republic is included in the final map while here it's left out). I didn't end up using this map in the main AAR because it was too hard to include the information about ethnic makeup and political divisions on the same map. Colored overlays for countries made the existing colors for ethnicities hard to distinguish while using just the borders, as the one above made it really hard to label the countries.

That said, that map is from 1974, so post Stalin era settlement of central Asia and deportations from the Volga region. So a similar map in OTL for 1944 would have even less red. Add in the effect of the Sino Soviet war in this timeline, the Russians, possessing most of the wealth and government apparatus, were able to flee faster and in greater numbers than the locals.

So, for example Mari el, according to the 1939 Soviet census was 47.2% Mari and 42% Russian. Let's say that 30% of all the Russians fled while only 15% of the Mari did. The post war numbers then make the province 57% Mari. The neighboring Chuvash republic goes from having 72% Chuvash to 79%. That's assuming that the Russians only fled in a 2 to1 ratio. Given how much richer the Russians were relative to minorities within the USSR 3 to 1, 4 to 1, even 5 to 1 ratios are more than likely. The idea is that many of the Russians left central Asia just before the Chinese arrived and that they haven't been encouraged to return. Some of the areas added, like Orenburg oblast are still predominantly Russian but now they are the Russian minority areas of the FCA.

Essentially Akmolinsk was the Russian version of the Treaty of Trianon which left 30% of all Hungarians stranded outside a vastly reduced Hungary in 1920. The problem for the rest of Europe is that the post Akmolinsk Russia will eventually be in a much stronger position than the post Trianon Hungary. And while the Hungarians, because of their small size and strong neighbors, had to wait for the Germans to give them an opening to enact their own revanchist agenda, the Russian state remains the largest and most populous in Eastern Europe and might try to start a war on their own.

The next update is all internal Chinese politics which have changed a bit.
 
Well...subscribed! I've been planning something similar for a couple of months (but a lot more scripted, hence the planning), just waiting for some flags to be made...

Amazing so far!
 
Hm, it seems that this is in coma. I hope for swift resuscitation of this AAR, I was really enjoying it while it lasted. Please, do continue. Subscribed

I think that China is approaching some severe social problems in 10 or 20 years' time. You wrote that thousands of european engineers, scientists et cetera flocked to China for new opportunities due to lack of sufficiently skilled Chinese. But in a decade or so, many more young educated Chinese will leave universities only to find out that many of the best, most prestigious jobs are held by Europeans, by foreign devils saved from tyranny by chinese soldiers and now living off chinese riches. I can't see that ending well.

If China will let the Europeans stay, I can picture the rise of some extremely nationalist parties and unrest and pogroms against the foreigners. Well, maybe the situation won't be that severe, but unrest against foreigners can't be ruled out. The government will that way also alienate patriots, so far in my opinion allies of democracy in China. That could pave the way for some nationalistic, autocratic regime, and that wouldn't be good for anyone.

But if China won't let them stay and will somehow get rid of them (either expel them and ruin international image and relations with the West, or discriminate them to make them leave and ruin international image and relations with the West, because I can't see any European nation being content to watch its people treated like garbage by some upstart Asians), it will experience a severe brain drain and cooling of relations with western world, but a happy population at home. And how would USA react to any deportations/pogroms? Intriguing...
Simultaneously, the kids of expatriate Europeans will reach working age. They would come from educated backgrounds and will be probably well educated as well, and will therefore compete against Chinese students in the job market. What about them? Some of them will have lived their whole life in China, but due to their parents are still foreign devils to Chinese. Do they expel them too, or let them stay? And will the public be ok with some foreign devils leaving, while others continue to pollute China?

Of course, there is a possibility that as Europe recovers, those expatriates will slowly and gradually return home while being gradually replaced by native experts, but that would be boring :D no conflicts=boring, right? wink wink, nudge nudge

I am very interested in your take on the situation, Porkman. I know HOI isn't particularly suited to simulate anything like that, but I hope for some interesting narrative :) Good work and kudos on the AAR, will be following.
 
You bring up an interesting point Kurfürst.

Maybe a law set up forcing retirement of these Europeans in 5-10 years time, or maybe a decree that they must train native employees to take their place? I agree that the foreigners cannot stay long term.

Hopefully an update is in the works.
 
State of the AAR update. The venerable old computer that I've had since 2004 finally died. It was the one with the game. It took a lot of time to get the game ported over to the new laptop along with the old pictures, screenshots and modified files. (for example I lost all my rocket techs) But it's back up finally, and I just need to script one more event and write the history of the 50's of 60's after this. This is number 59, the AAR (including epilogue,) should go to 62 or 61.

@TremblingBlue - My script for this one stopped in 1938 and I've been winging it ever since.

Kurfurst - I think they'll be resentment but not as much. Even though China gained tens of thousands of foreign experts, they are still a very, very, very, small minority. You also have to remember that this China was never cleansed of foreigners by the Japanese invasion. Foreigners have had a huge presence in most cities and have been operating inside China's economy for almost 80 years, especially in the roles of technical experts. (I wish I could find a list, but there are a lot of "Western" companies that are famous today, which started in Republican China.)

The biggest worry is not anti foreign mob violence, rather that nationalist parties will use the state to restrict and curtail the foreign companies in China. So far a weak government had enabled foreign companies to operate without much oversight, but the end of the war leaves China with a much stronger government that could be protectionist and successfully enforce it.

The USA and the UK in our timeline and this one gave up the concessions and extraterritoriality in 1944, removing the last big grievances.

The vast majority of foreigners who relocated permanently are former Axis or Soviet people, neither of which have governments that can stand up to the Chinese.

The future is going to be more, "They took our jobs." than "murder the white devils."

@Maj. Von Mauser -

Foreigners can live in China long term. Being Han Chinese makes you a member of the single largest ethnic group on the planet. If any country can weather immigration without changing demographics, it's China. There are 10 million ethnic Manchus now, but only 70 people who can still speak the language and the Manchus ran the place for 300 years.
 
Post War Fun

Assemblyhalloutside.jpg


Before Chiang's death, the old Political Study clique 政學係 had been the refuge of civilian reformers and industrialist officials with no independent power base of its own though it members were often tapped for both their idealism and administrative acumen. The actual power rested with the Whampoah clique, composed of loyalist generals and Dai Li's Blue shirts, and the CC clique which ran most of the civilian state apparatus. When the CC clique killed Chiang Kai Shek by accident, it's upper leadership was purged. Dai Li and generals like Bai Chongxi and He Yingqin had feared a return to warlordism and dissolution of the careful ties of personal relation that still bound most of the republic's army together if they tried to appoint a military man as Chiang's successor. As a stopgap solution, the civilian organs of the party were given real authority for the first time dressed up as finally enacting Sun Yat sen's ideal of political tutelage by the party. T.H. Yeh and Kong Xiangxi had been given Chiang's posts and powers, but without military backing neither of them could assume Chiang's de facto position.

Meanwhile, the Whampoah Clique, as a military organization, was formalized, diluted and dismantled. Chiang Kai Shek had worked hard to reduce the political power of military commanders besides himself and the army reforms of Bai Chongxi and Jiang Baili finished the process. A larger more professional army meant more junior officers who had come up after unification, while the peace had meant time for a lot of reorganization. Even though the members of the Whampoah clique still retained a great deal of political power and high positions within the armed forces, the character of the forces under their command had changed. Loyalty to commanding officers was expected to be professional not personal. Chiang Kai Shek's decision to recreate the commisariat in 1936 had paid dividends.

In the aftermath of Chiang's death, the driving force and glue behind the post Chiang government had become Dai Li. Like his chosen name, (Dai Li 戴笠 means "assassin's veil,") he operated from the shadows. He was Head of the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (軍統) and ran all of the regime's secret police work. His Blue Shirts were a nominally fascist organization composed of military officers and young party members, absolutely dedicated to the Chiang and the state, it had swung between openly avowing fascism in 1940 and condemning it two years later during the war against Germany. It was heavily involved in the schools, police, and even the Boy Scouts. By 1938, it had grown to over 100,000 members and was fiercely loyal to Dai Li and the Chinese State. The few people that had crossed him, like the Shanghai newspaper editor, Shi Liang Cai, had ended up dead or disappeared.

3 prospective young blue shirts
Kidsplaying.jpg


Chiang's unexpected death had forced Dai Li to improvise and cooperate to hold the state together without its head. Part of that was working to make the army subordinate to the civilian authorities which were in turn terrified of him. Destroying the power of the independent generals and removing the army from civic life left Dai Li with a monopoly on force with the knock on benefit of increased professionalism in the armed forces. The frantic backroom deals that held the republic together in those few weeks had been made to insure the continuation of the state and the near deification of Chiang Kai Shek. He had made the compromises and threats that secured the new government and, though he rarely dictated policy, it was also very clear that Kong Xiangxi and T.H. Yeh could do very little without his go ahead or at least cooperation.

However, the law of unintended consequences was in full effect. By 1944, Dai Li had solidified his powers within the Republic. The traditional centers of power and cliques that might have threatened him when Chiang died had been removed or thoroughly cowed. The warlord politics that had threatened the regime during the Nanjing decade were a thing of the past. His powers had expanded and he had developed a good working relationship with MI5, the OSS, Centre d’information gouvernemental, and the Japanese Public Security Intelligence Agency (the Kempetai had been disbanded during the occupation of Japan.) He had successfully stifled the anti war movement and his secret police served as the stick to the reformers' carrot when it came to consolidating the state's reach across China. He had neglected, though, to anticipate the effects of the genuine democratic reform that had taken place.

Voters.jpg


Ironically, despite personally holding a very low opinion of democratic government, he had fostered it in China as a way to forestall civil war. A popular explanation of his motives held that a government of civilians would be too weak and divided by its very nature to threaten his existing place within it, indeed it would be reliant on him as a counterweight to the military. In the meantime, the Political Study clique and the long neglected civilian members of the government finally had the money and peace with which to do the work of land reform, democratic reform, tax reform and all the other high minded ideas that had only existed on paper before the peace with Japan.

The 1941 constitution had given China a bicameral legislature but an odd one. The People's Political Council had been operating as the unofficial legislature since the war with Japan but it had had no powers under the extant constitution. It was a parliamentary body with seats apportioned by party with the Guomindang in clear and overwhelming majority. After the 1941 constitution, it had expanded to 250 seats and been made the upper house of the Legislative Yuan. The advocates of democratic reform had won a victory with the resurrection of the then defunct National Assembly which had direct elections by district in accordance to the Constitution of the Republic of China, members of the National Assembly were to be elected in accordance with the following provisions:
Those to be elected from the provinces and by the municipalities under the direct jurisdiction of the Executive Yuan shall be five for each province or municipality with a population of not more than 2,000,000, one additional member shall be elected for each additional 1,000,000 in a province or municipality whose population is over 2,000,000
Those to be elected from Mongolian Leagues and Banners
Those to be elected from Tibet
Those to be elected by various racial groups in frontier regions
Those to be elected by Chinese citizens residing abroad
Those to be elected by occupational groups
The number of women to be elected under the provinces, municipalities, and other items was prescribed by law. Based on the census calculations, at the time, the citizen population of China numbered at 461 million, in the 1941 election 773 representatives were elected.
Elected representatives from the provinces and municipalities: 622
Elected representatives from the Mongolian Leagues: 22
Elected representatives from Tibet: 15
Elected representatives by various racial groups in frontier regions: 6
Elected representatives by Chinese citizens residing abroad: 19
Elected representatives by occupational groups: 89
A Candidate required over 3000 voters' signatures or a party nomination to begin campaigning. Those who had failed were not be allowed to campaign. Overseas Chinese and Occupational Groups could only campaign if they had the required amount of voters. Because the constitution had just been promulgated, opposition was small, and most of the nominated candidates were from the Nationalist Party. Though both houses of the legislature composed the official Legislative Yuan, "立法院," that term was generally only used for the the upper house commonly while the lower house was referred to as the National Assembly "國民大會." The National Assembly had been gradually expanding to it's proper size since 1941 with more elections every year.

Electionresults.jpg


In late 1944, the National Assembly reached over 1200 members, enough to achieve quorum.and operate under it's full powers as mandated by the Constitution. Unlike the Legislative Yuan, it's members were not drawn from the old guard of the party and most had risen to national prominence only after Chiang Kai Shek's death. They were largely members of what was referred to as the "New Politics Clique." 新政係. It was a bit of misnomer. They weren't really an organized group like the old Whampoah or CC cliques had been, instead the term referred to those politicians that had risen to power by electoral means post 1938. The vast majority were country magistrates, city mayors, provincial officials and lower level bureaucrats. While they were far down on the hierarchy of the Guomindang, (The Executive Committee which ran the party and the Central Political Council which interfaced between the party and the government were still dominated by 1930's era party members), the New Politics Clique vastly outnumbered the Chiang Era officials. Party Members who had risen from the Nanjing Decade tended to refer to themselves as revolutionaries "革命家" while within the New Politics Clique the word was reformer "改良." While the older members of the party held their positions by virtue of tradition and patronage, the New Politics members drew at least some of their legitimacy from the ballot box, generally with the support of the existing local party power structure but not always.

The resulting National Assembly was a huge and contentious body which typically rubber stamped the Legislative Yuan's proposals when not engaged in longwinded debate. These debates were often heated and fistfights between members from different provinces and parties were not uncommon. The Guomindang controlled 1045 of the 1205 occupied seats with another 430 places yet to be elected. Generally, non Guomindang seats were a result of the party officially deciding not to contest it and leave it open for smaller parties to run. Unless explicitly mandated by the Executive Council of Guomindang (and sometimes not even then) the GMD rarely acted as a unified bloc inside the National Assembly.

It was a call back to the party's original big tent formation and there were still huge policy disagreements within it. The New Politics officials tended to split along regional interests. The Coastal Clique "海邊係“ was a name given to the delegates from Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other coastal cities that had been treaty ports and were well connected internationally. They tended to be bankers, industrialists, or other petty capitalists and were chiefly concerned with currency and market reform. The coastal cities also had the advantage of being the first areas to elect officials, so they had time to prepare. Broadly, they represented the interests of China's capitalists who had gotten rich in the past 30 years. They wanted more industrialization (in their district), subsidies for infrastructure (in their district), lower taxes, and low tariffs. They were strong advocates for China's intervention in the European war, seeing it as a way get a relaxation of trade barriers and increased trade with both the US in Britain. They were not opposed to rural land reform or rent reduction as they tended to represent urban factory owners rather rural landowners and offering to improve the lot of China's suffering peasants was a good way to distract voters from their own suffering workers. However, the group tended to split around regional interests, especially on domestic issues. Part of the justification for the National Assembly was that it would make domestic spending more responsive to local needs. Government money for a new railroad or expanded port facilities caused some of the bitterest debates on the floor.

Assemblyhall.jpg


The domination by urban capitalist interests was a bitter pill for democratic reformers. The National Assembly had been based around proportional representation in hopes that it would make the party and the government more responsive to the needs of China's vast peasantry. Indeed, by population, rural areas and representatives from those areas should have made up the vast majority of the seats and, on paper, they actually did. However, the vagaries of party politics and a new constitution had unintentionally opened up new ways for urban interests to override the will of the rural majority.

Democratization and direct election of representatives, had, by necessity of education and infrastructure, been first enacted in the cities followed by the countryside. It was thus relatively easy for city based party organizations to raise money and spend lavishly buying votes for the rural candidate of their choice who met the residency requirements. Around big, rich cities like Shanghai and Tianjin, it was an open secret that while the nearby rural 郊區 representatives were technically elected, they had been bought and paid for by urban party bosses.

Another more blatant and less common way to buy a seat was to take advantage of a well meaning loophole in the law. Due to the vast distances involved and poor Chinese infrastructure, representatives were allowed to designate a proxy to sit on the floor who voted and debated on their behalf. In theory, the proxy and the delegate were supposed to communicate regularly with the proxy being a merely a stand in for a maximum of a month at a time. Once appointed proxy, a person could then act entirely on their own, functioning as a full representative as long as they got a letter every month reconfirming their proxy appointment. In practice, a representative, once elected, could effectively sell their seat to someone by designating them the proxy and that person could then serve out the delegate's term without standing for election. This was, of course, illegal de jure, but the weakness of the courts in many areas meant that someone buying a seat just had to factor in the cost of bribing a judge along with a representative and they were good to go.

China's traditional rural elite to took advantage of this to get rich, First, they would leverage their local control of land and the peasantry to stuff the ballots, get elected, and then discreetly or not so discreetly open up the bidding for the new seat. Once money changed hands, the buyer got the proxy of their choice appointed and the original delegate returned home a very wealthy man. That the proxies serving in their name represented urban rather than rural interests would have far reaching consequences.

Grainscarcity.jpg


Sending out grain in exchange for votes was a very common practice. The line between bribery and encouraging people to participate in the democratic process was thin.

One of the most striking examples was Zou Minglun, a prominent landowner who was elected representative of Fushun County in Sichuan. Upon taking office, he immediately appointed a proxy, Jiang Jingxiang. Soon afterwards, Jiang Jingxiang made his way to Beijing while, Mr. Zou, was seen in a new Pontiac Silver Streak at his new villa on the outskirts of Chongqing. He kept company with the reputed buyers; a group of Chongqing businessmen that already controlled that city's party machine but found themselves lacking numbers in the National Assembly and losing lucrative government infrastructure contracts to their coastal brethren.

Proxies were a matter of public record, so the transaction raised the hackles in the Southwest China Daily, an independent paper published in Chengdu. Opposition candidates who had lost the election to Zou Minglun, filed charges of misconduct only to have them struck down by Sichuan's provincial court; reputed as one of China's most corrupt. Despite being particularly blatant, most expected the appointed proxy, Jiang Jingxiang, to survive in his position. However, the regional politics that had brought him into power also served to bring him down. Members of the Assembly from Shanghai and Beijing were not above using anti corruption as a cudgel to bludgeon their political opponents and used their influence within the Judicial Yuan to overturn the lower court decision. In addition, they filed an additional charge, treasonable use of public office, against Zou Minglun and Jiang Jingxiang.

Facing anger from both locals outside of the Chongqing party machine and the Judicial Yuan acting on the national level, the Chongqing party bosses found themselves outgunned and unable to stop the wheels of justice. In the subsequent trial, it was found that Zou Mingun was paid over 400,000 yuan ($20,000) in cash along with nearly 1000 hectares of land, in addition to gifts of gold, art objects and even a Swiss manufactured record player. Zou Minglun became the center of a public firestorm as each new detail emerged, gleefully cheered on by the coastal presses. The businessmen and party members who's money and influence arranged the purchase tried to use the same methods to extricate themselves with varying degrees of success. Thus, there were relatively few prison sentences within this group though many resignations and hefty fines.

One of the many small court cases

Courtcase.jpg


The harshest sentences were given to Zou Minglun and Jiang Jingxing. Being found guilty of treason, they both were sentenced to death. Jiang Jingxing would be executed while Zou Minglun would remain imprisoned for decades.

Reaction was mixed.
Xu Wenlun said:
...Furthermore, the verdict of treason is worrying. Treason is supposed to be limited to acts of subversion or aiding a foreign power. While it's clear that the Fushun duo is guilty of many heinous things, treason is not one of them. Should this verdict go unchallenged, I fear that factions in the National Assembly will make a habit out of crushing their opponents with trumped up charges. It's clearly not about the crime itself, a similar case in Suzhou was dismissed with a slap on the wrist. Rather the Fushun duo's true crime was not having the votes to protect their own unethical behavior. The Assembly cannot function if minority members can be executed for stealing a feather.

Others saw the harsh sentence as a good thing.
Chu Anping said:
I hope that the harsh sentence will make it clear to the rest of the permanently absent delegates and their proxies that while they may have gotten away with it for now, the cost of buying again might be more than they can afford. For the party in general, it's a triumph; another step on the journey to rid China of the twin scourges of local corruption and those who turn a blind eye to it. As a Republic and as a party, we need to make sure that the national government continues to serve as a check on local corruption rather than an aide to it.

Obvious and blatant corruption aside, it was a victory of sorts for democracy. The high asking price for the seat meant that the new National Assembly was important enough to be worth bribing. It was also coming into it's role as the domestic executer of policy. The Legislative Yuan, the President, and the Prime Minister stated goals, apportioned money, and set benchmarks. Once these got to the National Assembly, the delegates there decided how to implement them. What railroads to build where, the best location for a reassembled German car factory, funding for schools, etc.

Opposition parties remained small but legal. The difficulty for them was one of harassment and lack of penetration. A Guomindang candidate enjoyed year round favorable coverage on through the party newspapers and radio stations. State employees were also often encouraged to vote the right way by their bosses. That said, there were many contests where two Guomindang candidates ran against the other, with the associated party media organs twisting themselves in pretzels trying to please both candidates.

34年 1月 30日

The biggest challenge to the new order came during 1945 on a debate over price controls. China had become a victim of it's own success. Peace had led to inflation. War had made the government the leading economic entrepeneur. In 1932, the National Defense Planning Commission 國防設計委員會 was commissioned to prepare China's industry for the coming war with Japan. It was then renamed the National Resources Commission 國家資源委員會 in 1935 to reflect its role beyond defense-related industries. China's wild industrial growth during the war caused it to grow into a massive bureaucracy that was involved in managing a large state-owned industrial sector and in coordinating foreign trade. By 1945, it had a staff of over 100,000 who supervised nearly 2 million workers, mostly in public enterprises. The equally as massive Industrial and Mining Adjustment Administration 公共調整委員會. It had initially been started to prepare for moving critical industries out of threatened areas during the war with Japan, but as the Chinese had advanced, it had taken responsibility for administering factories and mines as well as providing loans, in all of the newly acquired areas. This had continued on through the war and its jurisdiction had spread across Asia and Europe. Though never official, both agencies had settled into a de facto agreement where the National Resources Commission ran the state industry within China and the Industrial and Mining Adjustment Administration ran all the industry outside of it.

One of the many soldiers turned worker-for-the-state at a small textile mill in Hebei

returntocivilianlife.jpg


Peace threatened the arrangement and maneuvering had started in earnest during the Paris Peace Conference. For the industrialists who ran the IMAA, they knew that the gradual retreat of China back to it's own borders would reduce their own jurisdiction and their source of funds. One of the early victories was that the IMAA maintained control of the German industry that was transferred to China. They were fighting an uphill battle. Kong Xiangxi and T.V. Soong were well invested in the National Resources Commission through their existing control of the Bank of China and China Finance and Development Corporation. For them, the goal was to get the IMAA shut down and all of it's assets moved into National Resources Commission once peace concluded and China withdrew. This also represented a split in the KMT. The older, Nanjing era officials tended to be with the National Resources Commission, and had lucrative and exclusive lines of patronage and graft. This had forced younger and less well connected party members and industrialists to the IMAA. That the IMAA also had a closer working relationship with the army made matters even more difficult.

Akmolinsk had forced a turf war that was busy playing itself out in the National Assembly. The Legislative Yuan, controlled as it was by the senior party members, had voted to liquidate all foreign assets of the IMAA and fold it into the National Resources Commission. The National Assembly had a much more sizable contingent of businessmen turned officials who had made their fortunes off of the war in Europe with the IMAA and they weren't backing down. The New Politics Clique was largely in favor of turning the IMAA into an additional source of internal development aid. They wanted to combine both organizations into something larger, with enough spaces to ensure that the lucrative government loans and contracts kept coming.

The floor debates in the National Assembly became heated. There were billions of dollars on the line and a question about how much presence the government of the Republic would have in the economy during peace time. Inflation was not out of control but the coastal cities had been hit hard and many people had seen their real wages drop anywhere from 50 to 70% compared to 1940. There was talk of extending price controls on rice, oil and cotton all of which had seen massive price increases as the demands of financing the largest land invasion in history drained the country. Rather than falling after peace, the price had stayed stubbornly high and there were demands for government action and riots in some cities. Also compounding the government's problems was the easing of the generous loan rates and credit lines China had enjoyed during the war. There seemed to be a ground swell of popular support that called for the government to step in fix the economy.

Two things stopped the slide into socialism. One was that China was not bankrupt. It was indebted and spending vast sums on the world's biggest military, but demand and employment had also exploded internally and prices had started to drop albeit slowly. For those already wealthy and in control of the government industrial base, the situation was not yet critical and they avoided any drastic action. The second was Dai Li.

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In Bai Chongxi's memoirs, he wrote about a private conversation he had a with Dai Li. According to Bai, Mr. Dai had never been happy that he had been forced to rely on the bankers to hold the country together following the death of Chiang. The last thing he wanted was to give the government a bigger role and therefore the bankers more control of the economy.

So it was an impasse, the old guard of the KMT in the Legislative Yuan faced down the New Politics 新政治 Clique
in the National Assembly. It was a battle that the National Assembly was destined to lose, until Dai Li came down on their side. Threats and cajoles to the Legislative Yuan killed the plan to fold the IMAA in into the National Resources Commission, and the National Assembly called for the National Resources Commission to fall under IMAA jurisdiction in a vote where they won a surprising majority. The Legislative Yuan was never going to accept it and they issued a new resolution that called for the IMAA to liquidate all assets over a period of 5 years and be disbanded. This was widely believed to be negotiating tactic, a play by the entrenched party members to scare the Assembly into backing the original deal. It would have too, except that Dai Li assured several member of the National Assembly that he had their backs. Emboldened by the support, the National Assembly went even further, it rejected both of the Legislative Yuan's proposal and proposed their inverse. The NRC would be gradually disbanded and IMAA would assume all of it's domestic functions. Newspapers across China tended to be part of someone's business/political empire and most took the side of their patrons, further creating an atmosphere of doubt.

It was at this point that Dai Li intervened to clip the wings of both factions. The separation of powers between the Legislative Yuan and the National Assembly was not well defined. Nor was the National Assembly as united as the higher party members in the Legislative Yuan. (At this point, composed of 178 KMT representatives and 72 from other parties) With two mutually exclusive resolutions going through the motions, the matter was then referred to the Judicial Yuan for a ruling. The result surprised everyone, the judge ruled both proposals as valid. Making matters stranger was that the National Assembly's proposal to gut the NRC passed the Legislative Yuan, with support from the non KMT members inside joined with just enough high ranking party members to have a majority, including Kong Xiangxi, himself.

At the same time, the second proposal for the IMAA passed the National Assembly when over 100 delegates switched sides. With both passed, the courts intervened again, with surprising alacrity. Both the NRC and the IMAA would be disbanded over the course of 5 years. Most of their assets would be sold off and a new agency the National Development Committee 國民發展委員 would be in charge of the remainder. It was a mandated cut that would take 80% of the state controlled industry and return it to private control. For the 20%, that remained in state hands, a suspiciously high number belonged to those members of the both the Legislative Yuan and the National Assembly who had switched at the last minute.

Though the details wouldn't come out until the fifties, it was an open secret that someone had manipulated the courts and and both houses to break up the state controlled industrial bureaucracies. The backlash was fierce and recriminations and investigations continued for months but they all fizzled out as no one was talking. The net result was one that upset both liberals and conservatives, and a significant number began to doubt the benevolent leadership. Still there were some benefits, the Bureau of Military Statistics secret police had stayed out of it and newspapers had enjoyed tremendous and unprecedented leeway when it came to reporting on the IMAA and NRC. It was the first time that the National Assembly or the Legislative Yuan had tested the KMT's de facto non elected leadership and they had been forced to back down. But the press also reveled in their new found openness and were unlikely to relent their criticism of government agencies.

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The new National Development Committee had the task of developing China's 19th century infrastructure. Though it's first priority was to concentrate development in Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, before embarking on a general plan for the 18 provinces of China proper. The rationale for this plan was integrating the newly acquired territories into China's economic orbit before Russian industry could catch up/ The TranSiberian by this point, was the busiest railway in the world, with vast amounts of Chinese supplies and resources flowing in both directions. The problem was that China was now split economically into two areas. The Russian Far East and Manchuria, connected by the TranSiberian and China proper connected by the Jingguang railway. It was still easier to ship something from Harbin to Moscow than to GuangZhou. For the Republic of China Army now tasked with guarding a huge central Asian frontier, the need to be able to move troops to the border without going through Manchuria was paramount. Building the rails from the outside in also simplified the logistics. The war across Asia had forced the army to become somewhat adept at building and maintaining new rail links. Some of the equipment as built or bought from abroad, but the vast majority was captured Soviet and German equipment and still spread across Asia. It was easier for the army to move it back to the border and build the railroads necessary to get it into China proper instead of trying to ship it.

Next update is about the military reorganization of China in the wake of total victory.
 
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Interesting developments :)
So China is on its way towards a market economy with limited government involvement? And a more or less open political atmosphere with not quite a multi-party system but at least a multi-interest system. Plus a free press. The China that never was!

Are the pictures from the actual period? Or are those from the early years of the KMT rule in Taiwan?
 
Interesting developments :)
So China is on its way towards a market economy with limited government involvement? And a more or less open political atmosphere with not quite a multi-party system but at least a multi-interest system. Plus a free press. The China that never was!
True. And the transition from the old authoritarian KMT to the democratic/free market Taiwan squeezed into, at least, a decade.
 
Sorry to hear about your computer problems. C'est la vie!

Really nice update. It's easy to read a wall of text when it's as well written and interesting as this was.

Interesting constitution. The system for electing representatives is particularly interesting, I'm sure I've seen something similar before somewhere. Is it based on the actual Chinese constitution from the time or something else?
 
Why is Zhang Xueliang still in the cabinet?!

I foresee two likely possibilities for China's political future: the first is that China becomes a carbon copy of Japan IOTL politically, with the KMT instead of the Liberal Democrats as the perpetual party of power for the next fifty years with a rather inept socialist opposition (perhaps led by a pragmatic ex-communist *hint hint*) the second is that China experiences a liberal revival sometime during the sixties, and a Liang Qichao-esque Chinese liberal party challenges the KMT for the leadership (possibly led by someone like Zhao Ziyang, or an ex-KMT figure). There could also be a split in the KMT, I doubt Dai Li is very happy that the current President was/is a banker...
 
I had long thought this AAR dead. However I just watched a film on John Rabe and it made me wonder if anything had happened.

It's good to see another update. :)
 
It's not dead, I'm just a bit rudderless at the end. The post war stuff really doesn't work in my traditional "date---- blurb ---- picture" format and I have the second to last update mostly written though no pictures really. The big problem is the usual, "end of history" that happens once the war is won, the game is nothing but boring after 1944. The current update is the immediate post war with game pictures and the final one will be the one that takes it to the modern day.