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LWE

Lt. General
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Jul 10, 2015
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This is going to be a relatively short and laconic AAR about my playthrough as Guangdong, with slightly modified NNM mod (it now lasts until 1st September 1939, and the AI is a little bit less aggressive). I haven't played Victoria for a while, so my skills in this game were quite rusty.

The first thing the new governor of Guangdong did was to encourage education in the province ("teachers" is just renamed clergy).

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Foreign dogs continue to spread opium all across the Great Qing, including Guandong.

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The Qing managed to keep its territorial integrity in the resulting war, but opium trade continued almost unchecked.

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The cholera and a peasant rebellion made the 1850'ies a harsh decade in Guandong.

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Anti-Qing sentiment was growing in Guandong as more reforms were made, both among the commoners and the elite.

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Despite massive peasant rebellions, prompted by poverty and by unpopular, although necessary, reforms, the governor of Guandong refused to close the province's borders.

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So the reforms continued, until finances were put in a proper order, the railroads made transportation easier, and the old weaponry replaced by new rifles, untill, finally, the province was considered truly civilized by the West.

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The now de-facto independent government of Guandong oversaw the beginnings of light industry, while taking care to ensure that order and traditions are well-maintained.

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The end of the sixties saw first post-westernization mass movements in Guandong, forcing the governor to allow mass meeting and institute pensions.

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Of course, the Qing could not tolerate such disobedience, sending armies to Guandong, intenting to bring it to heel. But the new Guandong army doctrines and rapid mass mobilization meant that the Qing and their loyal governors suffered severe casualties even from unexperienced Guandong recruits.

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Qing armies were pushed away from the capital.

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Guandong fleet managed to block hordes of Qing troops in Hainan.

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Armed with muzzle-loaded rifles and a new concept of social justice, the Guangdong soldiers were true Social Justice Warriors.

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Although the troops often had to retreat under assault, in the end, unorganized Qing loyalist armies were always repealed.

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By the end, Qing exhaustion was so high, they were willing to end the war giving some land to Guangdong.

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And so Guangdong precipitates the collapse of China, or is it the rise of a new China from the ashes of the old?
 
It ended up being both.

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The victory resulted in rising Cantonese nationalism.

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Guandong heavy industry started with the machinery of death.

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Further concessions were made to liberal movements, including the institution of the Parliament.

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It didn't take long to integrate the new lands.

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The governor of Fujian also attempted rebelling from the Qing, but the new modernized Wing army quickly overran the province. Taiwan notables used the rebellion as a pretext to declare independence.

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Taiwan independence didn't last long, after the island was taken over by Guandong.

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Controversially, the new Guandong state allied with Japan, united by a common enemy.

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Even after a slapdash modernization, Qing troops are still no match for Cantonese soldiers.

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Some elements in Guandong protested against the war. The protesters were quickly suppressed as unpatriotic subversives who want Guandong to be ruled by the Manchus again.

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The Battle of Nanning was a most bloody one, but at the end of the day, the battlefield was controlled by the Cantonese.

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The Qing retreat from another province.

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Soon, the Qing were humiliated even further.

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Communists were proclaimed to be a danger to the Chinese people.

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Social protests of Guandong workers were harshly repressed as harmful to the struggle to liberate China from the Manchus.

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The successes in Qing wars allowed Guandong to divert some men to the Vietnamese operation. The Vietnamese remnant was annexed a decate later. Meanwhile, paternalistic Guandong bureaucrats took the workers' side in a union dispute.

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Soon, the Qing had to give up more land to the rising South Chinese tiger.

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Guangdong might soon find itself saddled with the whole ungainly mess that is China.
 
China is certainly the main theme of this AAR, yes.

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The Socialists first entered the government of Guandong in 1892, promising to respect the constitutional order.

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Education and enlightment spread across Guandong, as its people looked at comets not with the reverent fear of old times, but with the inquisitive minds of educated people.

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Cantonese troops could now enjoy bananas as they were shooting the poor drafted Qing peasants.

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More land freed from the Manchus as the North Pole is conquered.

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This was a rather underwhelming Great War.

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Rising Chinese nationalism in Guandong started to acquire fascist traits, even as the government tried to diffuse the youthful enthusiasm of the Blackshirt Society.

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After the latest war, Qing controlled few lands south of Yangtze.

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This string of defeats resulted in Qing collapsing.

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Some of the minor ex-Qing warlord cliques were quickly mopped up.

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The continued victories gave the Guandong government enough leverage to suppress the popular discontent with unequal elections.

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How did the not-so Great War stack up nation-wise?
 
Germany and USA vs. France and A-H. Great Wars are probably a bit too prominent even with reduced AI aggressiveness, but on the other hand, their effects can be fun sometimes.

------------------------------------

The growing demand for Guandong to free China from the warlords resulted in yet another victorious war.

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The state combined repression with concessions to the social justice and labor movements.

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Guandong used the destructive German-Russian Great War raging in Europe to occupy Macao, with the Portuguese being able to do nothing about it. Now only Hong Kong remained as a Western imperialist outpost in China.

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The new European borders.

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You don't see Fascist Sweden every day.

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Another proud European nation falls to - or, depending on your point of view, rises up to - fascism, and another minor warlord clique falls to the Guandong Chinese Liberation Army.

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The regime in Beijing proclaimed itself to be "nationalist", but the people of Guandong weren't fooled. However, the Japanese wanted Northern China to themselves...

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The Beijing regime betrayed its own people by surrendering not to Guandong, but to the Japanese puppet clique in Manchuria. This was a massive outrage to all the Chinese people - how could they remain slaves of a foreign power even after the Qing were forced to abdicate?

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With the development of new infantry equipment, Guandong felt itself ready to strike at Japan and its puppet regime in Beijing.

(Also, there's a Primitive, Fascist Kurdistan, formed from the Iranian Kurds).

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Puppet armies melt like butter before Guandong Chinese Liberation forces, but the Japanese imperialists fought stubbornly.

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The war was one of the most lethal in Chinese history.

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Puppet Chinese armies, despite their bad combat performance, distracted Guandong troops from the Japanese treat.

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It seemed like the Japanese would be finally pushed out...

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But then, the dishonorable imperialists used poisonous gas on the battlefield, chocking to death almost 50 000 brave Guandong soldiers. Despite the horror of this defeat, the people remained strong, refusing all offers of surrender.

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Another battle where Guangong Chinese boys were forced to retreat from the noxious fumes of the Japanese.

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Still, the lands south of Yangtze contained many people ready to fight and die for the case of Japan no longer intervening in continental Asia.

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One of the largest Japanese armies was surrounded and beaten in February 1926.

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A month later, its remnants were scattered.

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The Japanese are retreating from numerical Guandong advantage.

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Finally, the Guandong Chinese Liberation Army found out the secrets of Japanese gas attacks.

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This allowed a brave military operation in Korea.

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Remaining Japanese forces in Korea were no match for patriotic Southern Chinese.

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In honor of the victories over Japanese (and to prevent massive war-time rebellions) the voting system was reformed and pensions were increased.

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The Japanese beast was finally defeated. Northern Chiinese and Koreans were freed. Due to protests from Western powers, Guandong refrained from reuniting China, instead merely overthrowing the Japanese puppet government in Beijing, replacing it with a friendly one.

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A great victory. And while China may not yet be united, it is surely just a matter of time.
 
Unfortunately, the whole China won't be reunited - at least, not before September 1939. The event that gives you a choice to declare war with the reunification casus belli didn't fire in the remaining ten years, so I did something different.

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A massive Communist uprising was ruthlessly put down.

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The Reactionaries were deal with the same way. Guandong could not be influenced by the rable-rousers of either extreme Left or extreme Right.

(Pop militancy was pretty high from all that war exhaustion)

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The pro-Guandong government in Northern China was overthrown in a coup, giving Guandong the pretext to stage an intervention, liberating more Chinese land.

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In the West, the fascist British Empire clashed with America and Germany, two forces on the side of democracy, allied, ironically, with Tsarist Russia.

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After some deliberation, Guandong decided to ally with Germany.

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Guandong participation in war amounted to occupying Hong Kong, British Malaya and some provinces in British India bordering Tibet. The war was really decided in Germany, as the British, after their initial success, overextended and let their ally Belgium fall, leading to the defeat of their troops in Westen Germany and German invasion of the Home Islands (note the far upper-left corner of the map).

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At the peace confernce, Guandong representatives were humble, insisting only that they want to limit British power.

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Nevertheless, Guangong was given not only Hong Kong, but also some secondary British colonies all over the planet, mostly to prevent conflicts by the victorious powers. Most of these colonies were released as autonomous protectorates. Guandong kept Tanganyika, part of Cyrenaica and Ceylon as direct possessions.

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New map of Africa. Russian possessions in Africa make the Russian flag HoD steamboat a reality.

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The people of Guangong by the end.

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And the world. Russia now controls Delhi, with local powers reclaiming most of India. Guandong liberated Korea and pushed Japan back to their islands, even through it couldn't liberate Beijing, which remained under the control of incompetent North Chinese regimes.

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Well that is a beautifully messy map of Africa.
 
You can see much worse bordergore in any old EU3 thread...

Interesting read.
Thanks. A better player can probably easily achieve a WC with Guangdong, but I enjoyed my game regardless.