The Middle Kingdom: A Sinocentric China AAR [Complete]
Hello everyone, welcome to my first ever AAR, a Chinese Empire AAR.
Mods Used:
Total Wars for Victoria 2 (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?537882-MiniMod-Great-Wars-for-Victoria-2)
Custom: I made a few minor changes to the history files in favor of realism. The main changes include: Egypt starts with a slightly stronger starting position, China has Mongol as an accepted culture, Ottoman Empire has cores on Greece, and Greece starts allied to Russia, France, and the UK, as well as a few other minor differences.
Introduction
The Chinese Empire has a truly unique position in history. China dominated East Asian politics for centuries through its immense size and Sinocentric tributary state model, and was at the heart of world civilization and technological advancement for centuries. With it immense population and vast size, China's potential is truly limitless.
However, in 1836 Qing China is in a tenuous position. Qing China has fallen far behind the West in technology, and with horrendously low literacy that will be difficult to change. Worse, Qing China starts with a far too small bureaucracy that has made tax collection difficult and sorely strained the Qing budget, due to the Qing Empire's failure to keep the size of its bureaucracy at pace with population growth. Meanwhile, resentment is growing against the oppressive Manchu elite.
Worst of all, for the first time in its history, China faces a truly existential threat. Before, China's vast size and central importance to East Asian politics ensured that any conquering empire that managed to subjugate China would themselves become China in the process, be it the Mongol Yuan dynasty or the Manchu Qing dynasty themselves. But the invasions of industrialized European and westernized Japanese armies changed all that, and created the ever-present fear that China would suffer the same fate as India before it - and be wholly consumed into the various colonial empires.
In history, while China managed to survive despite the odds, the Qing regime failed to deal proactively with these problems successfully. Between invasions by far superior Western and Japanese armies that left the Qing regime's prestige in shambles and utterly destroyed the Sinocentric tributary model, mediocre emperors that failed to provide dynamic central leadership in this time of crisis, constant anti-Manchu rebellions, and finally the reactionary coup that overthrew Emperor Guangxi after his ambitious reform program, the Chinese Empire continued to decline until Qing China finally collapsed into the warlord era. China would not truly be reunited and freed from European dominance until Mao, and wouldn't really succeed in becoming an industrialized superpower until recent years.
This AAR is meant to explore an alternate history in which the Daoguang Emperor's reign proved more successful, and embarked China on a path of reform and modernization. Note that I will be roleplaying as Qing China to the best of my ability, so expect me to frequently refer to Europeans as “barbarians,” and so forth. China at this time was extremely ethnocentric, and at least until they lost the Opium Wars, referred to Europeans as barbarians. If this offends you, apologies, I recommend reading a different AAR.
We start with an alternate history justification for this. Historically, Jahangir Khoja led a rebellion in Xinjiang against Chinese rule with enormous early successes. However, in real life history, the rebellion was crushed after the Daoguang Emperor sent a large army to crush it.
In the alternate history, the Russian Empire, sensing Chinese weakness, decided to send large amounts of military aid and advisors to Jahangir Khoja. Jahangir Khoja rapidly modernized his military forces with Napoleonic-era Russian equipment and tactics, and met with such enormous victories using superior Russian firearms, that he declared himself Khan and conquered deep into the heart of China. By 1834, he marched on Beijing itself, to the shock of all. His actions forced the Emperor himself to take command of the hastily rebuilt Qing armed forces, after several of China's most prestigious generals met with catastrophic failure in the first few years of war.
However, Jahangir Khoja had overreached himself with such an ambitious march, and the Qing forces under the Emperor's command managed to at least partially adapt to their Napoleonic-era tactics and weaponry. Ultimately, Jahangir Khoja's army was surrounded, cut off from further Russian military aid, and in early 1835, he was beheaded after his army surrendered. With him dead, his remaining armies quickly surrendered or were destroyed.
In 1836, the Qing empire is at peace again, and has mostly recovered from the rebellion. But the Daoguang Emperor knows from personal experience that the European barbarians possess an enormous advantage, and that he must take proactive measures against this ever-present threat, or the Qing Dynasty was likely doomed. Chinese isolationism and technological backwardness must come to an end.
The objective of this AAR? Playing as China, modernize and overthrow the Concert of Europe's colonial Great Powers, and build a new world order centered around Chinese hegemony.
Table of Contents:
Act I - The Return of China, From Weakness to Glory (1836 - 1883)
Part 1: An End to Isolationism
Part 2: The Panjabi War
Part 3: The Panjabi Mountain Campaign
Part 4: The Partition of Panjab and Kashmir
Part 5: 1843 Sino-British Treaty of London
Part 6: The New Tianxia
Part 7: The Third Manchu Invasion of Korea
Part 8: The Rice Riots
Part 9: The Vietnam War
Part 10: Treason
Part 11: The world in 1848
Part 12: The Railroad War
Part 13: The Uneasy Peace
Part 14: The Anarchy
Part 15: Fall of the Heavenly Kingdom
Part 16: The Great Qing Reconquest of China
Part 17: The Kōmei Restoration
Part 18: The First Sino-Japanese War
Part 19: The Middle Kingdom
Part 20: The Hundred Days
Part 21: The Xianfeng Era Begins
Part 22: Preparing for War
Part 23: The California Crisis
Part 24: The End of A Genocide
Part 25: The Xianfeng Peace
Part 26: The Franco-Prussian War: A Bismarckian Nightmare
Part 27: The Franco-Prussian War: A Bismarckian Nightmare, Conclusion
Part 28: The Second Great Chinese Treasure Fleet
Part 29: The Long March, Part 1
Part 30: The Long March, Part 2
Part 31: A Place In The Sun
Part 32: The Second Great Chinese Treasure Fleet, Voyage Two and the Unification of Germany
Part 33: The World In 1868
Part 34: Germany Ascends
Part 35: The Right To Publicly Assemble
Part 36: The Second Great Chinese Treasure Fleet, Voyage Three
Part 37: The Baden and Burmese Questions
Part 38: The Scramble for Africa
Part 39: The First Sinocentric War
Part 40: The Lhasa Convention of 1872
Part 41: The Tributary Network Expands
Part 42: Sino-German Friendship
Part 43: The World in 1874
Part 44: Declaration of War
Part 45: The Second Sinocentric War; Part 1, Assembly of the First Lhasa Coalition
Part 46: The Second Sinocentric War; Part 2, The Barbarian Hordes Descend
Part 47: The Second Sinocentric War; Part 3, The Bloody Advance
Part 48: The Second Sinocentric War; Part 4, The Totally Unprovoked American Aggression Against Fusang
Part 49: The Second Sinocentric War; Part 5, The Qing Victorious
Part 50: Chinese New York
Part 51: Chinese Africa
Part 52: Empress Cixi
Part 53: The Second Sino-Portuguese War Begins, and the Chinese Industrial Revolution Continues
Part 54: The Zanzibar Scandal
Part 55: Sinocentrism Spreads
Part 56: Java
Part 57: The Third Sinocentric War, Part 1: A Global War
Part 58: The Third Sinocentric War, Part 2: The Ever Victorious Army
Part 59: The Third Sinocentric War, Part 3: The Sack of Calcutta
Part 60: The Third Sinocentric War, Part 4: The Treaty of Calcutta
Part 61: The Rise of Beiyang
Part 62: Nationalism, Imperialism, and Pan-Sinism
Part 63: The Guangxu Era Begins
Part 64: Fall of the Trucial States and Electricity
Part 65: The Sino-Afghan War
Act II - The New Sinocentric World Order (1883-1904)
Part 1 (Act II): Dawn of a New Era
Part 2: Sokoto's Last Stand
Part 3: The Indian National Congress
Part 4: The Fourth and Final Sinocentric War, Part 1: The Third Lhasa Coalition
Part 5: The Fourth and Final Sinocentric War, Part 2: Indian Independence
Part 6: The Fourth and Final Sinocentric War, Part 3: The Sun Sets on the British Empire
Part 7: The Fourth and Final Sinocentric War, Part 4: The Betrayal, and the War's End
Part 8: The Sinocentric Economic Boom
Part 9: The Calm Before the Storm, Three Years of Peace
Part 10: The Great War, year 1893
Part 11: The Great War, year 1894
Part 12: The Peace to End All Peace
Part 13: The Boxer Rebellion
Part 14: The World in 1896
Part 15: The Road to WWII
Part 16: World War II, Chapter One: The War at Sea
Part 17: World War II, Chapter Two: The Western Counterattack
Part 18: World War II, Chapter 3: Budapest
Part 18: World War II, Chapter 4: Stalemate
Part 19: World War II, Chapter 5: The Abdication
Part 20: World War II, Chapter 6: The Siege of Vienna
Part 21: World War II, Chapter 7: The Eastern Counterattack
Part 22: World War II, Chapter 8: Co-Belligerents
Part 22: World War II, Chapter 9: The Battle of Britain
Part 22: World War II, Chapter 10: The Algerian Commune
Part 23: The Treaties of Beijing, 1904
Act III - Epilogue (1904-2016)
Epilogue, Part 1, A Chinese Future and Part 2, All Empires Must Fall
This AAR is complete as of 4/6/2016, and I do not intend to add any further updates. ^^ Hope you all enjoyed!
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