German Freedom and German Greatness: The Legacy of Gustav Stresemann

[Faeelin]

I wonder if Stalin is going to "liberate" Europe next? He has the Army and the air force to Do so and the Soviet Fleet is no longer a joke now as it certainly out classes the German Fleet and probably is a match for the French fleet and can easily reach the Atlantic from its bases in Republican Spain.

PS I like to see a world wide naval comparison if that is possible in the next update.

Sure. But even if the Soviets can beat the German fleet, which isn't clear (well they certainly could if they concentrated it all in the Baltic, but would they?)

Hrmm.

Anyway, Stalin's goal isn't to liberate Europe. He isn't Hitler, after all. Stalin's goals will become much clearer in the next post.

 

[Arilou]

Hmmm, annexing a few million manchurians might prove troublesome even for Stalin, no? (if nothing else, assuming he keeps it, I can see it turning into monster-Chechnya later on) Another reasonably big ethnic group to balance would be a headache, if not for Stalin (he can always just kill them) then for his successors...

 

[yourworstnightm]

Hmm, Stalin seems eager to spread Communism around. I guess after his practice in China, Eastern Europe will be in trouble.

 

[Arilou]

For some reason I doubt it unless something spectacular happens. I don't think Stalin is stupid enough to make all of Europe his enemies barring some kind of major meltdown in the European alliance system, or that he finds some kind of unexpected ally.

I expect him to be chewing at the marigins a bit, but trying to avoid a general war.

 

[Faeelin]

Hmmm, annexing a few million manchurians might prove troublesome even for Stalin, no? (if nothing else, assuming he keeps it, I can see it turning into monster-Chechnya later on) Another reasonably big ethnic group to balance would be a headache, if not for Stalin (he can always just kill them) then for his successors...

But you're assuming Stalin will govern the place directly, no? He has a party on hand to deal with Manchuria.

For some reason I doubt it unless something spectacular happens. I don't think Stalin is stupid enough to make all of Europe his enemies barring some kind of major meltdown in the European alliance system, or that he finds some kind of unexpected ally.

I expect him to be chewing at the marigins a bit, but trying to avoid a general war.

I concur. Stalin ain't crazy, and he recognizes that the one thing that will provoke Europe to go crazy is a Soviet invasion of anywhere else. He would only try it if he thought he had no other options.

But if you look at Stalin's foreign policy, he was perfectly willing to push when the need arose, and risk. Hence he tried to dominate Turkey, slice off Northern Iran, cause the Berlin Airlift, and start the Korean War.

Korea itself is very interesting; you saw Soviet aid through China, the Soviets themselves providing aid to North Korea; but there was never any thought on Stalin's part of heading west.

Stalin's actions can be seen as trying to spread communism; but in another light they can be seen as a continuation of Tsarist foreign policy. since the next few posts will detail what's Stalin up to, and how the world responds, this gives you some idea of what to expect.

 

[Karelian]

Unified Korea will become a real local powerhouse in the future if Stalin is willing to support their industrialization. And the future of China will surely be turbulent, that much is sure.

 

[Nathan Madien]

Unified Korea will become a real local powerhouse in the future if Stalin is willing to support their industrialization.

It will also put him much closer to Japan. Even if he doesn't invade the country, I imagine he could exert influence on Japan's future development.

 

[Arilou]

Hmmm, didn't the japanese communist party become pretty strong post-War OTL? (IIRC the US had something of a panic about it, similar to what happened in France and Italy) if Japan loses the war and the Soviets are there to "help" a communist Japan might not be TOO far out of the question... Heck, avoiding that scenario might be yet another reason for the brits to keep their ambitions in check visavi Japan.

 

[Faeelin]

Unified Korea will become a real local powerhouse in the future if Stalin is willing to support their industrialization. And the future of China will surely be turbulent, that much is sure.

I pity Korea, actually; it's one of the places that will end up significantly worse. Although even then, hrmm.

It will also put him much closer to Japan. Even if he doesn't invade the country, I imagine he could exert influence on Japan's future development.

Hmmm, didn't the japanese communist party become pretty strong post-War OTL? (IIRC the US had something of a panic about it, similar to what happened in France and Italy) if Japan loses the war and the Soviets are there to "help" a communist Japan might not be TOO far out of the question... Heck, avoiding that scenario might be yet another reason for the brits to keep their ambitions in check visavi Japan.

Japanese Communism would be incredibly weird, and could be the only communist state which retained its monarch. But then, Japan has an interesting ride ahead of it, as it comes out of The Shōwa Restoration.

 

[Faeelin]

Severed Dreams​

The Pacific War was officially termed by the Japanese government “The War of Greater East Asia,” which was true in the sense that they had managed to unite Greater East Asia against them. The war which had begun to shatter the colonial empires, or at least force them into a passive neutrality, spiralled out of control despite the successes in 1941 and 1942. The causes for Japan’s defeat are well known, but how the government, and in particular, Hirohito reacted to it is especially interested.

As early as the Battle of the Gulf, Hirohito fumed about the lack of a decisive naval victory, worrying that “The war we’re waging now raises the enemy’s morale. We’re making America feel uneasy; we’re causing China to puff its chest up. Isn’t there some way, some place, we can win a real victory against the British?”

By 1943, the answer became more and more obvious that the answer was no, and Hirohito became increasingly irritable. Always favoring an offensive strategy, he demanded “Isn’t there someplace where we can strike the British? Why don’t you study how not to let the British keep saying, ‘We Won! We Won!’” [1]

By the fall of Shanghai, there were many within or near the Japanese government who were willing to look for a way out of the war. Unfortunately, Hirohito, at this point, was still willing to fight on. And so the peace maneuvers, supported by Prince Konoe, had come to nothing. Why did the Empire delay negotiations for so long? To a large extent, Hirohito had been persuaded by those around them that if Japan continued fighting, it would be able to reach more favorable terms. While Southern China might have fallen, nobody thought the Allies would have the desire to advance into Northern China, where the Japanese had been in control for years. British proposals before the war’s outbreak had been willing to recognize Japan’s interests in Manchuria; and a show of force would force the Allies to let Japan walk away with most of its empire intact.

The obvious problem, of course, was that this required ignoring that the Soviet Union was a deadly menace along the border. Hirohito, however, had become willfully blind, convinced that the Soviets would need Japan as an ally, given the distinctly frosty relations between the Soviets and much of Europe. As such, Hirohito rejected, on October 5, Prince Konoe’s request to approach the Americans for mediation. And man, did he feel incredibly awkward on October 8th, when the Soviets poured across the Manchurian border.

Nevertheless, the Japanese government still stalled for two months, as the Soviets rapidly overran Manchukuo and the League went north. Overnight the Empire seemed on the verge of collapse, and there were some who spoke of a crisis of the kokutai. Hirohito himself entered a period of depression, and ultimately, it was a memo from Konoe on a “Draft Plan for Controlling the Crisis Situation.” It was a heavy moment, coming as Seoul had just fallen to the Soviets. But given the relatively lenient terms of the League, the outcome was inevitable. League Armistice terms would ensure the preservation of the Imperial Throne, and there the Cabinet discussions included some military thinkers who foresaw League-Soviet tensions as a way to ensure the retention of as much of the Japanese Empire as was possible.

And so the Pacific War ended on January 2, 1944. Yet, as is so often the case, the end of the war failed to bring peace.

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To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant.-League of Nations Charter, Article 22​

The end of the war in the Pacific brought a strange unease and quiet to the island of Taiwan. The 150,000 Japanese troops kept to their barracks, and the colonial government continued to maintain the island’s basic services. Wreckage from bombing was removed; schools continued to open. For the simple fact of the matter was that nobody on the island knew what their fate would be, with rumors ranging from remaining part of the Japanese Empire to union with China, neither of which was greeted with great optimism.

Since its cession to Japan in 1895, Taiwan had undergone prodigious economic development under an authoritarian empire. While China proper knew nothing but civil war and strife, Taiwan’s economy boomed under an oppressive yet corruption-free administration. Every Taiwanese child went through six years of primary school, ands by the 1920s thousands of Taiwanese were enrolled in institutions of higher education in Japan and Taiwan’s sole university at Taipei.

Yet prosperity brought with it a growing sense of a Taiwanese identity, and by the 1920s there were demands for an assembly in Taipei as well as representation in the Japanese Diet. In March of 1920, wealthy Taiwanese promoted a Taiwan Cultural Society, dedicated to preserving an identity distinct from both China and Japan. The Society and its magazine were banned on Taiwan, but allowed within Japan itself, and many of its members returned to the island to speak. Even as Japan itself became subject to creeping authoritarianism under Hirohito, Taiwan continued its development of a civil society, alternatively despite, and with the support of, Japan. In 1935 the Japanese set up an elective government for the island, and while the first votes were rigged with only 172 seats up for election, while only 187,000 Taiwanese men voted. In 1939, by contrast, 286,700 Taiwanese voted, and 3,104 were elected to various assemblies for towns, counties, and the island itself.

The Sino-Japanese War, and the Pacific War, only exemplified this paradox. Chinese clothing, language, and names were suppressed by the Japanese government, yet over a hundred thousand Taiwanese enlisted to fight on behalf of Taiwan’s rulers. And so, the armistice was signed in early 1944, there was no uprising against Japanese rule, no celebration in the streets; only an eerie calm, as a people awaited their fate.

Taiwan’s fate had been the subject of considerable debate and argument between China and the League powers. While Chongqing was adamant that the island should be returned to China, London was less sure. The Chinese had shown themselves barely capable of governing their own country, and they weren’t overly inclined to listened to Chinese demands for an island they’d lost fifty years before anyway. More to the point, the memories of the Great War and its injustices lingered in the memories of everyone in Whitehall, and nobody wanted to create another Alsace-Lorraine.

However, Attlee was no less prone to flights of fancy than anyone else, and as a strong proponent of the League, saw a natural solution to the problem. Why not make it a League of Nations mandate, pursuant to Article 22 of the League Covenant? [3] This was at first entirely unacceptable to Chongqing, who had no desire to propagate what they saw as British colonialism in a new guise. [4] Chongqing would only agree to a mandate if it was truly a League mandate, and it had a say in the island’s governorship. Moreover, it would only agree to a temporary mandate, with the island voting on its status ten year’s from the war’s end. As for who would be the League of Nations governor general for the island, well, come now. Chiang was adamant that it could not be a Briton or a Frenchmen, a smaller power’s official would lack the gravitas appropriate for his role, and the Americans, well, Willkie’s efforts to get America to join the League of Nations were still stuck in the Senate, so an American wouldn’t do.

Once you narrowed the pool of candidates, there was frankly only one man who could be appropriate to the job.

It ain’t Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck; he can take his Askari and go home. But that is an oddly close guess.

Governor-General von Falkenhausen had been the head of the German military delegation to China, and was a good friend of Chiang Kai-shek who was a devoted Sinophile, and, equally important, not British or French. Chiang was therefore confident that he would support Chinese efforts to gain control of the island, while provide a voice for China against the pernicious influences of other parties.

Falkenhausen would surprise everyone, however. Although in his memoirs he would later joke that he ruled the island as a Daoist sage, living by the principle of wuwei, this is to underestimate his achievements.[5] For under Falkenhausen, the island’s civil society flourished along with its economy, establishing a bastion of democracy in East Asia, and giving lie to claims that the “Asian Mind” would never be fit for liberty. When the Republic of Taiwan came into being in 1955, it would set an example that would, in time, reshape the destiny of millions.

______________________________________________​

The Soviet Union’s plans for China were far more subtle than they appeared to many in the west, and, frankly, appear to some historians to this day. In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Chiang tried to open negotiations with the Soviets to discern Stalin’s intentions. To avert a conflict, Chiang offered the Soviets, in return for the help retaking Manchuria, railway rights, commercial ports, and "joint use" of air and naval bases there. The Soviets responded with several preconditions for the conclusion of a treaty of Soviet-Chinese friendship, preconditions which covered Luxun, Dairen, the Manchurian railways, the Mongolian People's Republic, and southern Sakhalin Island. Most significant, however, was that the Soviet proposal asked that the China abstain from any collective security agreements that did not include the Soviet Union.

The offer was clear. The Soviets would return Manchuria if it was effectively demilitarized and turned into an economic fiefdom of the USSR; and it would reduce its support for the CCP if the KMT agreed to withdraw from any international alignments which might prove hostile to the USSR. Wellinton Koo's response is, of course, well known.

"We let you set up protected economic regions and bases and you agree to let us retain autonomy? Ah, yes. We have extensive experience with that kind of arrangement.”​

Even before the Manchurian invasion, the Soviet Union had taken an increasingly hostile stance towards the KMT, with Pravda carrying an article in August of 1942 condemning "defeatists" and "capitulationists" high within the KMT who wanted peace with Japan in order to wipe out the CCP. Other similar articles followed in the Soviet press. Chiang believed that this Soviet media campaign was an attempt to undermine American support for him. Yet nowhere was Soviet pressure as great as it was in Xinjiang.

Stalin, and Chiang had different visions of Xinjiang’s future. To Chiang, Xinjiang was but one of several territories that had been seized from China during a time of weakness, its soil every bit as Chinese as Hunan or Shaanxi. To him, Soviet influence was propping up another Manchukuo had to be removed. For Stalin, the region was a buffer for Soviet Central Asia, and he spent the 1930s and early 1940s integrating the region into the Soviet economy while respecting nominal Chinese sovereignty. And between the two of them stood Sheng Shicai, the ruthless warlord who ruled the region.

Sheng Shicai rose to power in 1933, Sheng quickly realized he needed help to develop the province, and turned to the Soviet Union for assistance. Soviet forces helped suppress rebellions against Sheng’s rule in 1933 and 1937, and in 1934 they granted him what would be the first of a series of loans to develop the region. With Soviet financial and technical assistance, roads and bridges were built, telegraph and telephone lines were strung, and new industrial facilities, schools, and hospitals were built. Trade between Xinjiang and the Soviet Union swelled, as Xinjiang’s rich petroleum deposits were developed by the Soviets under an “oral agreement” between Sheng and Stalin. But such ties came with a cost, as Sheng gradually found his power threatened. For one of the other tentacles of Soviet influence was ideological.

Sheng was induced to combine a tolerant policy towards Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities with ruthless Marxism-Leninism. In 1936 the Soviet Union began pressing Sheng to arrest Xinjiang's wealthy and confiscate their property in order to help repay recent Soviet loans., and Sheng was forced to agree and invite the Soviet Union to send personnel to assist in this "class struggle." Over 100,000 people were then arrested and sent to prisons and concentration camps by the end of 1937, while Sheng was induced to model Xinjiang’s security forces on the NKVD. The KMT was forced to remain aloof, recognizing that it lacked the power to do anything about the creeping Stalinization of a Chinese province.

With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Xinjiang went from being an irritant to Nanjing to a route for vital Soviet aid to flow to China. As such, Chiang could not oppose the expansion of Soviet influence in the region, done, ostensibly in the Soviet Union’s interests. Soviet radio and air stations were established at Dihua, Qitai, and Yili, while a Soviet military base developed at Lanzhou with a large contingent of Soviet aircraft and personnel. Stalin even deployed a Soviet mechanized infantry force, the 8th regiment; at Sheng’s request, of course. [6] Indeed, the Soviets kindly began construction of a rail line from the Soviet Union to Dihua.

The Soviet Union was careful, of course, to respect certain Chinese interests. Stalin vetoed Sheng’s application to the CCP in 1938, citing the “delicate international situation,” and until 1940 kept the aid flowing. [7]But with the signing of the Soviet-Japanese Nonaggression Pact, the Soviets moved from hegemonic influence to outright control.

This came in the form of a "mining agreement" concluded with Sheng Shicai on 26 November 1940. This agreement established an exclusively Soviet-owned and -managed company, named "Xin Tin," with rights to develop Xinjiang's mineral deposits for thirty years. [8] Xin Tin was given extensive economic rights and immunity from supervision or control by Chinese authorities. Sheng initially resisted the demand of the Soviet Consul General I.V. Bakulin that he sign the "mining agreement, claiming it was reminiscent of the Twenty-One Demands presented to China by Japan in 1915 and with the ninety-nine year concessions held by the Western powers in Chin. Bakunin responded that Stalin was fully aware of the terms of the agreement and, giving him one day to sign, asked Sheng to “Make a wise and cautious decision on a matter which affects not only the future of Xinjiang, but also of yourself." [9]

Is anyone really surprised to learn that in January of 1941, Sheng asked Moscow to create a Soviet government in Xinjiang, as the CCP’s organizational paper of the CCP in Xinjiang, Xinjiang Ribao, was attacking Sheng and his regime? [10]

And behold! On March 4, 1941, amidst a parade by the 8th Regiment of the Red Army, Sheng Shicai joined the Soviet Communist Party. And so for China, the tale remained the same, a saga of influence, basing rights, and trade treaties; the sorts of things the world had imposed on China for a century. But time does not stand still, and Mao Zedong wasn’t about to let another country bumpkin push him out of the limelight. [11]

______________________________________________​

We can infer something of Mao’s beliefs from his work “New Democracy,” written in the fall of 1940. Envisioning China as moving through its own Proletarian Revolution, it tolerated envisioned a first stage in which there would be a "revolutionary democratic dictatorship" of several classes to carry out the anti-imperialist and antifeudal tasks of the revolution. In the second stage, however, the proletariat would launch another revolution, making China a socialist state. Thus, long-term cooperation with the KMT was impossible. Equally important was his view of Soviet relations with the rest of the world:

The conflict between the socialist Soviet Union and imperialist England and America has already intensified. If China does not stand to one side, it must stand on the other. This is an inevitable tendency. How could it be possible not to lean to one side? This is a day dream. The whole world will be drawn into these two camps. Henceforth "neutrality" is merely a word used to deceive people. ​

As you’d expect, KMT-CCP relations reached something of a nadir during the war, with some generals, such as the Shaanxi warlord Yan Xishan, making de facto truces with the Japanese to go after the CCP within their base region. Despite a series of intermittent truces, the two parties would spent a significant time at war. In Chongqing, this conflict may have engendered Chiang’s willingness to negotiate with Japan, but Mao was ambivalent about that prospect, as he stated in the central directive of 10 September 1940.

There were three possibilities regarding China's war of resistance, the directive said. The first possibility was Western intervention in China, which was hoped for by the reactionaries and would be advantageous to the KMT. The second possibility was that the KMT would be forced to compromise with the “patriotic bourgeoisie,” adopting a pro-Soviet international position and abandoning anticommunism. The third possibility was Japanese capture of Chongqing and the surrender of part of the KMT to Japan.

This possibility was welcomed by Mao, for it would result in chaos within China’s elite and the emergence of popular antitraitor movements. This possibility was preferred, by Mao, to Western intervention in China and gives an insight into Yenan’s thinking at the time. In short, Mao preferred to see Japan defeat the KMT rather than see the KMT defeat Japan together with the United States and Britain.

What this meant, of course, was that when Chiang scored the propaganda coup that came with liberating Shanghai as part of a League of Nations expeditionary force, Mao and the CCP had a bit, umm, of a credibility problem among the Chinese people. And yet as early as the fall of Guangzhou, the CCP had taken a more aggressive response to the Japanese aggression. The CCP became more aggressive in its guerilla campaigns, and began preparations urban insurrection, to be launched in coordination with assaults on big cities by the armies of the CCP.

The British response to all of this was somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, they were bitterly critical of Chiang’s rule, and felt that China needed liberalize and develop democratically. And at the dawn of 1944, the British government felt that the Chinese Communist Party was not, in a sense, truly Communist. British representatives in China described them as “agrarian reformers” and “mild radicals”, and Bevin questioned whether they deserved to be labeled a truly Marxist organization. British media backed these claims, with the Manchester Guardian and News Chronicle offering favorable portrayals of China even as the China Campaign Committee portrayed the CCP as moving towards democratic government and agrarian reform. Even the centrist Times claimed during the Pacific War that “The Chinese Communist Party are not communists; the Yenan system is more accurately described as agricultural Communism.” Despite the best efforts of the CCP to claim that they were debating dropping the word Communist from their name, it was clear to many that they were doctrinaire Communists.

And yet there were others who saw them By the end of 1944, however, this had started to change. Several factors helped bring this to light. First, British police in Hong Kong had acquired copies of original Chinese communist documents. These proved that the CCP was ‘strictly orthodox, confident, mature, and at the highest level very well organized’ and showed “no trace of Negrinism.”

The CCP emerged from the war strictly organized and Marxist, yes, but it also emerged from the war under the control of Mao Zedong, who was now the party's unquestioned leader. By 1940 the party had about 800,000 members, and by 1945 more than 1.2, million. And while he was happy to work with Stalin, and saw the Soviet Union as China's only ally in the Revolution, he was not a Soviet stooge. The recently recruited cadres, mostly from peasant backgrounds, were instilled with a new version of party history that extolled the virtues of Chairman Mao and made the Long March and Mao's rise to power the parables through which the truths of Communism and the objectives of the party could be explained. Membership inductions revolved around chanting slogans, the party's propaganda spread across China.

The communists claimed they had carried the weight of fighting for years, until the KMT had invited the League into China, while in reality its sole major campaign against the Japanese, the Hundred Regiments Offensive in 1940, was a disaster. Nevertheless, they had managed to make themselves appear as a somewhat respectable force in Chinese politics, even if the 1943 offensives had restored vital prestige to the KMT.
Moreover, with the end of the Pacific War, tensions between theKMT and CCP began to heat up. While Stalin allowed CCP forces to cross into Soviet-occupied Manchuria, as a stick to threaten Chiang with, he continued to play his cards close to his vest, consolidating the Soviet Communist Party’s influence in Xinjiang and, although refusing to negotiate with the League, negotiating, through his ambassadors in the West and Molotov, about Soviet intentions in East Asia.

By the middle of 1944, Wellington Koo thought that there were two bridges that separated peace from war in China. The first crossed the divide between foreign and Chinese perceptions of events in the country since the end of World War II, wherein Washington's and Moscow's view of China as part of a global power game was split from Nanjing's and Yenan’s prospect of their parties' positioning for national influence. The other was the Marco Polo Bridge, which had the honor of marking the location where the Sino-Japanese War had begun, and now marked the dividing line between CCP held territory and the KMT. The only barrier that protected these bridges was the fragile negotiations between the party leaders, and that would be in place only as long as the CCP and KMT could maintain peace, and negotiate for a an end to the Civil War that would not leave China in ruins once again.

______________________________________________​

Across the vast spaces of China, two villages, of no particular import, witness a scene that has become tragically common across China. One in the north, a land of millet and hard work beneath an endless sky; the other in the south, ensconced amidst rice paddies. Two villages, where soldiers had come to right the injustices of their foes.

"In the famine year," began an accuser, "my brother worked for your family. We were all hungry. We had nothing to eat. But you had no thought for us. Several times we tried to borrow grain from you. But it was all in vain. You watched us starve without pity." The defendant is silent, his face buried in his hands. It is true, he knows.

In the other village, an accuser speaks up, a widow from the war. Her back is hunched in pain, a legacy from bandit’s bullet. “You came during the war, when my husband was in Chongqing. He was a just landlord, and he loaned grain willingly. You came at gunpoint, in the night.”

We hear the words of another victim of injustice, harsh and angry. "One year I could not pay the rent. You took the whole harvest. You took my clothes. You took everything." He broke down sobbing as a dozen others jumped up shouting. "What was in your mind?" "You took everything! Miao-le and his brother died."

The words grow louder now, as the crowds grow angry, seething with hatred for all they have suffered. “Yes, what were your thoughts? You had no pity. Didn't you hound P'ei Mang-wen's mother to her death? They weren’t even rich peasants. Yet you called them enemies of the peasants, and you said she was a Japanese spy!” Others jumped up shouting. “What was in your mind?”

Two villages, of no particular import, under different rulers. And as the criminals pay for their crimes, two villages who share much in common with the rest of China.

Two villages, with two armies, and two governments. And two more victims, falling to the ground.

[1]All Hirohito quotes are taken from Hirohito and the Making of the Modern Japan.

[2] Noteworthy is that no one, within the organization, advocated a return to Chinese rule; set aside the chaos engulfing the nation that abandoned them, Japanese rule seemed preferable indeed.

[3] Actually the idea was suggested by the Foreign Office.

[4] Which the initial League mandates certainly were.

[5] Essentially, the Daoist precept that the proper action is inaction, or perhaps more accurately, the art of letting things be.

[6] This is all OTL.

[7] Stalin wasn’t just being cynical and averting Sheng’s bid to balance Soviet influence with the CCP’s; he was also worried it would antagonize Chiang, and make him suspect that the Sino-Japanese War was being used to Communize (is that a word? If not, I have made it so!) China.

[8] The mascot is a German shepherd named Rin.

[9] This is a historic treaty, actually; Sheng got out of it by signing his name, but not affixing the seal of the Xinjiang provincial government, and then was saved by Barbarossa.

[10] This is actually all from OTL. But after this, things pick up speed.

[11] Chiang isn’t happy about any of this, of course, and his plan is so Machiavellian it’s easy to see how he held onto power. Among other things, he encouraged a few British and American missionaries to visit the province, to add to Russia’s worries.

 

[Enewald]

Woah....
So Manchuria is lost to CCP, while Allies still consider it to be Japanese land?
A war is coming soon again in Asia... a nation divided won't be so for long...

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

And man, did he feel incredibly awkward on October 8th, when the Soviets poured across the Manchurian border.

I can imagine Hirohito at that moment...

 

[Karelian]

So Mao is still able to hold the most important strings in his hands? Or are there other forces at work behind his back?

 

[Faeelin]

So Mao is still able to hold the most important strings in his hands? Or are there other forces at work behind his back?

It's... complicated. The long and short of it is that Mao is firmly in charge of the CCP; Stalin doesn't overly trust him, but he's willing to work with him for now.

I can imagine Hirohito at that moment...

This being Japan, nobody would be so callous as to point out to Hirohito the cost of his mistake.

Woah....
So Manchuria is lost to CCP, while Allies still consider it to be Japanese land?
A war is coming soon again in Asia... a nation divided won't be so for long...

It wasn't so much that they considered it Japanese so much as they (correctly) didn't think the Chinese could keep it out of Soviet hands.

But ya, China is gonna be in for trouble.

 

[Faeelin]

Divided Loyalties

Madam Fun’s was packed, like the rest of the saloons, dancing halls, and bars of the French quarter, with the heroes of the League of Nations Expeditionary Force. Dutchmen rubbed shoulders with Australians, while in the corner a couple of French were stubbornly trying to enjoy their first batch of opium. Raucously, one of the Canadians raised a bottle of beer in salute as he held a woman in his arm. “To the people of China, who have given us so much to fought for.

Across the bar, William smirked. “Of course they are.” He thought of a limerick that had been making the rounds since they’d reached the city.

“Slant eyed maidens, all around I see
Calling out “Englishman, Englishman, abide with me!”​

Although, reflects William, that wasn’t quite fair. Some of the girls were White Russians, with a tight little rump and a walk that put the girls of Calgary to shame. He sighed. With the number of officers in the city, white women were out of the reach for a lowly sergeant. And the girls who were here…

You could see it in their eyes, sometimes, when they were touched in a certain way, or when they didn’t think anyone was looking. William took a sip of his beer. It didn’t seem right, somehow.

But on the other hand, thought a considerably more sozzled William later that night, on his way back to what passed for barracks, these woman wouldn’t sell themselves if something better was available, would they? You could look on it as doing them a favor.

And if he gave them enough money, at the end, he could almost believe it.

But that was life in Shanghai, in the spring of 1944. China may, or may not, have been putting it back together; that was of no concern to Shanghai, a gilded ornament amidst a seething mass of squalor and poverty. Cinemas played the latest Hollywood movies, Soda shops catered to the city’s upper class youth, and if you were a Westerner and had cash (and what Westerner in China did not?) it was a jolly old time. League troops patrolled the French quarter, and, with Chiang’s acquiescence, some of the richer parts of the rest of the city. At night the International Settlement was lit up like a carnival, while to boost morale the League task force imported a series of musicians to play in the Public Gardens along the water front, keeping out the Chinese, of course, to maintain propriety. And so long as you didn’t notice the rest of the city, it was a jolly respite indeed for the veterans of the Pacific War. And when you did notice the rest of the city? Then things became much more complicated, as William found out.

Tensions had been flaring, with rumors of outbreaks of violence in the north between the KMT and the Communists, and so the League had stepped up its patrols in the rest of the city. Quite what they were supposed to do if they ran into trouble was unclear, but it wasn’t the first time anyone had seen the brass act irrationally. And so they were traversing a part of the city few of them had seen before. Now the real Shanghai became apparent; a woman begging on the ground; a child, alone, sleeping beneath some ragged newspaper. Coolies pulling handcarts through a crowd of people. William frowned, and reached into his pocket and pulled out a fiver to put in the beggar’s cup. The old woman, her face wrinkled and hair gray, smiled a toothless grin.

Scott spoke up. “Sergeant, isn’t that a lot of money to be giving her?”

William frowned. Scott’s family was from Glasgow, and it showed. And he’d only joined the platoon after much of the hard fighting, so William wasn’t inclined to listen to the bastard. “Charity is a Christian act, Private.”

Scott looked around at the crowd. “It’s not that, Sergeant. It’s just that, you know, giving a beggar that much cash.” He shrugged. “How’s she going to spend it?” He chuckled darkly. “Opium, maybe?”

William looked around for a moment, and then up to the sky. This was getting ridiculous. “Alright, alright, I get it!” he yelled to the heavens. “Life in 1940s China was bad, and for many of these people about to get worse! I’m somewhat flawed but basically good Canadian, who’s supposed to give an otherwise tragic tale a happy ending. Show me the woman you’re going to have me marry and get it over with!”

“Sergeant?” George asked.

William blinked. “Sorry, did you say something? I felt a bit off for a moment.”

_______________________________________________

Now is the time to tell the League that they should reconsider their policy on the Northeast and on the CCP and make a quick decision whether they would like to play an active role in East Asia or just a passive [role]. They should not repeat their mistake from 18 September [1937]—at that time, if the Americans and the British would have exerted some pressure on the Japanese, then the Japanese would not have been so rampant in their aggression. Now the situation is the same. The League should help us prepare for war, if they really wanted to stop the Russians' ambition of expansion. –Chiang Kai shek, July 1944
​

While the Soviets retained control of Manchuria, the status of the rest of China was still in flux. And in Northern China, the Chinese Communist Party acted. While its military strategy remained indecisive, within Manchuria it began a radical policy of land reform. The party's policy on land reform, which during the war against Japan had been a moderate one, emphasizing reductions in rents and interest rates, now changed into a policy of distributing land to landless peasants. Mao’s motives had been discussed, but it is clear that the CCP’s leaders realized the advantage a policy of land distribution would give them in all out war.

And so the May 4th declaration held, that the CCP "should understand that a solution to the land question in the liberated areas is the basic historic task confronting the party.” And yet the CCP also presented a moderate face, arguing that nondespotic landlords should be protected, and urging that commerce and industry should not be subject to redistribution. In essence, the CCP was trying to present itself as the same party that had participated within the United Front even as it stoked the flames of revolution.

However, the CCP faced several severe blows to its credibility. The CCP argued that Chiang’s decision to sign trade agreements with the Western nations was just another sign he was a foreign puppet. The KMT shot back that any such claim was a bit rich from a party which supported the creation of another Manchukuo. This, indeed, was one of the difficulties facing the CCP in 1944 to 1945. Chiang Kai-shek authorized a national assembly in the fall of 1944, and, under pressure from the League and more liberal members of the KMT, he was forced to propose that the Communist Party be allowed to send delegates. Chiang agreed, however, on one condition. The Communist Party would only be allowed to join “if it is a true Chinese Party, and supports the withdrawal of all foreign troops from China.”

The CCP’s response to such claims was pointing out the presence of League officials within China was the same as the Red Army. This was greeted with a great deal of dubious looks, and the student protests of 1944 and 1945, while attacking KMT incompetence, also erupted in a visceral hatred of the Soviet Union and its Chinese puppets. The CCP’s failure to capture the support of the Chinese student movement is not surprising, perhaps, given their ultimate nationalism. In making their voices heard, the activists in schools and universities linked up to a long tradition of student protest in China, going back to the radical movements of the beginning of the century. Although four-fifths of the population were illiterate and the number of college students was small compared with the general numbers of the population— no more than 100,000 students in all of KMT-held China— the student movement became a vital part of the opposition to Chiang and Mao’s policies.

China’s students had a crucial role in public opinion whose significant has been ignored in the west. In a role inherited from the earlier student movements and from the special position that examination candidates, as aspiring members of the elite, had had in Confucian ideology, they were often considered the voice of the nation. Factory workers and rice farmers identified with the lofty ideals of students, even if they didn’t share or understand their political demands. And more importantly, their small numbers were concentrated in the major cities of China, where the press, onlookers, and foreigners could see them and spread their message. Despite the KMT’s best efforts, the student movement rapidly grew in importance from the winter of 1945 on. With posters, changing, and street theater the students were assured an audience. And with the failure of the CCP to appear as more than a Muscovite puppet, and the KMT maintaining a dictatorial regime, is it any surprise that so many turned to National Socialism?

_______________________________________________​

As William and his men turned a corner, they saw a crowd laughing and applauding a show. “Should we check it out?” asked David. There was a trace too much eagerness in his voice; they were supposed to be on patrol, after all, not tourists.

William hesitated. On the other hand, it couldn’t hurt to guard the square. “Sure, why not?” And so, given their height and rifles, they were able to politely move through the crowd, mostly oblivious to the fact that the Chinese crowd had learned, over twenty years of warlordism, to make way for men with guns. They got to the front, where a man with a wooden rifle was stealing a bicycle from a shrieking woman and, after taking it, promptly carried it away over his head, unaware of what it was used for. The absurdity of the situation made even William laugh.

As the Canadians watched an actor wearing a Stalin mustache come out with a puppet of some Chinese guy William didn’t recognize, he noticed a girl standing next to him, who was trying to see through the crowd. Frowning, he turned to the girls’ grandmother, who was leaning on a cane and watching the show. Speaking slowly, he asked, “I help?” and mimed putting her on his shoulders. After a moment, the grandmother nodded, and he helped the girl onto his back.

After another couple of skits which none of the Canadians entirely understood, there was the sound of a whistle being blown. A dozen men in uniform, were moving through the crowd, knocking people out of the way. William carefully put the girl down, tensing up along with his men. “I think we had better figure out what’s going on.”

By this point, one of the uniformed men was shouting at the actors, while a young woman in her twenties wearing a western skirt shouted back. “Alright, that’s enough.” He shouted. The two continued to ignore him, either unable to hear or too absorbed in their fight. The girl spoke again, and the man took a club off of his belt.

William fired his pistol into the air, bringing the crowd to a dead silence. “Alright, what’s going on?” he asked in broken Chinese.

To his surprise, the girl spoke up in English. “Uppity students who support the masses of China are about to get a beating. It’s one of the Kuomintang’s more common forms of street entertainment.” She paused for a moment. “Also, who are you and why are you shooting pistols into the air? You do realize that bullets fall, right?”

“Well, yes, but-“

“And isn’t this entire scene a bit patronizing?” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, what these people need is a white man to teach them about compassion and democracy.”

William scowled. “That’s a good point. I’ll let the jackass with the club teach you about compassion and democracy.”

The cop frowned as one of the foreign devils ranted with this Chinese devil in a language he had the barest understandings of. In Chinese, he demanded, “They have to leave. You can help us do so.”

William frowned. “What’d he say?”

The girl translated into English. “Within the National Revolutionary state established by the Kuomintang in their triumph over the Japanese imperialists, unruly protests by those who would incite the peasants and workers to subversive ideas are a threat to the state. The advocates of National Socialism, communism, and every other disastrous ideology must be stopped.”

William blinked. “That’s a lot to pack into one sentence.”

“I can’t help it that Chinese is a more elegant language.”

William frowned. “Tell him that your skits, while perhaps blurring the boundaries of good taste, did not seem subversive, but rather an exercise of freedom of speech.”

The girl duly translated this as, “Listen, fat man. I can’t help but notice that in a city that is still hungry after years of Japanese misrule, you seem a bit plump and prosperous. Were you one of the collaborators who was pointing a rifle at us a few months ago? I did not spend the last four years of my life fighting from Hanoi to Nanjing to be bossed around by the son of a whore.[1]”

The officer raises his voice, and turned towards William. Then he noticed the pistol still in William’s hand, and the other soldiers with him, League of Nations patch sewn below the Canadian flag on their arms. “Fucking bleeding heart foreign devils,” he muttered. He turned to his men. “Let’s let these gweilos enjoy the show.” He could always come back and beat up the onlookers later anyway.

The girl smirked as the cops stomped off, and turned to William. “Thank you,” she said after a moment. “You didn’t have to do that.” The crowd began to drift away, as the hope of watching a gun battle between the KMT and the League forces dwindled. “My name is Sarah Koo, by the way.” [2]
William’s mother had raised him properly, and so, despite the awkwardness of the situation, he introduced him and his men to Sarah and the rest of the Chinese. It turned out, as it often does, that offering to share a pack of cigarettes makes people get along famously. And most of the actors knew some English, with one of them, surprisingly, talking with Jacques in passable French.

As William lit his cigarette, he asked a question. “If you don’t mind me asking, Miss Koo, who are you people?”

She flashed a smile. She looked rather pretty when did, thought William. “I’m a National Socialist. Renquan is a classical liberal, who’s naïve enough to think that Willkie and Roosevelt could serve as models for China. Pengjun is one of the last of the liberal Kuomintang, trying to remain loyal to the teachings of Sun yat-sen even as the party descends into maintaining rule by terror and force. But we are all members of the Democratic League, the last, best hope a greater, freer China.”

William nodded, impressed. She spoke with an accent out of a Hollywood movie, and her words spoke of a burning passion for a better world. “Okay, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you get the name Sarah? It doesn’t, seem, umm, usual.”

She hesitated for a moment.” My parents sent me to a private school run by American missionaries. Sarah was the name I took when I was baptized.”

“They must have scrimped and saved for that, then.”

Sarah thought of her father’s factories and investments. “Yes. They wanted me to have the best of everything.” [3]

William smirked. "Clearly that paid off." He hesitated for a moment. "Listen, I wouldn't normally ask this, but is there some way I can pay a call upon you?"

Sarah's voice hardened. "Ah, so that was why you came to our aid? So you could play the knight errant?"

"Not at all," said William. "I was actually hoping to use you to set up an opium racket, supplying the workers of China drugs that will stupefy them and make them easier for the capitalists of Winnpeg to exploit."

Sarah studied him for a moment. "Well, in that case, I suppose you can."

_______________________________________________​

Dear Editors,

We are a group of hated policemen. This feeling of hatred and contempt towards us is not due to the fact that we are policemen, but is the result of our being utilized as an instrument to oppress the poor, innocent people. For instance, we have been ordered to drive away the stall keepers along the streets, to forbid the peddlers to do business, and what is more heartrending, to confiscate the goods in the roadside stalls which sell English Army rations. If the soldiers do not unlawfully sell their rations, how can the stall keepers get hold of them? Many of these stall keepers, after having had their goods confiscated by the policemen, have begged for the return of the goods through tearful entreaty. They have borrowed their capital at a high rate of interest and their family members depend on the money they make for a living.

But we are merely carrying out "instructions." We love our country just as much as others do. Like others, we do not want to see the country go on the road to destruction. . . . But for the sake of our meager salary and because of lack of time, we could not but give up such a good opportunity to participate in the patriotic movement.

Sincerely,

A Group of Hated Police [4]

To understand the Chinese Civil War, it is necessary to understand just how strained the KMT state was by its victory in the Pacific War. In 1943, the state controlled some 15% of China; and by the end of 1944, the territory under their control mushroomed to 70% of what is now the Chinese Federation. To win popular support, the party would have to show initiative, wisdom, and cohesion while overcoming the corruption that had plagued the party for years. It should come as no surprise that within a year it had squandered the goodwill it had earned.

The 1945 movie Spring Rver Flows East provides an example of how the KMT liberation functioned in practice. A young couple is split by the war, with the husband moving to Chongqing as the wife leads resistance in the countryside. When the war ends, he takes up a new posting in Shanghai, setting up a mansion with a White Russian mistress. When his wife returns to him, she is turned away and forced to find work in the house of his mistress. [5]

Chiang did not order his officers to go out and be corrupt; he actually urged an orderly return of confiscated property and efforts to reestablish order. And indeed, initially the KMT regime did attract widespread support in the liberated cities, with public rallies attracting widespread enthusiasm far beyond the support exhibited in the 1930s. But the arrival of carpetbaggers from Chongqing horrified the locals, as well as League soldiers who were still in China. Moreover, by early 1945 the KMT state was rapidly running out of funds, as the League loans were paid off and nobody exhibited a willingness to make more without certain “democratic reforms,” carried out. Chiang turned to the only rational response, shaking down businessmen in China’s coastal cities to fund the state. So despite the pretense that the state was run “for the rich, by the rich,” the state didn’t even have their support, as it resorted to shakedowns to subsidize its rickety administration.

Anyway, as widespread corruption and financial troubles led to the inevitable nightmare of every nation, inflation, the government also lost the support of the labor unions. The first major strikes took place in the winter of 1944-1945, and 1945 saw over 1700 local strike across the country, often entailing citywide alliances demanding better working conditions. Chiang hoped to control the unions through a mixture of the carrot and the stick, forcing rthese spontaneous unions within the party’s “Chinese Labor Association,” but its leader, Zhu Xuefan, proved unwilling to support the use of violence against them. Zhu’s stand meant he was inevitably on the outs, and after being exiled in 1945, he fled to Taiwan, where he too joined the Democratic League.

The Party did appear to make inroads in controlling and suppressing the labor unions, through a series of reforms in 1946 designed to promote the party’s image as the protectors of labor interests. And most ominously, as the government’s attempts to curtail inflation failed, the workers began to tie their demands to the nascent student movement.

In spite of government attempts to limit its influence, the student movement became an important voice in Chinese politics from the summer of 1946 on. Its inventive methods— posters, chanting, street theater— always secured the students an audience. During its early phase, in 1946 and early 1947, the movement was a local, mostly spontaneous, and loosely organized nationalist force that raised slogans against war and foreign domination of China. Even though the Communists spent much time discussing how best to gain influence among the students, they could still not set the political agenda of the movement. They were rudely reminded of the limits to their influence in the spring of 1946, when Nanjing and Shanghai students, who had demonstrated against U.S. policies, suddenly went out in protest against the continued Soviet occupation of Manchuria.


The rapid spread of labor unrest in the latter part of 1947 should have provided the CCP with an opportunity for infiltrating the independent unions, reversing their failure to maintain an organization in the major cities for more than a decade. Despite optimism in the early fall of 1945, the Communists were simply, for a variety of reasons, unable to use labor unrest to their advantage. [6] Part of it may have been the party’s weakness; part of it was simply that, as rumors filtered out of Manchuria, people rationally said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Perversely, the greatest sympathizers with the CCP came from China’s bourgeoisie In the chaos that followed the KMT taekvoer, they simply had no role to play in the KMT’s administration, and so many of China’s intelligentsia and middle class found themselves attracted to Communism. Yet at the same time, The CCP had

Meanwhile, life in the countryside continued as it always had, except, well, worse. Chiang’s focus on controlling the cities meant that so long as the government’s authority was respected, it turned a blind eye to what the landlords did. The government, in essence, hoped to promote a patronage system, using local elites to maintain its hold on the countryside. The problem was that this meant little would be done to ameliorate China’s impoverished countryside. Combined with the economic havoc wrought by warfare and KMT taxes, peasants found their plight worse than it had been before the war. Moreover, any rural unrest was viewed as the action of Communist agents, so while the government recognized there were legitimate grievances, it lacked the means, and will, to fix them. And so a people lost hope in their government, and almost lost hope in the future. For the withdrawal of allegiance from the KMT did not mean an embrace of the main alternative, the CCP. Important parts of society sought outlets for their beliefs, hopes, and dreams from a new, third way for China.

_______________________________________________​

That evening all the people went to Ching-ho's courtyard to help take over his property. It was very cold that night so we built bonfires and the flames shot up toward the stars. It was very beautiful. We went in to register his grain and altogether found but zoo bags of unmilled millet— only a quarter of what he owed us. Right then and there we decided to call another meeting. People said that he must have a lot of silver dollars— they thought of the wine plant, and the pigs he raised on the distillers' grains, and the North Temple Society, and the Confucius Association.. . . "But this is not enough," shouted the people. So then we began to beat him. Finally he said, "I have 40 silver dollars under the kang." We went in and dug it up. The money stirred up everyone. We beat him again. He told us where to find another hundred after that. But no one believed that this was the end of his hoard. We beat him again and several militiamen began to heat an iron bar in one of the fires. -An Account from a CCP Cadre in Northern China.

While Southern China suffered, in Northern China and Manchuria, great changes were afoot. [7]. The Japanese reign of terror was over; and a new, harsher reign of terror washed across the land.

Once the CCP was able to firmly ensconced itself in Manchuria, Stalin seems to have expected the party to settle down and constrain itself to ruling the territory with Soviet aid. In practice, however, the CCP underwent rapid militarization, preparing for what its leadership saw as a fight to the finish. As tensions continued to increase even after the war ended; in Iran, in Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, Mao came to perceive a clash with the capitalist nations as inevitable; and China would be among the battlefields. And so The CCP military was refashioned into the People’s Liberation Army.

The CCP began stepping up efforts to recruit in the territories it controlled. While villagers from Manchuria and Yanann showed a strange reluctance to join the military, even after they were given land [8] Yet the CCp began introducing conscription, and also turned to bandit chiefs, former soldiers of Manchukuo, and any other sources of military technology. And once the soldiers were drafted into the PLA, they were treated far better than most KMT forces, fed and clothed as they never had before. The PLA, unlike the KMT, was willing to spend more resources to save injured soldiers, or minimize losses. And along with such carrots, there were powerful sticks; threats of sanctions against a soldier’s family if he deserted and execution. Meanwhile, even the villages were militarized, as the women’s associations were trained to dig ditches and children were taught to nurse the injured. Manchuria became a barracks for a revolutionary army.

Meanwhile, the Communists carried out a policy of land reform that forced its peasants to throw in the lot with the CCP. By engaging in radical land reform and breaking the landowners, the peasants had a real, personal stake in the CCP’s fate; for all knew what the KMT did when it recaptured areas where land reform had been carried out. The peasants welcomed land reform, of course; but they were aware that accepting it meant they had no choice but to throw their support behind the CCP.

Nor was the CCP short of weapons. While many of the PLA’s weapons were initially of Japanese origin, captured by the Soviets after Japanese surrendered. But by the middle of 1945, as doubts began to grow about the viability of the KMT state, Stalin was willing to open the armories of the USSR to his comrades. These weapons played a crucial role in the CCP military, even as military aid to the KMT began to die down, and the Western China lobby urged pushing Chiang for more democratic reforms in return for aid. This would lead to a strange and surreal war when the civil war resumed, as the KMT and CCP both found themselves using hosts of poorly trained militias with a core of modern firepower. But in any event, it did mean that by the beginning of 1946, the CCP would have, with substantial Soviet advisors, a professional and cohesive military force.

We can see, by the time the war began, three futures for East Asia. Mao saw China as the vanguard of the next wave of the Communist Revolution, a future of collectivization and a dictatorship of the proletariat. Chiang had begun the creation of a quasi-fascist dictatorship, based on reverence to the party and the leader, while ruthlessly suppressing all dissent. Yet even a fascist state would have been better, in some ways, than the morass of corruption and incompetence that characterized KMT rule. Honorable men on both sides did try to mitigate the excess and zeal of their parties, but they were doomed to failure.

Arise, Suffering Slaves! by Li Hua​

And the third fate for China, exemplified by the quiet prosperity that was beginning to overtake Taiwan? Well, as it would turn out, there were plenty of people who found that appealing.

[1] I always wonder how much of this sort of stuff goes on when people are translating. Ah well.

[2] When dealing with the gweilos, it was common for the more cosmopolitan Chinese to take a western name, on the assumption that they’d be treated more seriously.

[3] Deleted line by William: “Oh, so I can’t persuade you to marry me with the wonders of indoor plumbing.”

[4] This is a variation on an OTL letter from 1948, with the US changed to UK to fit the TL.

[5] Chinese cinematography had an unwritten rule at this time that if there were any decent characters in a film, they would either: a) End up living a tragic life, or b) become evil. Imagine a society that would view Battlestar’s child prostitution scenes as, “Oh, yea, that’s how life works,” and you have some understanding of how truly dark most films were.

[6] This is also OTL. Union recruitment didn’t pick up, in general, until the CCP was basically about to take the city.

[7] Oddly, it turned out that once the peasants had secure livelihoods they were less inclined to risk getting shot for a glorious revolution.

 

[unmerged(44312)]

A freedomloving-democratic-chinese National Socialism, that would create a very new kind of perspective! Well it seems that this National Socialism is quite different than OTL. An ideology based on a democratic nationalism and socialism!

Are the Chinese taking on some inspiration of Schuhmachers democratic nationalism? Well it is certainly an appealling third way!

 

[Karelian]

Without USAF transport planes to transfer his best troops into middle of Manchuria, Chiang and his armies might fare little better than in OTL - on the other hand Mao seems to have more Soviet support than he historically did.

We´ll see how far the student movement fares. Chinese Federation...It has a certain ring to it.

 

[Faeelin]

Without USAF transport planes to transfer his best troops into middle of Manchuria, Chiang and his armies might fare little better than in OTL - on the other hand Mao seems to have more Soviet support than he historically did.

There are still Soviet troops in Manchuria, and Harbin is a Soviet base. So, people are worried. On the other hand, Chiang is doing a great job being Chiang, so the West isn't really sure what it should be doing.

The next post will return to Continental Europe, and the European Community.

A freedomloving-democratic-chinese National Socialism, that would create a very new kind of perspective! Well it seems that this National Socialism is quite different than OTL. An ideology based on a democratic nationalism and socialism!

Are the Chinese taking on some inspiration of Schuhmachers democratic nationalism? Well it is certainly an appealling third way!

Pff, the Chinese don't need to copy Schumacher. The National Socialists were a Chinese party in the 1930s, who fate is going to be a bit kinder to.

Hopefully. I admit that whenever Chinese students have gone up against the government in the 20th century, the result isn't usually so hot.

 

[TheExecuter]

This all reminds me of South Korea in the late 40s and 50s.

One can only hope that peace and prosperity will triumph, but I just can't see it happening. I fear more death will come to the Middle Kingdom...

TheExecuter

 

[Milites]

"Ah it was the Summer of '46 we had a rally and we tried really hard"

Somehow, somewhere and despite my - modestly speaking - insufficient knowledge of the Chinese language, I'd say that'd sound pretty cool in the more elegant language.

Again, a great update. It's a very interesting theatre and I can't wait to hear how this Chinese Civil War will play out - well obviously a glorious People's Democracy is out of the question with the hint of "Chinese Federation", but maybe a sort of compromise? Is this where national socialism will play a role?