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Hearts of Iron IV - 47th Development Diary - 4th of March 2016

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I like the route Paradox is treading with this update, as China has always been problematic. It does beg the follow-up question about cause and effect with a longer, more capable China theater though.

What I mean is, if the "new" China is more robust vs. Japan, how likely is Japan to favor bypassing a China Campaign? Obviously Paradox will balance the heck out of it, but once you make a base change like this, the dominoes start to fall; i.e., by not invading China, Japan has full attention to focus on the US (minus China resources of course); would this be enough to force the US to commit more of a effort in the Pacific than historical? If so, then how does that effect the UK and the whole European war?... and so on and so forth. Or does the inherent lack of China resources as with this Japanese war plan act as balance in itself?

I will definitely be following the progress on this one.
 
Pdubya said:
I like the route Paradox is treading with this update, as China has always been problematic. It does beg the follow-up question about cause and effect with a longer, more capable China theater though.

What I mean is, if the "new" China is more robust vs. Japan, how likely is Japan to favor bypassing a China Campaign? Obviously Paradox will balance the heck out of it, but once you make a base change like this, the dominoes start to fall; i.e., by not invading China, Japan has full attention to focus on the US (minus China resources of course); would this be enough to force the US to commit more of a effort in the Pacific than historical? If so, then how does that effect the UK and the whole European war?... and so on and so forth. Or does the inherent lack of China resources as with this Japanese war plan act as balance in itself?

I will definitely be following the progress on this one.
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Considering that Japan really did underestimate the difficulty of the China campaign, thinking they would be able to force a settlement and extract concessions within a few months, this might be WAD. It is only logical for a player who understands that the campaign would far more difficult than the historical Japanese thought it would be to either commit to it more fully in order to win decisively (which would probably preclude offensives against the US) or bypass it entirely.
 
I don't think you guys realize that China was rapidly modernizing its industry and military during the 1930's - all the way up to July 1937, guess what stopped that?

In an alternate reality, if Japan really left China alone to focus on the Western Allies and the USSR, and never invaded in 37'. Do you really believe their Manchurian conquest would be safe from Chinese invasion. It's not like China would just sit there with a modernized army, while Japan was waging war against America, eyeing Manchuria, and not doing anything to get revenge.

The Soviet Union and America would both be begging China to invade Manchuria (a land with vast resources that Japan relied on for its war effort), they would probably have given the Nationalists weapons, tanks, aircraft and supplies. I mean in this alternate reality where China is left unscathed, with a huge military now modernized with the extra 4 years of peace, liberation of Manchuria would be incredibly attractive and feasible.

Invading China is a preemptive move, better to destroy China's capability to go on the offensive before your glorious and foolhardy confrontation with America, then be at war with America, start losing the naval war, and then have the Chinese Nationalist Army invade Manchuria, with Soviet and American military assistance.

Keep in mind, China lost something like 90% of its war industry and tax revenue by 1938.

So yeah, there's a point to starting that quagmire if you are playing as Japan. Its the same reason why Hitler attacked the USSR before forcing UK capitulation. USSR was in the middle of its re-organization. Imagine fighting the Red Army after it is fully modernized and reorganized, and when its invading western Poland.
 
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I am sincerely appreciative of the effort going into the post-WW2 events and setups for things like the Chinese Civil War. It'd be great to get some events, decisions, and in-game support for something like Operation Unthinkable that's a more global potential conflict.
 
Wondering if the Marco Polo Bridge incident can occur if the Peoples Republic (or a Chinese warlord) happens to have control of Beiping/Beijing and Tianjin. Japan would likely still have invaded regardless of which government controlled the land
 
podcat said:
not sure, there tends to be problems with us representing tibet as a separate nation
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Glad Paradox isn't trying to pander to the Chinese market on this. German laws about flags and such are one thing, but pretending a state that existed didn't exist simply because of political pressure from a communist dictatorship would have been very disappointing.
 
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'Tibet is part of China. Full stop.'

That quote was made by one of those well-known members of a communist dictatorship, an official of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2008. He was speaking about a statement by the Foreign Minister clarifying the governments position. Until 2008 the British Government's position had been that China held suzerainty over Tibet but not full sovereignty. They were the only country in the world to take that position:

Our ability to get our points across has sometimes been clouded by the position the UK took at the start of the 20th century on the status of Tibet, a position based on the geo-politics of the time. Our recognition of China's "special position" in Tibet developed from the outdated concept of suzerainty. Some have used this to cast doubt on the aims we are pursuing and to claim that we are denying Chinese sovereignty over a large part of its own territory. We have made clear to the Chinese Government, and publicly, that we do not support Tibetan independence. Like every other EU member state, and the United States, we regard Tibet as part of the People's Republic of China.
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Did you not know that every US President since Roosevelt, and the United Nations, have never recognised Tibet as an independent country?

Tibet's claim to independence is based on a dubious legal position, that they signed a treaty with Mongolia around 1911, when the Qing dynasty collapsed, stating they were independent of the Qing. So did a number of the provinces of China. They also signed a Treaty in 1913 recognising that "Tibet forms part of Chinese territory" and after the Tibetans selected a Dalai Lama, the Chinese government was to be notified and the Chinese commissioner in Lhasa would "formally communicate to His Holiness the titles consistent with his dignity, which have been conferred by the Chinese Government".

This is the statement by the US State Department in 1995:

"The United States considers the Tibet Autonomous Region ... as part of the People's Republic of China. This longstanding policy is consistent with the view of the entire international community, including all China's neighbors: no country recognizes Tibet as a sovereign state. Moreover, U.S. acceptance of China's claim of sovereignty over Tibet predates the establishment of the People's Republic of China. In 1942, we told the Nationalist Chinese government then headquartered in Chongqing (Chungking) that we had "at no time raised (a) question" over Chinese claims to Tibet."
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I strongly advise the devs to do some reading into maoist military theory (mostly through Mao's own work). The Civil War and Long March, the Anti-Japanese Aggression War and the Revolution itself have some pretty amazing tales. These wars transformed everything we knew about irregular warfare and could spawn a game of themselves.

It would be interesting to see in a game the deep mechanics of a Communist Revolution. Base Areas (or "Support Bases"), self-sufficient guerrilla armies that grow into regular ones, complex political mechanics inside Base Areas (also recently conquered cities and provinces), ways of actively winning the support of the people, reforms, active agitprop work... All of this done right was the great advantage of the Chinese Red Army over the KMT and Warlords. In practical terms, having the support of the people expands line of sight enormously and allows for great maneuver (if you ever want to simulate the CRA's "10 against 100 in Strategy, 100 against 10 in Tactics"), causes a ton of attrition to the reactionaries and pour new recruits into the Revolutionary Army on a daily basis (not "magical troops"). Oh, and seeking alliance with rogue tribes during the Long March would be a lot of fun too.

Also, the Second United Front was a communist initiative (the KMT favored internal pacification before external resistance), so a KMT player historically would have to accept or refuse it. Proposing it would be alternate history.
 
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I am not sure if it has been mentioned already, but the way Manchuria was "given" to the CCP after the war with Japan ends does not reflect well with what happened historically. The CCP and KMT all tried to get to Manchuria first after the war. The Nationalist were able to send their troops their first via American air lift. So the major cities of Manchuria was under the Nationalist control in the beginning. And it set up the three major campaigns of the Chinese Civil War. The first major campaigns is the Northeastern Campaign, then Northern China and then Eastern China. So in the game, when Manchuria was all given to CCP without the pockets of cities given to the Nationalists, it took away the possibility for players to play through the historical Northeastern Campaign. The CCP was successful using guerrilla tactics to surround the cities hold by the Nationalist and eventually through some fierce battles captured the whole Northeast.
So perhaps there could be some mods that more accurately reflected the post war divisions, to better simulate what happened historically.
 
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