Well, it wasn’t, it was a peasant society.
What? They had a Pacific port at Vladivostok.
Sorry, but “Shek” isn’t the dude’s last name (surname). It’s not even his personal name. Calling him “Shek” is like calling “Billy” “ee”.
I do agree with you on Chiang’s running of the ROC. It certainly wasn’t any bastion of democracy but it was a far better place to be than the mainland.
And any naval force going from there to Taiwan would have to pass by South Korea, our hypothetical Nationalist China, or Japan. (They might take a long detour all the way around Japan, but that would take much longer than it would take the US or Nationalist China to stage an invasion of hypothetical Communist Taiwan.) To my mind, that is completely untenable from a strategic perspective. The USSR’s navy would be literally sailing into a three sided envelopment, where they could be attacked by land based air, easily stopped with naval mines, etc.
I disagree. Taiwan under Japanese rule had compulsory primary education, a good railway system, quality sanitation, good public health, and was experiencing an economic boom. Chiang did not personally transform Taiwan into the economic success it was in the late 20th century. Rather, the ingredients for economic and industrial success were already there, and had actually been set back by the KMT’s heavy-handedness.
Edit: I suppose what constitutes a “peasant society” varies between people. If this is some kind of well-defined term I’m not aware of, my bad.
They would have had to have a real blue water navy, a lot earlier than they did. If I recall, it was not until 75 that the russians got serious and started putting some serious surface metal in the water.
Declan
There wouldn’t be that big black granite “V” in the ground in Washington DC
While Taiwan was a better place to be, attempting to project how Chiang would have run mainland China from that is, well, nutty. It’s impossible to guess how that would have gone, because it just isn’t the same thing. Taiwan isn’t just another China, it’s another country that happens to be populated by people who speak Chinese.
Taiwan is a very small place - it’s about as big as Maryland, or half the size of Scotland - with a population smaller than Canada’s limited almost entirely to the west coast of the island. China is, well, bigger. Bigger in every conceivable sense - area, population, and the complexities of its government - by a factor of a bazillion. We can’t guess how Chiang would have done. Maybe he would have run it successfully, maybe not, maybe he would have been overthrown in 1957, maybe the complete alteration of the world’s power structure would have resulted in World War III.
There probably would have been no Korean War or Vietnam War. If there had been a Korean War, South Korea would have won and the country would have been reunited. The Cold War would have been much different with the Russians almost as focused on the Chinese as the US.
No Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution means tens of millions of Chinese don’t die. The economic growth of China happens 25 years earlier and today China is almost as rich as South Korea. China would be easily the largest economy in the world by now.
You would have probably hated it even more if I’d have written it as intended…I actually meant to write Shrek as a play on one of my favorite green cartoon characters. Sorry about that.
No, the ROC wasn’t a bastion of democracy and I’m not trying to white wash how things were, but I don’t think there is much of a comparison between what Chiang Kai-Shek did in Taiwan and what Mao did on the mainland, and I think it’s a good guide to what would have happened had their roles been reversed (though I’m not convinced Mao could have withdrawn to Taiwan and made it work at all).
Were the Nationalists ever close to actually defeating the Communists and winning the civil war? They were at one or a few points, weren’t they?
I agree that it’s mistaken, but wouldn’t call it nutty.
The reason I think you can’t project is because leaders mostly do what historical circumstances push them into. Radically different circumstances, radically different Chiang. But I can’t prove it.
A more recent question of leadership personality vs. historical circumstances: Would President Al Gore have behaved much differently from Bush the Younger in Afghanistan and Iraq? I think not. Gore (and I’ll bet most posters here) thinks otherwise. Really, it is unproveable. Do I think leaders have no free will? Well, I think they have some. So, please, let’s not risk Bush the Youngest! But the Clintons and Obamas and Bushes and Chiangs don’t have as much ability to stand up to history as they think.
By the way, that’s because the Kuomintang forced Mandarin on the Taiwanese. Under Japanese rule, the most common pattern was to speak Taiwanese at home, but Japanese in public.
Lee Kuan Yew is critical of this, saying that economically wise dictators (he doesn’t use that word) mandate English. In Taiwan’s case, having the same official language as China not only makes trade with the West more complex – it contributes, in a small way, to mainland irredentism. Where the heck was America-loving Madame Chiang Kai-shek when hubby made his language blunder?
P.S. Yes, I know, Chiang forced Mandarin on Taiwan to back up his own irredentism, and English thus had no chance of adoption.
Yeah, the Reds’ base in the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet was crushed by Chiang’s Encirclement Campaigns in 1933-34. But Mao escaped with most of his force and went on the Long March.
This. Chang Kai Shek/Jiang Jieshi was a despotic bastard who ran a corrupt empire feat. nigh state-sponsored looting and strong ties to the criminal underworld. Also his actions from the 20s to 47 prove that he could not be trusted by his allies and did not have the well-being of China or the Chinese in mind.
Simply put, he was an ass. Which is kind of why the Communists won.
[QUOTE=Velocity]
Were the Nationalists ever close to actually defeating the Communists and winning the civil war? They were at one or a few points, weren’t they?
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Yes and no. In 37, yeah, the Commies were pretty much on the run (and Jiang was so focused on fucking the last of them up, his own generals had to arrest him before he would reluctantly start focusing on fighting the Japanese, who were sort of invading half the country at the time). Come the tail end of the war, the Nationalists were in a much, much better position than the Communists despite the latter’s big comeback from the Long March : the Nationalist army had almost twice as many men, was much better equipped thanks to Allied efforts, controlled more of the territory, had international backing and initially at least even enjoyed popular support, riding on the “we kicked the Japs out !” wave.
That Jiang managed to piss all of that away should tell you how good a leader he was.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Yeah, the Reds’ base in the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet was crushed by Chiang’s Encirclement Campaigns in 1933-34. But Mao escaped with most of his force and went on the Long March.
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Took him five tries and international help though (including that of beloved social commentator Adolf Hitler).
[QUOTE=Kobal2]
Simply put, he was an ass. Which is kind of why the Communists won.
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Well, the Communists got a wee bit of help from cold war politics. After Russia started annexing former Japanese (which was former Chinese) territories in '46 the Russians were also giving the Communists a lot of captured Japanese weapons and other supplies, while the US was hands off for political reasons. It wasn’t JUST because Shrek was an ass or even an ogre with many layers.
As opposed to Mao getting aid from that great humanitarian Stalin, right? 
Look, I don’t think anyone is saying the Nationalists were angels, but come on…it’s hard to imagine anyone doing a worse job of governing that Mao and his merry men did. They literally killed millions of their own people through sheer stupidity…I mean, we aren’t even talking about the millions they killed on purpose, we are talking about the millions they killed just with their idiotic agricultural policies (not to mention that bit about building up industry by having everyone puddle iron in their own backyards). I don’t care how corrupt Chiang Kai-Shek and HIS merry men were, or how despotic, you’d be hard pressed to kill that many people through stupidity alone.
ETA: I see an alternative universe under the Nationalists as following more along the lines of South Korea. Initially corrupt and despotic, but with ties to the western world and eventually morphing (after perhaps whacking several dictators and strongmen perhaps) into the economic powerhouse it is today after they got rid of a lot of the Communist claptrap and baggage, except maybe a few decades earlier. Or, maybe it would have been just as bad or worse, especially with the Soviets and North Korea in the mix (not to mention Vietnam). We’ll never know though.
Well, his being an ass (and flatly refusing any kind of people’s involvement in his government, despite the Republican ideal having been what put him in the driver’s seat to begin with) is mostly what rapidly lost him any semblance of popular support, which in turn meant the Red Army had a much larger pool to draw resources from/larger base to safely run logistics through. The Nationalists didn’t just lose on the battlefield(s), they first and foremost lost the hearts & minds, particularly those of the peasants.
Which is kind of an issue when your country is like 90% peasants.
My turn to say “oh come on”. Stalin flogged Mao whatever guns and ammo the Japanese had left over in Mandchuria - which might not have been all that much considering the Ever Victorious Army of Glorious Nippon had been running on fumes for the last two-three years. And relations became hella tense around '49 when it appeared Mao would not, in fact, be a good little lapdog.
Hitler OTOH built heavy industry & weapon factories for Jiang and trained his troops.
I mean, sure, you can file both of those item under the header “aid” but…
I dunno, honestly - it’s a competition between Very Old Stupid and New & Imaginative Stupid. China under Jiang would have been something like modern Russia without the industry IMO. You’d probably still have mass famines - because the Friends of Jiang Ltd. would have taken the grain for themselves and shot anybody looked at 'em funny, all in the name of the security of the State and needing resources cum unilateral support in order to Root Out the Bandits. I mean that’s more or less how they rolled in the 20s and 30s, isn’t it ?
Throw in a Communist Taiwan, that would have been like Christmas : all of the justification, none of the actual political threat.
To be fair, there’s no guarantee that a Nationalist China would turn into a democratic and ethical state. South Korea and Taiwan were/are both heavily dependent on US aid, while a Nationalist China may be powerful and self-sufficient enough to avoid bowing to US pressure.
But Mao had an advantage - he didn’t have a Mao trying to overthrow his government. Because while Mao was terrible at running a country, he was a genius at running a revolution. If Mao had died around the end of 1950, he’d probably be remembered as a great man.