What if the PRC from 1 December, 1949, is ISOT'ed back 30 years to 1 December, 1919?

[raharris1973]

What if the PRC from 1 December, 1949, is ISOT'ed back 30 years to 1 December, 1919?

This is the entire territory sovereignly controlled by the PRC, so the only exceptions are the remaining foreign leasehold territories, which in 1949 were the Portuguese leased Macau, British leased Hong Kong, and Soviet leased Dalian and Lushun/Port Arthur on the Guangdong peninsula. Those don't ISOT back, so they remain in their 1919 incarnations, which are controlled by Portugal, Britain, and Japan, respectively. However, by 1919 numerous other concession areas and leases throughout other Chinese cities and ports like Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhouan had been abolished, so their 1919 foreign owners/protectors will wonder where their property, expats, and regular contacts suddenly disappeared to.

The Chinese PLA has just occupied Chongqing, and is poised to begin the occupation of Chengdu, and the remaining southwestern provinces. PLA forces are fanned out in an arc to complete the occupation of the western portions of China, along the southern border, where they've recently conquered and chased KMT remnants across the border, and in Guangdong & Fujian, across the straits from the Nationalist held islands of Hainan and Taiwan.

The PRC government has diplomatic ties to establish with the Russian Federated Soviet Republic. Mao Zedong, his comrades, and likely Soviet personnel present in China likely have some "news from the future" they would like to convey to the USSR about the quarter century ahead.

The PRC also would probably like to change the situation of having the Japanese Empire as a neighbor on land, ASAP, seeing the Japanese removed from the Guangdong peninsula and Korean Peninsula, in that order. Beijing also desires Japanese ouster from Taiwan and the Pescadores, but that is probably less strictly urgent, from a pure security POV, and probably also more difficult to accomplish.

The Russian Communists at this moment are still going through their own Civil War in December 1919, and are at war with Poland. In the parts of Russia bordering China, it is White Russians, aided by foreign, especially Japanese, and even some Chinese warlord, troops who are in control, so Mao has every incentive to take fraternal socialist action and send PLA fighting volunteers to help the Bolshevik side. The White side in the Russian Far East/Siberia is in fact finding its supply-line through the Manchurian railways interrupted by PRC control, even while they still control the Trans-Siberian leg north of the Amur. The PLA needs to re-allocate some forces back to the northeast to protect it, and to cross the border to work with Bolshevik partisans to interdict or capture the TSR and get the Japanese out of the Amur and Primorye districts in addition to Port Arthur.

Conveniently for Mao, this is also an opportunity for him to subborn or overpower the Chinese Beiyang/warlord troops in Outer Mongolia & Tannu Tuva so that those regions are clearly integrated with the PRC and under its authority before the Soviet Civil War is resolved. Indeed, intervention in the Russian Civil War on behalf of the Bolsheviks can provide an opportunity to correct past unequal Sino-Russian treaties, or at least parts of them.

This is also a period of dissent within Korea, and a period when the Japanese public, unlike the 1930s, was not squarely behind military adventurism. However, military humiliation and offended pride can most likely convert the broad Japanese public into a conformist, right-wing frame of mind.

In 1919, on thing Mao certainly *cannot* count on is western countries being anti-Japanese in Japanese struggles with Communist Russians and Chinese.


How do things develop from this starting point?

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

What if the PRC from 1 December, 1949, is ISOT'ed back 30 years to 1 December, 1919?

This is the entire territory sovereignly controlled by the PRC, so the only exceptions are the remaining foreign leasehold territories, which in 1949 were the Portuguese leased Macau, British leased Hong Kong, and Soviet leased Dalian and Lushun/Port Arthur on the Guangdong peninsula. Those don't ISOT back, so they remain in their 1919 incarnations, which are controlled by Portugal, Britain, and Japan, respectively. However, by 1919 numerous other concession areas and leases throughout other Chinese cities and ports like Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhouan had been abolished, so their 1919 foreign owners/protectors will wonder where their property, expats, and regular contacts suddenly disappeared to.

The Chinese PLA has just occupied Chongqing, and is poised to begin the occupation of Chengdu, and the remaining southwestern provinces. PLA forces are fanned out in an arc to complete the occupation of the western portions of China, along the southern border, where they've recently conquered and chased KMT remnants across the border, and in Guangdong & Fujian, across the straits from the Nationalist held islands of Hainan and Taiwan.

The PRC government has diplomatic ties to establish with the Russian Federated Soviet Republic. Mao Zedong, his comrades, and likely Soviet personnel present in China likely have some "news from the future" they would like to convey to the USSR about the quarter century ahead.

The PRC also would probably like to change the situation of having the Japanese Empire as a neighbor on land, ASAP, seeing the Japanese removed from the Guangdong peninsula and Korean Peninsula, in that order. Beijing also desires Japanese ouster from Taiwan and the Pescadores, but that is probably less strictly urgent, from a pure security POV, and probably also more difficult to accomplish.

The Russian Communists at this moment are still going through their own Civil War in December 1919, and are at war with Poland. In the parts of Russia bordering China, it is White Russians, aided by foreign, especially Japanese, and even some Chinese warlord, troops who are in control, so Mao has every incentive to take fraternal socialist action and send PLA fighting volunteers to help the Bolshevik side. The White side in the Russian Far East/Siberia is in fact finding its supply-line through the Manchurian railways interrupted by PRC control, even while they still control the Trans-Siberian leg north of the Amur. The PLA needs to re-allocate some forces back to the northeast to protect it, and to cross the border to work with Bolshevik partisans to interdict or capture the TSR and get the Japanese out of the Amur and Primorye districts in addition to Port Arthur.

Conveniently for Mao, this is also an opportunity for him to subborn or overpower the Chinese Beiyang/warlord troops in Outer Mongolia & Tannu Tuva so that those regions are clearly integrated with the PRC and under its authority before the Soviet Civil War is resolved. Indeed, intervention in the Russian Civil War on behalf of the Bolsheviks can provide an opportunity to correct past unequal Sino-Russian treaties, or at least parts of them.

This is also a period of dissent within Korea, and a period when the Japanese public, unlike the 1930s, was not squarely behind military adventurism. However, military humiliation and offended pride can most likely convert the broad Japanese public into a conformist, right-wing frame of mind.

In 1919, on thing Mao certainly *cannot* count on is western countries being anti-Japanese in Japanese struggles with Communist Russians and Chinese.


How do things develop from this starting point?

Mao would obviously militarily intervene in Siberia and Outer Mongolia in order to defeat the Chinese warlord remnants, and bring Mongolia back into the Sinosphere. However, he was politically skillful, and thus would hold back on military challenging the great power Japan was at the time, until China grew economically (the Roaring Twenties could extend to the PRC if Mao followed a similar industrial policy to Stalin).
If the Soviets became aware the Nazi regime came to power in part due to a divided opposition, the Comintern would seek to organize popular fronts between reformist and revolutionary socialist parties wherever possible, butterflying the term "social fascism". After the Whites and warlords were defeated, the PRC and USSR would develop a close partnership while Japan followed a pragmatic policy towards the new regime, avoiding both military intervention and major diplomatic concessions.
And yes, obviously, the unequal treaties would be at least partly renegotiated to make China an equal partner.

 

[raharris1973]

Here is a map of the Russian Civil War situation a little before this time (November 1, 1919): https://omniatlas.com/maps/northern-eurasia/19191101/

....and a little after (January 3rd, 1920): https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url...ved=0CBEQjhxqFwoTCLCAn_Kb8oUDFQAAAAAdAAAAABBn

And here is a map of the Chinese Civil War situation as of December, 1949:

Historical Atlas of East Asia (8 December 1949): Nationalist Taiwan

With the Communists victorious across China, about 2 million Nationalist Chinese fled to the offshore island of Taiwan. On December 8, Chiang Kaishek made the Taiwanese city of Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China but refused to give up his claim on the mainland.

omniatlas.com

So you can estimate the territorial control of the Communist giants.

However, he was politically skillful, and thus would hold back on military challenging the great power Japan was at the time, until China grew economically

Mao could try. Complicating factors on the Chinese including his own visceral feeling, feelings among Party cadre, and among the Chinese public. Also, Mao has a choice to make whether to provide "fraternal aid" to the young Soviet Union in its Civil War, both to help the Bolsheviks out, and also to possibly regain, by right of serving as on-the-ground liberator, the Qing dynasty lands lost to the Russian Empire via unequal treaties in the 19th century. Does he pass up fraternal proletarian duty *and* national irredentist opportunity?

A complication of intervention in Russian Asia at this time is that an international Allied force, including an especially large contingent of Japanese (as well as Czechoslovakians, Americans, British, French, Chinese) were stationed in the region and at points on the Trans-Siberian railway in various states of collaboration or non-collaboration with White forces and in contention with Red forces and partisans. As it turned out, this intervention became very unpopular with the Japanese public and led to a withdrawal, but things could change and the intervention could become menacing to China if it became entrenched.

From the Japanese side, there will be a certain automatic getting spooked factor of all of eastern and northern China Japan does business with suddenly turning into a self-proclaimed Communist state. It inherently looks and sounds like it is in cahoots with the Bolshevik partisans and fighters Japanese troops are opposing the Russian Far East, before Mao's Chinese even do anything real. But then beyond that, with the time displacement, the Japanese will soon be asking themselves, and these "new Chinese", what the heck did you do with all our diplomats and businessmen and troops manning the South Manchurian railway zone and the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone, and all our business properties, and our garrison in Qingdao, Shandong province that we secured in WWI, and garrisons in other concession areas?

Western powers as well will be asking, what the heck did you do with our people, businessmen, troops in all the international treaty port concessions?

Japan was not so loopy and hair-triggered in 1919 as in the 30s. The civilians exercised control over the military. With enough stark evidence, the uptime Chinese Communists and the downtime Japanese, westerners and Bolsheviks can probably wrap their head around the idea that geographically disjunctive time-displacement has occurred, not some sneaky instant conquest and kidnapping of their people in China. But the Japanese, and even the westerners would likely feel entitled to various rights of way, properties, concessions, and trading interests within China's territory that Mao and his Party would be loathe to hand back.

(the Roaring Twenties could extend to the PRC if Mao followed a similar industrial policy to Stalin).

Although in this decade, the USSR was pursuing the more market-friendly NEP. But yes. The price of foreign machinery and expertise [to the extent any of it was better than still functional 1949 Chinese plant] would be higher in the roaring 20s than when Stalin started his 5 Year Plans however, precisely because the 20s were more prosperous in North America and various times and places in Europe. The global Depression was a great boost to the Stalinist industrial program, making western machinery and expertise cheap, and countries formerly aloof to Soviet trade, willing to do more of it.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Here is a map of the Russian Civil War situation a little before this time (November 1, 1919): https://omniatlas.com/maps/northern-eurasia/19191101/

....and a little after (January 3rd, 1920): https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https://omniatlas.com/maps/northern-eurasia/19200103/&psig=AOvVaw0EHpxFuMsFJf6CQMM_gksn&ust=1714850979025000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBEQjhxqFwoTCLCAn_Kb8oUDFQAAAAAdAAAAABBn

And here is a map of the Chinese Civil War situation as of December, 1949:

Historical Atlas of East Asia (8 December 1949): Nationalist Taiwan

With the Communists victorious across China, about 2 million Nationalist Chinese fled to the offshore island of Taiwan. On December 8, Chiang Kaishek made the Taiwanese city of Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China but refused to give up his claim on the mainland.

omniatlas.com

So you can estimate the territorial control of the Communist giants.


Mao could try. Complicating factors on the Chinese including his own visceral feeling, feelings among Party cadre, and among the Chinese public. Also, Mao has a choice to make whether to provide "fraternal aid" to the young Soviet Union in its Civil War, both to help the Bolsheviks out, and also to possibly regain, by right of serving as on-the-ground liberator, the Qing dynasty lands lost to the Russian Empire via unequal treaties in the 19th century. Does he pass up fraternal proletarian duty *and* national irredentist opportunity?

A complication of intervention in Russian Asia at this time is that an international Allied force, including an especially large contingent of Japanese (as well as Czechoslovakians, Americans, British, French, Chinese) were stationed in the region and at points on the Trans-Siberian railway in various states of collaboration or non-collaboration with White forces and in contention with Red forces and partisans. As it turned out, this intervention became very unpopular with the Japanese public and led to a withdrawal, but things could change and the intervention could become menacing to China if it became entrenched.

From the Japanese side, there will be a certain automatic getting spooked factor of all of eastern and northern China Japan does business with suddenly turning into a self-proclaimed Communist state. It inherently looks and sounds like it is in cahoots with the Bolshevik partisans and fighters Japanese troops are opposing the Russian Far East, before Mao's Chinese even do anything real. But then beyond that, with the time displacement, the Japanese will soon be asking themselves, and these "new Chinese", what the heck did you do with all our diplomats and businessmen and troops manning the South Manchurian railway zone and the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone, and all our business properties, and our garrison in Qingdao, Shandong province that we secured in WWI, and garrisons in other concession areas?

Western powers as well will be asking, what the heck did you do with our people, businessmen, troops in all the international treaty port concessions?

Japan was not so loopy and hair-triggered in 1919 as in the 30s. The civilians exercised control over the military. With enough stark evidence, the uptime Chinese Communists and the downtime Japanese, westerners and Bolsheviks can probably wrap their head around the idea that geographically disjunctive time-displacement has occurred, not some sneaky instant conquest and kidnapping of their people in China. But the Japanese, and even the westerners would likely feel entitled to various rights of way, properties, concessions, and trading interests within China's territory that Mao and his Party would be loathe to hand back.


Although in this decade, the USSR was pursuing the more market-friendly NEP. But yes. The price of foreign machinery and expertise [to the extent any of it was better than still functional 1949 Chinese plant] would be higher in the roaring 20s than when Stalin started his 5 Year Plans however, precisely because the 20s were more prosperous in North America and various times and places in Europe. The global Depression was a great boost to the Stalinist industrial program, making western machinery and expertise cheap, and countries formerly aloof to Soviet trade, willing to do more of it.

Mao could pass up on it depending on how military intelligence of international troops went – if the PLA turned out not to be a match for them, he would not intervene, but face domestic political consequences, as you pointed out.

The sudden loss of their concessions and ports would make the Western powers and Japan oppose the PRC, albeit not militarily, due to civilian control of the IJA.

And yes, Chinese industrialisation would be more difficult than that of the USSR.

 

[raharris1973]

Here are some reference maps, relevant to the thread

 

[raharris1973]

Here's how I see some intra-national, intra-Communist discussions/debate on strategy going.

Mao, possibly Lin Biao, and Lenin, and possibly Zinoviev, may find the concept of universal, omni-directional Communist offensives and revolutionary promotion the most appealing to them.

This "all of the above" strategy would include ChiCom heavy lifting and direction of its military assets and limited 1949 Soviet resident support to reconcentrate first back in Manchuria to fend off any Japanese attacks but then also to promptly switch over to the offensive across the Russian border, completely crushing the White and Interventionist forces on the Russian Siberian and Far Eastern mainland in tandem with 1919 Bolsheviks and taking prisoners as hostages or for indoctrination or labor. For the 1949 Chinese, they would split their Manchuria force, 30:70. 30% should be adequate to do the Russia support mission, the other 70% does a Korea infiltration/invasion mission and same for the Guangdong peninsula to drive the Japanese Army off the continent, destroy its combat units and remove that source of reinforcement and replacements for the intervention force in Russia.

This is to be followed, while guarding the coast and being ready to ready to any Japanese mobilization and invasions of the China coast, by a series of consecutive rapid assaults across the borders of Hong Kong, French Indochina, and Burma by the forces left in the south, and continued marching of the forces completing the occupation of Xinjiang into as yet non-Bolshevik controlled adjoining parts of Soviet Central Asia.

Taking advantage of this relief in the east, and with some 1949 transport and bomber or strafing capable aircraft possibly lent back with some uptime Soviet advisors, the Red Army in Europe under Trotsky should be able to accelerate its campaign to crush Denikin and Wrangel in southern Russia. Later on, it can shore up the borders in the Baltics, do Poland "right this time" and keep reaching into Germany. Advances to recover Russian land can continue as feasible in Central Asia, the Caucasus and toward Bessarabia.

Depending on the threats and invasions the Chinese have to fend off from the Japanese or other powers, like British and the ANZACs, they will be able to send more, or fewer troops outside China's borders to press the offensive in Southeast Asian mainland colonies, assisting in Central Asia, reclaiming Tibet, and infiltrating agitprop teams to destabilize India in the wake of the Amritsar massacre of 1919. The Chinese and Bolsheviks would also offer arms and aid to encourage Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan to restart the Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 in case he can be interested in doing it in order to increase his borders and influence into Pashtun lands. Simultaneous, strikes, local invasions and uprisings, combined with some wider passive resistance in India start to do the job the Communists want.

In any interventions in "feudal" countries, or colonies or semi-colonies, the Communists are extremely promiscuous in the choice of native allies. They'll ally with and encourage natives calling themselves Communists, but ally with local monarchs, tribes, and bourgeois nationalists of any kind, as long as they are fighting for independence against an imperial great power. Disrupting capitalists' imperial structure and crutches as much as possible is the objective here, how disorder resolves is tomorrow's problem, that doesn't require much specific investment of have many specific measures of success or failure beside down with imperialists.

Tactically this would be about mass, aggression, bluff, and deception, to create the impression limited forces are unlimited and could strike almost anywhere. The lack of western and Japanese long-range accurate bombing capability, or even high quantities of long-range reconnaissance aircraft, theoretically could inhibit imperialist forces' ability to avoid surprises at least in the wide Asian theaters.

This is all the most aggressive option. It is premised on the idea that the colonial world is in an upsurge of ferment, and that the European-British world is at a point of high vulnerability, exhausted from the great war, with increasingly class-conscious workers increasing unwilling to go into combat again for far off, or even near, capitalist imperialist interests. The strategy of universal pressure and forward advance would certainly face setbacks here or there inevitably, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and it keeps the initiative away from the reactionaries, and sets the future stage for the worker's states in Russia and China better the more resources, colonial (in Asia), or industrial, in Germany and Poland, can be denied to the capitalists.

It is also extremely risky, provocative, makes an enemy of all capitalist powers still standing, and could see them full remobilize to protect their colonial and industrial property and gather for a decisive assault into the depths of the Socialist homelands.

So, this is the most extreme strategy in the spectrum of the Communist "Overton Window"

At the other extreme, more conservative or cautious downtime people, like perhaps Stalin, possibly Bukharin, possibly, with relation to Poland and Germany, actually Trotsky, and uptime people, like the Great Patriotic War and purge scarred Soviet cadre in China, like Ambassador Roschin, and Stalin's emissary to Mao, Kovalev, and CCP pragmatist developmentalists like Ren Bishi, Deng Xiaoping, probably Liu Xiaoqi, maybe Zhou Enlai (though Zhou Enlai lacked core principles, and, like Talleyrand, could serve any master or policy line) may argue, using future history experience, for a far more narrow, concentrated, diplomatic approach.

The Soviet uptime contingent, scarred by near-death experience of the Nazi-German invasion, and Chinese pragmatists, scarred by the Japanese invasion, prioritize prevention of those invasions, plus internal development and self-strengthening of Russia and China above all else. Accordingly, they advocate a policy of persistent, repeated, diplomatic outreach to Britain and France above all, including a willingness renegotiate and eventually repay Tsarist and other debts, and to leave their colonies alone. As described previously, the Chinese (and uptime Russians), with western witnesses in tow, regale downtime British, French, Dutch, Australians, and Americans with tales of Japanese perfidy, treachery, brutality, aggression, and atrocity. Then they proceed to launch their anti-Japanese focused military campaign to drive Japanese forces from the Asian mainland, while fending off any Japanese counter-attacks. They mind their Ps and Qs in handling and ultimately releasing any PoWs of western nationality they end up capturing or detaining in this process. Some uptime Soviets regale their downtime Bolshevik counterparts with tales of German, specifically Nazi German, perfidy, treachery, brutality, aggression, and atrocity. Then, with western witnesses of appropriate nationality in tow, they do the same with British, French, Dutch and American interlocutors and maybe Italian and Polish too. They follow that by offering trade deals, debt renegotiation, and nonaggression pacts with Britain and France, trade with the USA, and in their war in Europe, limiting their territorial aims to basically restoring the old Tsarist border except for Galicia instead of Congress Poland, setting their western border at the Curzon line. And they don't do favorable trading deals with Weimar Germany or *any* cooperation with the German Reichswehr. Of course, over time the Communist powers would promote the principles of worker power and colonial independence, but their pushing of their ideas internationally could be more subtle and measured than it was in the historical twenties, and their strategic aims would be strengthening and industrializing at home, keeping Germany defanged in Europe as much as possible, Japan defanged as a land power in Asia, and the USA comfortable as interested only in the Americas, with just Britain and France and Japan as their engaged great power interlocutors in the Eurasian-African rimlands.

 

[raharris1973]

If the Chinese, through the reactions of others (western and Japanese), or their own exuberant decisions do basically "take on the world" in 1920, they can help the Soviet cause a bit in Europe/Poland eventually, and the western fringe areas around Russia, but they can probably do the most, the fastest, on mainland Asia, in anti-colonial coalition activity. They would mobilize bitter Japanese and western resentment and counterattacks, but the westerners in particular are also at the grassroots level, just.....not......in......the mood, for protracted war. If fighting colonial powers extensively the Chinese would do best with fast attacks destroying colonial garrison units and using captured western PoWs as hostages and propaganda pieces. Manchurian Candidate brainwashing should work at least as well in creating demoralizing spectacles as in the Korean War era. And in dealing with colonial areas, peoples and elites, the best approach is casting a wide political net and opening to a broad, *bourgeois-inclusive* coalition opposing the western forces just to multiply the imperialists' difficulties and deny them bases.

The tricky thing for the Communist side, especially the Chinese, is that it is the Japanese, based nearby to them, who probably have the most "fight" left within them and national will for protracted war, because they were not really bloodied and jaded by WWI. The Europeans, and the British in particular, have more economic/industrial heft to supply anti-communist campaigns, but lower morale. The Americans are not as bloodied and could have morale reserves and endless material reserves, but you need to convince them the cause is worth it. They have their international trade interests possibly motivating them to get and stay involved in Eurasia in an anti-Communist way, and they could profiteer and send resources, but if you leave the Philippines alone, let their businesses do purchases, and leave their missionaries alone, the will for big expeditions just may not have much staying power. The structure of this situation might be that the Japanese sort of become the all-purpose hired mercenaries of British and American capitalism in the Indo-Pacific region, doing the dirty security jobs the white guys are less interested in doing, and they'll be damn sure to get their own cut out of this, chafe at being hirelings, and work to improve their status and autonomy among capitalist/imperialists, or risk having an internal revolution themselves..


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This portrays the Japanese as the most determined/deadliest threat to the ISOT'ed China. And viscerally, emotionally, it would be easy for Communist China to feel this way. Japan contributing the largest foreign contingent to the Russian Civil War, Far Eastern Front, intervention, aside from the the Czechs perhaps, in 1919, could add to that feeling.

It could create a temptation for the Communist Chinese to use diplomatic skills, and "news from the future", ie knowledge of future history, to sow divisions among Japan, America, and Britain, to prevent a coalition. The first instinctive approach might be to badmouth the Japanese to the western powers, with tales (and film and documentary evidence, and Americans and Brits in China who can corroborate) of the treacherous Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese raids as far as Darwin and Sydney Harbor, and brutal Japanese atrocities across Asia and to western PoWs and civilian internees. Smooth-talking Zhou Enlai would be quite competent to lead such an effort if he can get in touch with the right western VIPs and journalists.

Of course, the Communists could also use a counter-intuitive approach to try to peel off the priority, nearer, more determined, possibly more dangerous Japanese threat, at the expense of the image of western countries.

Zhou Enlai and other comrades can offer to speak to Japanese Zaibatsu businessmen, diplomats, Diet members, Imperial Privy Council members and military officers and describe future history and show dramatic film footage to demonstrate a couple things. Japan tries a a conquest of China, but it ultimately will fail, just costing both countries lots of lives and treasure. Further, this China war will bring Japan into a war with the white powers, that Japan will lose badly, its commerce blockaded, fleets naval and commercial sunk, cities burned, and two cities obliterated by the most terrible weapon ever, the country occupied by American soldiers who then go raping Japanese women with impunity and have Japanese authorities providing brothels for occupation troops, overseas Japanese expelled from the empire, killed or held for slave labor in Siberia, and south Karafuto/Sakhalin and the Kuriles de-Japanized and repopulated with white Soviets.

This could show senior military genro like the esteemed Yamagata Aritomo that an invasion of China, and Japan trying to boss around China from a superior position, far from uniting the Orient under Japanese leadership as hoped and planned for under Imperial ideology as articulated by him and others, to stand up to inevitably hostile white powers, instead divided the two great Eastern nations against each other, to their great cost, leading to the ultimate white partition of Asia, and the first defeat, surrender, and foreign occupation of Japan’s history. And then Zhou can offer the alternative of Sino-Japanese cooperation as equals and self strengthening against the white powers, or even common action against them. After all, the 1919 Japanese will already have seen the racial equality clause rejected at Versailles by this time. They can hand Japanese people books, written in Japanese, complaining about the unequal terms of the Washington Naval Treaties imposed on Japan, how the western powers pressed Japan out of Shandong by 1922 as part of the Washington Conference, how Britain ditched its alliance with Japan, and how, in the same year Japan became western style liberal democracy with universal suffrage, 1925, the USA slapped Japan in the face by replacing the old “Gentleman’s Agreement” limiting labor immigration with an outright ban on Japanese immigration, and a refusal to treat Japanese with the same quota system used on even minor Europeans like Greeks and Bulgarians and Albanians. As an extra spice they can add the 1931 Hays film code, forbidding portrayal of Asian-white romantic relationships, which killed the career of Sessue Hayakawa, still a millionaire Hollywood star and heart-throb, the "Japanese Valentino," in 1919. The Chinese could produce defected Japanese collaborator personal testimony, along with film, recorded and printed material to substantiate all this.

.....and obviously, there is "dirt" on Japan and the world situation to give to the Americans to discourage a near-term anti-communist coalition between them and the Japanese:

Basic details about the 'next' 30 years would potentially have a massive influence on public opinion. For instance how does news of the 3rd Reich affecting feeling among its neighbours about Germany? Or how does the US react to news about the depression and then Pearl Harbour and the brutality of the war in the Pacific.”

Talking to Americans, diplomats and journalists alike, about Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, and the overall brutality of the Pacific War.

The obvious aim here would be to incite anti-Japanese feeling and suspicion. And to 1920 American minds, already with misgivings about involvement in the late war, the peace treaty, and wartime allies, news of a second global war in only two decades, with much higher American losses, won’t inspire preparedness and coalition building as much as revulsion and deeper isolationism.

Zhou Enlai could produce from among 1949 American missionaries, businessmen, diplomats in China people who can corroborate his factual outlining of WWII in Europe and the Pacific, Japanese brutality, rampant KMT corruption, Communist success at winning popular and political support to add credibility.

There could even be a tailored spin campaign to render the British (and French) more wary of their current AND possibly future Allies AND Enemies that are noncommunist. pointing out how few Brits (or French) actually died at the hands of Communists over the next thirty yeas compared to others:

The Communist Chinese could provide evidence of the doom of the British/Allied anti-Bolshevik intervention, America’s complete retreat to isolationism and unreliability in the interwar, its pressure to make Britain drop the Japan alliance, pressure on Irish issues, damage to the whiskey industry through prohibition, stubbornness on loan repayment, and then later bad news of the rise of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Militarist Japan, humiliating clashes in China over concessions, and then Japan’s rapid invasion and conquest of British colonies up to India and it’s atrocities to PoWs and civil internees, all kicking Britain while it was down fighting Germany for life. And it can point out how while the Americans came to help, they came late, offering nothing for free, and making sure Britain transferred its last financial reserves to them, nagged them constantly about colonial affairs, strutted around their homeland and Dominions “overpaid, oversexed and over here”, stole their best weapons research, and left Britain having to give up independence to India and Jewish terrorists in Palestine while *still* having rationing at home four years after the end of the war. They could find Brits in the country to substantiate the factual account, along with English language material by British authors, along with sympathetic British observers in China who would also attest to the efficiency, practicality, popularity and lack of corruption in Communist rural administration, like Dr. Michael Lindsay. (The dark corners of Communist rule, like punishment areas for wavering Party members and class enemies, had been carefully hidden from many firsthand western observers’ view before full PRC takeover)

Plenty of potential for diplomatic, divide and conquer, and psywar approaches as substitutes for, or supplements to, blunt force.