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Divided China after World War II

Looking back at this thread of mine, remember Chen Cheng was a reformer. He would have implemented reforms that would have made the KMT more popular.

Chen Cheng spent most of the Civil War helping lose it, KMT in Taiwan after losing the war is a completely different proposition to KMT on the mainland during/after winning it, and there's no indication that Jiang was prepared to fuck his landlord base like that.

The CCP-in-Manchuria scenario is one that none of the parties involved are really willing to allow happen.
 
Chen Cheng spent most of the Civil War helping lose it, KMT in Taiwan after losing the war is a completely different proposition to KMT on the mainland during/after winning it, and there's no indication that Jiang was prepared to fuck his landlord base like that.

The CCP-in-Manchuria scenario is one that none of the parties involved are really willing to allow happen.

First, Chen Cheng failed in Manchuria but that was a region where there were several problems hindering the Kuomintang.
Second, in this scenario, Chiang is killed in Burma in 1942.
Third, the US told Chiang to give up on Manchuria and implement reforms.
 
Would killing off Mao and some of the CCP leadership have any effect? Say the CCP ends the war weaker than OTL, and only survives in Manchuria because the USSR threatens to intervene?
 
Did Chen Jiongming's vision of a federalized China really have any cachet or is it something that only exists on Wikipedia and in Kaiserreich?

Alternatively, what would be interesting if the Beiyang Republic had survived under the rule of one of the historical warlord cliques, such as Zhang Zhuolin's Fengtian Clique.

I also once wrote all this based on questionable historiography:

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Besides the Nationalists and Communists, were there any other groups in the running who could've not only established political and military power to contest those two, but also ideological legitimacy and support?

I don't want to be too influenced by the Kaiserreich China rework (though I am), but the ones that come to mind are

  1. Chen Jiongming and his Federalist conception of a United States of China; the Public Interest Party
  2. Liang Qichao's constitutional monarchist ideals which included possibly replacing Qing with the descendant of Confucius, Duke Yansheng; the Progressive Party
  3. Kang Youwei, another monarchist reformer who wanted the Qing or a Ming descent, but also creator of the proto-communist Great Unity, whose Society to Protect the Emperor ended up merging into Liang's Progressive Party
  4. the actual Royalist Party of Qing/Manchu loyalists, which I'm gonna declare defunct by 1917, on account of Zhang Xun's restoration attempt failing badly
  5. Feng Yuxiang's Christian Socialism with Chinese characteristics
  6. a bunch of smaller democratic parties (including the post-Progressive parties) who attempted to be a third way between the KMT and CPC and just weren't popular or violent enough to get ahead:
Minus Liang, several members in 1927 created the Democratic Constitutionalist Party (民主憲政黨) but they were based in the United States so they had very little influence in Chinese politics. Within China, Carsun Chang started the 1931 National Renaissance Society (再生社) which was succeeded by the 1932 China National Socialist Party (中國國家社會黨) which mixed Liang's reformism with Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People. They were upset that Chiang Kai-shek's rule was a personalistic dictatorship and that the Nationalists had ignored their democratic principles. Opposing both the Nationalists and the Communist Party of China, they aimed to be the third force in Chinese politics so they created an umbrella group of small democratic parties called the China Democratic League (中國民主同盟). The CDL pushed for the long delayed constitution and reconciliation between the Communists and Nationalists especially after the New Fourth Army Incident.

When the CDL became increasingly pro-Communist, the National Socialists withdrew and merged with the Democratic Constitutionalists on 15 August 1946 to form the China Democratic Socialist Party (中國民主社會黨). They fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War and along with the Nationalists and the Chinese Youth Party (中國青年黨), were the only legal parties for decades. In Taiwan, they offered the same soft criticisms they have been giving since their earliest incarnations. The Democratic Socialists lost all their seats in the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly after free and fair elections began in the 1980s. Within the People's Republic of China, the China Democratic League continues to exist as part of the United Front.

Okay, given how some of these guys alternatively became puppet opposition parties in both China and in Taiwan, they're probably all hopelessly unfeasible. That said,

7. Carsun Chang/Zhang Junmai "supported German-style social democracy while opposing capitalism, communism, and guild socialism" sounds distinct enough to be considered, though probably not compelling or violent enough to base an entire military faction around. Though perhaps they would have had a chance with foreign backing. To bridge this mess of names, I dub them the Chinese Democratic Nationalist League to bridge the CNSP, CDSP, and CDL mishmash of names.

Anyone else? I'm just really imagining an alternate Chinese Civil War where Chen systemizes his ideas and federalists take over Beiyang fighting against Liang's constitutional monarchists while Feng and Zhang try to make their own plays. I also don't know how either Zhang Zuolin or Zhang Xueliang fit into this.

Edit: well, well, well

Initially called the China National Youth Corps, the YCP acquired its current name during its fourth national convention in September 1929. During the Northern Expedition, the party supported the northern warlords because they opposed the Communists within the First United Front. After the anti-communist purge, they still resisted the KMT because of its one-party state.

The party was banned after the Nationalists came to power in 1928 and the YCP refused Chiang Kai-shek's offer to merge the two parties. The Nationalists denounced them as a warlord party due to their early failed attempts to recruit Wu Peifu and their opposition to the Northern Expedition. The Communists called them fascists because their leaders had ties to a French fascist and their strident anti-communism. The YCP considered itself to be a conservative parliamentary democratic party.

They were based in Manchuria under the protection of Zhang Xueliang. After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the YCP called for an immediate declaration of war, in contrast with the Nationalist government's resistance to a formal war declaration and initiating hostilities. The YCP joined the anti-Japanese United Front in 1937 to support the national government. After the initiation of the full-scale war, the YCP cooperated closely with the Kuomintang (KMT) in fighting Japanese military aggression. It joined the China Democratic League, an umbrella group of small democratic parties. In the early years of the war, the Youth Party became the third largest party, after the GMD and the CCP, yet one informed historian called the party organization "extremely weak." The members were either personal friends of Zhang Junmai, many of whom had been followers of Liang Qichao, or his former students.

Leaving aside their good terms with Zhang Junmai, perhaps they could be the Fengtian Zhangs' party! So either scrap the CDL altogether, or at least have the YCP remain separate from it, in opposition to Zhang Junmai's third way social democrats, as well against both the KMT/CCP/Chen federalists/constitutional monarchists/whomever else is out there.
 
I've always been interested in a situation where the Qing collapse earlier- in 1895 or after the Peking Legations get stormed and the Great Powers retaliate- and the British act on the Francis Bertie memorandum of the 1890s and switch to backing a Han dynasty on the Yangtze, on the assumption that Russia and Japan would try to carve up northern China.
 
I wonder how a 1895 Russo-Japanese War would have gone. I’d assume Russia would be in a stronger position, although maybe this scenario would involve Chinese proxies.

I've always been interested in a situation where the Qing collapse earlier- in 1895 or after the Peking Legations get stormed and the Great Powers retaliate- and the British act on the Francis Bertie memorandum of the 1890s and switch to backing a Han dynasty on the Yangtze, on the assumption that Russia and Japan would try to carve up northern China.
 
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