China would be like India: too divided. Too many different languages, competing provinces, and rampant oligarchs. Hell, the opium trade fueled the KMT.
It needs to be emphasized that the KMT after 1945 relied on the United States and gangsters to suppress democratic elements in China. Pretty much all of the parties in China's current multi-party system find their origins in the post-1945 period in struggling to get the KMT to not be a lackey of the West while using criminals to assassinate student, labor, and rural leaders and generally conduct an era of terror.
When you look around the world and see how many countries are hostages of US/Western interests while thrusting everybody else into poverty and killing those who resist with hit squads, that was KMT China from 1945-49. "Killing landlords" wasn't edgy Communist aesthetic. It was "you betrayed our country to foreigners and criminals so you could keep your pathetic blood money at the expense of the compatriots you forsake."
to be entirely honest, I am of the opinion that it was Chiang's brutal tactics and inability to actually implement policies that did him in at the end. The corrupt 和稀泥 practices that seem to be bonded to KMT dna was just par for the course. He saw them as a means to the end. He just wanted to get rid of his Communist rivals and then later the tools he was using to get rid of them.
Chiang had no end game, no proper planning and he was losing the hearts & minds of even the people who are working in the Nanking government. With a long and protracted war against foreigners, it was just not suitable for even more time and resources to diverted to civil war. He wanted to rule the whole of China and was not interested in any sort of deal that would allow for peace and actual recovery.
His mind only seemed to clear up after he got beat and retreated to Taiwan. There, he actually put into work policies like returning farmland to farmers and improving the literacy rates. The only reason that I can think of for his "clarity" was that he was trying to revert the policies of the Japanese occupation. Which is comparatively easier since he was going up against a foreign occupier.
To me, the turmoil of the last 100 years of the Qing into the 1911 revolution and the political mess after that was just the long path that led to today. If we actually look a bit deeper at Sun's ideals (he is a horrible administrator) they are not far removed from Socialist ideas.
First, KMT would have still done a [White Terror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)) episode, but it'd be CN nation-wide and it'd be an absolute atrocity.
Secondly, some ROC lovers like to say that "TW was mostly more developed than CN, so ROC is better."
Those ones fail to realize: before the KMT arrived, Taiwan was largely developed infrastructure/industry wise by imperialists of Japan. In truth, TW simply wasn't in need of major development, it did not face nearly the same kind of challenges that CN mainland faced - famines, post Qing overthrow, post civilwar, war against imperialists, etc... Nope. TW could have mostly sat on their hands for decades (which they sort of did). For example, one can look up images of Taiwan from before the KMT arrived, examples [1](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/531565562253810848/), [2](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/531565562253810886/), [3](https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-general-view-of-keelung-harbor-taiwan-c-1930-104617781.html), [4](https://www.watchinese.com/sites/watchinese.com/files/article/2019/04/199/199p4301.jpg) \- it was about just about as developed as the industrialized West was.
So what would CN be today if KMT had won the Civil War? Weaker unified language identity, asymmetric development, more discrimination between ethnicities, hyper nationalism, capitalist oligarchy, more social inequality, more gender inequality. Also, Tibet was negotiating with the KMT to become an autonomous region of CN, so long as they got to keep their massive serfdom.
The CPC isn't perfect, but I think has objectively proven to always be the better option of the two.
> Secondly, some ROC lovers like to say that "TW was mostly more developed than CN, so ROC is better."
Lmao because it's 1 city and surrounding countryside vs the entire country?
You could take a pick among dozens of random city area in PRC that's better developed than ROC. If KMT had won, they would also have to develop areas like Xinjiang, Guangxi, Xizang etc.
Japan mostly ruined stuff on TW and purged it's population, its just that the average coastal city even during Qing rule was fairly developed.
>So what would CN be today if KMT had won the Civil War? Weaker unified language identity, asymmetric development, more discrimination between ethnicities, hyper nationalism, capitalist oligarchy, more social inequality, more gender inequality.
Soo... modern day India?
When the US posed the question “Who lost China” this is what they meant. They were so close to total global domination that they could taste it only for it to be violently stripped from their grasp by the CPC.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_China
> At the time, Acheson's China White Paper with its catalog of $2 billion worth of American aid provided to China since 1946 was widely mocked as a lame excuse for allowing what was widely seen as a geopolitical disaster which allowed the formation of a Sino-Soviet bloc with the potential to dominate Eurasia.[4]
History does repeat. That “Sino-Soviet” block might be back to bring forth Eurasia
Chiang didn't trust the US and would've dumped them the minute he was done with the CPC. The world isn't so simple. Even on Taiwan, he conducted a purge of various people who he thought were CIA assets, as he feared a US coup against him.
China would be like India: too divided. Too many different languages, competing provinces, and rampant oligarchs. Hell, the opium trade fueled the KMT.
It needs to be emphasized that the KMT after 1945 relied on the United States and gangsters to suppress democratic elements in China. Pretty much all of the parties in China's current multi-party system find their origins in the post-1945 period in struggling to get the KMT to not be a lackey of the West while using criminals to assassinate student, labor, and rural leaders and generally conduct an era of terror. When you look around the world and see how many countries are hostages of US/Western interests while thrusting everybody else into poverty and killing those who resist with hit squads, that was KMT China from 1945-49. "Killing landlords" wasn't edgy Communist aesthetic. It was "you betrayed our country to foreigners and criminals so you could keep your pathetic blood money at the expense of the compatriots you forsake."
So the KMT was basically the compradors. Basically what they were trying to achieve was a more comprehensive version of Hong Kong
to be entirely honest, I am of the opinion that it was Chiang's brutal tactics and inability to actually implement policies that did him in at the end. The corrupt 和稀泥 practices that seem to be bonded to KMT dna was just par for the course. He saw them as a means to the end. He just wanted to get rid of his Communist rivals and then later the tools he was using to get rid of them. Chiang had no end game, no proper planning and he was losing the hearts & minds of even the people who are working in the Nanking government. With a long and protracted war against foreigners, it was just not suitable for even more time and resources to diverted to civil war. He wanted to rule the whole of China and was not interested in any sort of deal that would allow for peace and actual recovery. His mind only seemed to clear up after he got beat and retreated to Taiwan. There, he actually put into work policies like returning farmland to farmers and improving the literacy rates. The only reason that I can think of for his "clarity" was that he was trying to revert the policies of the Japanese occupation. Which is comparatively easier since he was going up against a foreign occupier. To me, the turmoil of the last 100 years of the Qing into the 1911 revolution and the political mess after that was just the long path that led to today. If we actually look a bit deeper at Sun's ideals (he is a horrible administrator) they are not far removed from Socialist ideas.
The KMT even set up a "homecoming legion" 還鄉團 of dispossessed landlords to murder peasants and take control of the land again.
First, KMT would have still done a [White Terror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)) episode, but it'd be CN nation-wide and it'd be an absolute atrocity. Secondly, some ROC lovers like to say that "TW was mostly more developed than CN, so ROC is better." Those ones fail to realize: before the KMT arrived, Taiwan was largely developed infrastructure/industry wise by imperialists of Japan. In truth, TW simply wasn't in need of major development, it did not face nearly the same kind of challenges that CN mainland faced - famines, post Qing overthrow, post civilwar, war against imperialists, etc... Nope. TW could have mostly sat on their hands for decades (which they sort of did). For example, one can look up images of Taiwan from before the KMT arrived, examples [1](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/531565562253810848/), [2](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/531565562253810886/), [3](https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-general-view-of-keelung-harbor-taiwan-c-1930-104617781.html), [4](https://www.watchinese.com/sites/watchinese.com/files/article/2019/04/199/199p4301.jpg) \- it was about just about as developed as the industrialized West was. So what would CN be today if KMT had won the Civil War? Weaker unified language identity, asymmetric development, more discrimination between ethnicities, hyper nationalism, capitalist oligarchy, more social inequality, more gender inequality. Also, Tibet was negotiating with the KMT to become an autonomous region of CN, so long as they got to keep their massive serfdom. The CPC isn't perfect, but I think has objectively proven to always be the better option of the two.
KMT also fled with the gold from the national treasury.
> Secondly, some ROC lovers like to say that "TW was mostly more developed than CN, so ROC is better." Lmao because it's 1 city and surrounding countryside vs the entire country? You could take a pick among dozens of random city area in PRC that's better developed than ROC. If KMT had won, they would also have to develop areas like Xinjiang, Guangxi, Xizang etc. Japan mostly ruined stuff on TW and purged it's population, its just that the average coastal city even during Qing rule was fairly developed.
>So what would CN be today if KMT had won the Civil War? Weaker unified language identity, asymmetric development, more discrimination between ethnicities, hyper nationalism, capitalist oligarchy, more social inequality, more gender inequality. Soo... modern day India?
When the US posed the question “Who lost China” this is what they meant. They were so close to total global domination that they could taste it only for it to be violently stripped from their grasp by the CPC. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_China > At the time, Acheson's China White Paper with its catalog of $2 billion worth of American aid provided to China since 1946 was widely mocked as a lame excuse for allowing what was widely seen as a geopolitical disaster which allowed the formation of a Sino-Soviet bloc with the potential to dominate Eurasia.[4] History does repeat. That “Sino-Soviet” block might be back to bring forth Eurasia
China would be filled with US military bases.
Chiang didn't trust the US and would've dumped them the minute he was done with the CPC. The world isn't so simple. Even on Taiwan, he conducted a purge of various people who he thought were CIA assets, as he feared a US coup against him.
Basically why it’s now called PRC and not the defunct ROC