What if the Nationalists won the Chinese Civil War?

[Saiwania]

I think they really lost any chance at winning when they opened the dyke at the Yellow River.

It was for the Chinese people's benefit. The alternative would've been to let the rampaging Japanese military's advance continue unopposed and have them kill and abuse the Chinese they came across, like was the case in Nanjing. If it took a flooding to stop the Japanese advance in that area, I don't see how it is much different from when the Soviet Union for example, used scorched earth on a massive scale, to stretch out and weaken Nazi Germany's advance towards Moscow and the Caucasus.

[Aureumterra]

I don't know about that. China currently is not a bastion of equality, but either way, the Nationalists would have been a better government than the communists, and there would have been the possibility of democracy.

It will definitely be richer than India..more like a large or a lot of Taiwans.

There were elections in China back in 1912.

How would China be richer than India? Unlike RoK and Japan, China would still have vast swaths of extreme poverty, similar to what it has today. China today still isn’t as wealthy as Japan and RoK GDP per capita-wise

[Kubra]

I think they really lost any chance at winning when they opened the dyke at the Yellow River.

It was for the Chinese people's benefit. The alternative would've been to let the rampaging Japanese military's advance continue unopposed and have them kill and abuse the Chinese they came across, like was the case in Nanjing. If it took a flooding to stop the Japanese advance in that area, I don't see how it is much different from when the Soviet Union for example, used scorched earth on a massive scale, to stretch out and weaken Nazi Germany's advance towards Moscow and the Caucasus.

Yeah, tell that to the chinese peasants. They seemed to prefer the side that did not air any intentions of blowing up any dams.

the soviets dismantled infrastructure in their retreat, not people.

[Tristian]

Assuming they get their act together and form a functioning central government (no more local warlords) then I imagine China being far more prosperous than it is today with a much higher standard of living. The human rights situation might be a bit bumpy, but probably nowhere near as bad of Communist China. The mass starvations of the 1960s and 1970s don't happen,Tibet might still be a free independent country, and North Korea wouldn't even exist anymore. It was the Chinese intervention that saved it in the Korean War and Soviets didn't even care enough to get more than marginally involved.

[Esheaun Stroakuss]

Probably would have been a dictatorship, anyway. It seemed that whoever won the Civil War, the Chinese people would lose.

[Duhon]

Chiang was an authoritarian who went ultra hard on the Taiwanese after securing the island as a refuge for the Kuomintang; it is hard to believe that he wouldn't rule with an iron fist after a hypothetical vanquishing of Mao's Communists. So what happens after Chiang becomes important.

[Nakena]

What if the Communists Lost the Chinese Civil War?

This is a very good video on the matter. Basically he says that even if the KMT won, things wouldn be all good.

[Ostroeuropa]

I'm not sure it would be all that different really. The assumption that they'd be somehow western ignores that the examples where this occurred; South Korea and Japan, did so only after western military intervention and their prolonged reliance on western support, good will, and trade.

The idea that China would somehow be less authoritarian if they were democratic strikes me as fairly naive and misses the obvious examples to the contrary like Russia and Singapore and so on.

It's even possible that South Korea and Japan would be less reliant on the west in this scenario and retain more of their pre-western political characteristics, though not likely imo in the case of Japan, for Korea that is certainly possible.

I think we'd see a China similar to todays China, without the intervening attempts at communism. Todays china is in some sense Chinas natural form, something it has sunk back into as a result of attempting communism having failed.

I think that's mostly a result of historical discourse, culture, and so on. This is why Russia is still authoritarian despite now being democratic and capitalist, and it's why an American socialism or a British socialism would have different characteristics, and may well preserve the same pathologies of the capitalist system in some regards.

[Duhon]

Russia is hardly a democracy in all but the technical sense, now

[Ostroeuropa]

Russia is hardly a democracy in all but the technical sense, now

Right, and I don't particularly see why China would be different in that regard, especially in a scenario where they have just put down an uprising. I think that's where oligarchs would take control of the democratic process.

[Aureumterra]

What if the Communists Lost the Chinese Civil War?

This is a very good video on the matter. Basically he says that even if the KMT won, things wouldn be all good.

I haven’t even clicked the link yet, but if this is AlternateHistoryHub or CGP Grey, the I wont even bother. Both of them are good with European history, but nearly all of their videos on Asian history are poorly researched/unrealistic

[Nakena]

What if the Communists Lost the Chinese Civil War?

This is a very good video on the matter. Basically he says that even if the KMT won, things wouldn be all good.

I haven’t even clicked the link yet, but if this is AlternateHistoryHub or CGP Grey, the I wont even bother. Both of them are good with European history, but nearly all of their videos on Asian history are poorly researched/unrealistic

It's Cody's alternate history hub. One of the very few YouTube channels I would ever be unironically shilling for. (the other one being Isaac Arthur atm) I am not saying that he's beyond any criticism however. But I just like the guy. This aint his strongest video though to be honest.