AHC: Republic of China (Szechwan)

[Admiral Matt]

Through the hardest parts of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the core power center of the Nationalist regime remained in the valley of Sichuan. Regardless of Japan's overwhelming advantages in other areas, geographically the province was simply impossible to reach. With Chiang Kai-shek's (Jiang Jieshi's to use the modern Mandarin pronunciation) stronger military formations available to defend it, the region was a remote and impenetrable fortress. Japan could do no more against it than to launch long-range bombing raids, which probably explains why Chongqing ended up the most bombed city in WWII.

Years later, during the Chinese Civil War, the Nationalists were at first successful in defending the place. They held on until basically the whole country was in Communist hands. It took until December of 1949 before Sichuan fell, along with Guizhou and Yunnan in a parallel offensive. The only significant change after that was the fall of Hainan.

Now there are obviously a dozen good reasons why Sichuan could resist the Japanese but not the Communists in OTL. But equally obvious is that in OTL's Chinese Civil War, if any part of the mainland could possibly have held out, it was Sichuan.

So that's the challenge: With PODs post-dating July 7, 1937, arrange for the Republic of China to retain control of Sichuan for an extended period (no need to go crazy with any "until the modern day" nonsense) after the rest of China has become part of an entity calling itself the Peoples Republic of China. Let us assume that the PRC comes into being in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

And of course feel free to speculate about the consequences thereof, although it's getting ahead of ourselves. Forgotten Tibet?

 

[Blackfox5]

There would need to be substantial changes. This area was advantageous to China during the Sino-Japanese War because the Japanese had long supply lines and limited forces. They were at the edge of keeping their forces in the field. That won't apply to Mao who has huge numbers and local supply. Mao can much easier use central China as a supply base than the Japanese could.

This strategy is basically saying that the Nationalists could hold up in the mountains and fend off the Communists for quite some time. (So this is much more than just Sichuan, about most of the mountainous west). To do that the Nationalists need to have saved a large number of their forces, especially the highly trained and well equipped forces by the Americans in WWII. The Communists need to have lost a lot more of their troops. The Sichuan area would need to be doing well economically, and there would need to be strong infrastructure to allow Western support and supplies go into them. In contrast, the Communist held areas will have need to be severely harmed and not able to support a Communist offensive.

So we are looking at a very different civil war. The Nationalists will have done much better - yet not so good that they could win the war outright or at least stop the Communists at the Great Wall, Yellow River, or Yangtze River. This is hard knife's edge to balance.

The only thing I can think of is that Chiang's best troops in Manchuria were able to break out in late 1947 or 1948 instead of being isolated and wiped out. The loss of Manchuria hurts, but the Nationalists still have many of their best troops. The Communist offensives in late 1948 and early 1949 still happen (perhaps at a later year), but they lose many more forces. Chiang believes central and eastern China will be loss and once again moves as much as he can into the west - not just Sichuan, but also Yunnan. Mao manages to take the east and even the central portion, but his forces are exhausted by that point and much of China under his control has been destroyed by retreating Nationalist forces. Mao is forced to call a halt while he rebuilds his forces while the Nationalists finally begin to receive American aid. With a stable frontline now, and realizing his mistakes in domestic policy, Chiang implements many of the reforms he instituted in Taiwan IOTL in the portion of the mainland he controls.

The Nationalists' major problem is that they've lost the major population centers and rice bowls. Sichuan is one major area, but only one, and it's been depleted because of the war against the Japanese.

Something that might help this scenario is if China did better in the war against Japan so that this area of China suffered less. Maybe the Japanese didn't take Wuhan until one or more years after 1938. Or that the Burma Road was never closed, and the Chinese received lots of Lend Lease that built up the Sichuan and other western areas. Then in late 1944 or 1945, the Nationalists retook much of the east, but the Japanese did a slash and burn retreat devastating much of eastern and northern China, rendering it rather useless for the future. If so, then Chiang could make the determination that holding back to the territory he controlled before the end of the war makes much sense. He still likely tries to evacuate as much material and people he can.

 

[Admiral Matt]

Well we may not be able to use all of that, but I'm certain we could use some of it!

Ironically, the first time I tried to game out this scenario, I took a very different route. Rather than posit the Nationalists and Sichuan did much better during the war, I took up the cause of the Communists. Suppose a major warlord defected to the Communists around the time of the Japanese surrender. If the Nationalist position were much more risky to begin with, one could imagine them being more cautious about leaving their "base" under-defended. If that warlord were in Shaanxi, say, a few high passes away from Chengdu, we could be fairly certain that some of Chiang's best troops remain in the mountains. When the Communist cause surged, this could make a dramatic difference.

You make a good point that it would be unlikely to be Sichuan alone. Survival would be much more plausible if the could be supplied through Yunnan. And offensives are going to go through Guizhou, so perhaps it makes sense to consider that as well.

But man does not live by bread alone, and there are probably easier alternatives to a brutal slog of men and economies. Purported "delays" and quirks of politics can and have given temporary life to unviable states in the past. We just need it to happen again.

Hrm.... I think I may have it.