Recent content by LeX

It probably wouldnt matter that much. But the Russians losing kept Manchuria out of the Russian empire. It might not become a Chinese territory by modern times if the tsars had been able to hold it after 1905. IOTL 20th century, around 50 million Chinese moved from China proper to Manchuria...

The main guy in the Chinese army after Chiang seemed to be He Yingqin. Probably him and a vaguely pro-Japan junta would take over, while the KMT in general would lose cohesion as the pro-communist elements leave to join the CCP and the warlord elements exercise even more autonomy than they did...

Somewhat unrelated but what if the situation is like the United Kingdom still exists by virtue of the royal family escaping overseas, with Socialist Britain just running the main island? Kind of like Taiwan and mainland China except the "Taiwan" in this case encompasses a vast number of...

It seems to me that the North Koreans, having experienced severe bombing just a few years before, would have contingencies in place to continue governance (if only via martial law) in the event of nuclear strike. Assuming the DPRK is still a thing, I would expect the Korean war to restart...

Semi-jokingly, I can see future historians ITTL dividing the PRC into the 北共 (Northern ChiCom) and 南共 (Southern ChiCom) periods.

I had a look at the SIOP 1959 targets for China and other places. Moscow has 3 full pages of targets. Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou each have 10-25 targets. But what surprised me was that even rather unremarkable small cities like Sipingjie (in Manchuria, which would be completely destroyed as far...

There are good reasons why a PRC-Nazi friendship might be impossible but I really don't think the CCP would let the Reich's mass killings get in the way if it felt a partnership was desirable. I can see the Americans still falling out with the PRC over some issue shortly after the "new China"...

This is not as implausible as it seems at first glance. The CCP mostly won on their own and while the OTL Soviet invasion of Manchuria boosted them significantly, the Nationalists' fragmentation and incompetence could have easily provided Mao another avenue to victory at some point in the 1940s...

I think you would need to have Russia in the Union for the USSR to work. The Central Asian republics would only want to stay if they could continue getting financial and material support from the rest of the Union, i.e. Russia.

The USSR had somewhere over 200 million people in 1960. 150 million die in the bombings and another 40 million die in the weeks thereafter. There are 10-20 million people left by TTL mid-1962. Applying a similar logic to China there are only 60-100 million people in the (likely former) PRC...

Rather than surrendering, nuclear bombs might have gotten the Germans to use chemical and biological weapons against the Allies in response, which would in turn cause Germany to be hit with such weapons in kind. If Hitler and his circle know they are going down, they will try to take as many as...

Rough possible background timeline for events 1927-1933: The CCP is more swiftly weakened in the extermination campaigns of the 1930s. Mao and/or other key leaders are killed or captured while the rest of the communists try to escape north. 1930-1934: Chiang Kai-shek is ousted or sidelined...

How old is the Vietminh? Were they like the CCP, i.e. always communist since like 1920, or was there a gradual evolution of its ideology/political platform? EDIT: Note the OP is talking about the KMT destroying the CCP in the 1930s so we have at least back to then as the point of departure...

I think it's very hard because you have to fix a lot of Nationalist China's massive prewar problems, but assuming that they get their game in order, you can avoid a bunch of the conditions obtaining in OTL 1945. Stuff like: -- No North Korea due to changes in the overall China front leading to...

Assuming WW2/the conflict with the communists goes VERY well for the KMT prior to the Japanese capitulation, I can see them maybe sending troops to Korea and Indochina to accept the local surrender ceremonies, and those countries could end up in the Nationalist Chinese sphere of influence by...