Communist Taiwan?

[westvirginiarebel]

WI the nationalists had been successfully pushed out of the territory claimed by Red China altogether, where might they have gone to set up a government in exile?

[huojin]

I think crucially you need to look at the wider implications. Most nations anticipated a CPC victory in China by 1949, with Chiang retreating to Taiwan. Hainan fell surprisingly easily considering the effort put into its defence, and the capture of a large number of symbolic islands all along the coastline due to the lack of support from nearby bases left most of their territory along the coast captured. Perhaps the only significant victory the ROC scored at this point was the Battle of Kinmen, which prevented the CPC advancing on Taiwan.

If you want to suppose we've already reached this point, you have to consider why it suddenly became important in 1950 that Taiwan not fall - the Korean War. So it depends on how much you want to fiddle with what happened there, since the threat of communism overrunning Asia there caused the deployment of the US Seventh Fleet to the Straits to protect Taiwan, as well as to issue the threat of nuclear attack if Kinmen were attacked again.

An easier step would be to suppose that the CPC were successful in their attack on Kinmen - there's much they could've done better - and then perhaps that they advanced on Taiwan from that point. It's questionable how successful they would have been, considering the significantly larger area of Taiwan by comparison with the small islands taken earlier in the campaigns along the coast - it is even larger than Hainan, as well as being much further from the Mainland, full of ROC troops with nowhere else to retreat to, and more or less at the end of their tether. The communists on the other hand would be lacking nearby bases to support and resupply their troops, and therefore ammunition and materiel generally. They also don't have a navy capable of projecting power to attack Taiwan, and would lack one for most of their history - to attack Hainan (much closer to the Mainland) they had to utilise wooden junks with hidden mountain gun artillery pieces to tangle with the ROC Navy.

The long and the short of it is that any communist victory on Taiwan would be improbable, and if it came to bear it would be extremely bloody. It's also fully possible I think that in the case of a total communist victory, it's entirely possible that the ROC would not form a government-in-exile anywhere. If they did, the USA or Australia are obvious candidates, as might be Singapore after 1965, although it's a lot harder to offer support to a government-in-exile than it is to a rump state. I would predict a much sooner loss of the ROC's position on the UN Security Council, as well as most nations offering recognition to the PRC earlier than the 1970s.

The difference between the government in exile of somewhere like Tibet and the supposed-ROC is that Tibet lays claim to a separatist area, whereas the ROC claims to represent the whole of what is governed by another state. This is a strategy that barely held on until the 1970s in reality - and I seriously doubt that without any of their former territory under their control that states would recognise them.



TL;DR - it'd be stupid-hard to capture Taiwan anyway, but for government-in-exile there are a few candidates, but it doesn't matter because nowhere would recognise them.

[rinkou]

A somewhat related article about potential alternate outcomes of the Chinese Civil War from the Diplomat: thediplomat.com/2015/12/what-if-the-kuomingtang-had-won-the-chinese-civil-war/

Also, a good comment from commenter John Smith:

Japan and the Tigers were only made possible by the Communist victory in China. That is to say, they were the product of a unique set of historical circumstances which would be unlikely to generate the same result even in the face of minor changes. Unlike Europe, there was no Marshall Plan in Asia. Japan's reconstruction was ad-hoc and strategic, essentially becoming a factory of the US war machine for both Korea (which necessitates a Communist China in order to have become what it is) and Vietnam (which was driven by the fear of Chinese, not Soviet, support). Thus, the imperative and resources required for rapid reconstruction evaporate absent the Communist victory. Similarly, the Tiger economies were economic satellites of Tokyo, allowing Japan to travel up the value chain. All of these states were enabled by broadly one-sided trade arrangements, allowing access to US markets while keeping local firms protected. This ensured the success of capitalism, further drawing J/T into the Western bloc.

This isn't to say China would be better or worse off. I'm not TOUCHING that question. I'm just highlighting that the KMT followed the Japanese Asian Developmental State model as opposed to any innovation on their own part. This model was dependent on Cold War exingencies and rationalised by the policy of containment. When these externalities collapsed, so too did the model. It's not impossible that a Nationalist China could have repeated the successes of the Communist China, but I'd be willing to bet similar brutal policies would be necessary. The Asian Developmental State model is just the incorrect frame to be considering the question from.

[orvillethird]

Indeed, the KMT were responsible for fewer deaths than Mao, but still exceeding the levels of, say, Pol Pot.

[huojin]

Jan 21, 2016 2:10:53 GMT orvillethird said:

Indeed, the KMT were responsible for fewer deaths than Mao, but still exceeding the levels of, say, Pol Pot.

Are you talking scale or sheer numbers? Because Pol Pot was responsible for the deaths of >31% of the Cambodian population. So yeah.

[orvillethird]

Jan 21, 2016 18:33:19 GMT huojin said:

Jan 21, 2016 2:10:53 GMT orvillethird said:

Indeed, the KMT were responsible for fewer deaths than Mao, but still exceeding the levels of, say, Pol Pot.

Are you talking scale or sheer numbers? Because Pol Pot was responsible for the deaths of >31% of the Cambodian population. So yeah.

Sheer numbers. On scale, I think the only Chinese leaders who might compare are Hong Xiquan and Zhang Xianzhong.