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What if the US had fully backed the KMT in the late 1940s?

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  • #31
    Sun Yat Sen.
    Chimo

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    • #32
      Originally posted by DOR View Post
      “clean” KMT officials? I don’t know if there ever was such a thing.
      I'm a well educated, middle-class patriot living in Chiang's China. I'm dissatisfied by the status quo and want to be an agent of change. What are my options.

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      • #33
        Originally posted by hboGYT View Post
        I'm a well educated, middle-class patriot living in Chiang's China. I'm dissatisfied by the status quo and want to be an agent of change. What are my options.
        Start a revolution.
        Back the commies.
        Leave.
        Trust me?
        I'm an economist!

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        • #34
          Originally posted by DOR View Post
          Start a revolution.
          Back the commies.
          Leave.
          Surely, someone must have thought to effect change from within. Didn't a general kidnap Chiang to make him do the right thing?

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          • #35
            It was a friggin civil war. You're not going to find anyone without bloody hands nor compromized morals. Somebody got to lose and lose big. There was nothing fair about any of this. Pretending otherwise ignores the history.
            Chimo

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            • #36
              Originally posted by hboGYT View Post
              Surely, someone must have thought to effect change from within. Didn't a general kidnap Chiang to make him do the right thing?
              Zhang Xueliang and the Xi’an Incident of 1936 had nothing to do with economic reforms, which was the heart of your question. Still, he did follow No. 1 on my list of suggested courses of action.
              Trust me?
              I'm an economist!

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              • #37
                i'm currently writing a paper for a military journal on this subject. i knew the US had supported the KMT a lot post war, but with a bit of research i found out just how much...it was shocking.

                we gave more to CKS in the four years post-war than we've provided afghanistan in 17 years. and he still blew it.
                There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by astralis View Post
                  i'm currently writing a paper for a military journal on this subject. i knew the US had supported the KMT a lot post war, but with a bit of research i found out just how much...it was shocking.

                  we gave more to CKS in the four years post-war than we've provided afghanistan in 17 years. and he still blew it.
                  Wasn't most of that WWII surplus? In other words, 'free' ?
                  Trust me?
                  I'm an economist!

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                  • #39
                    Dec 1947 Intelligence briefing mentioning CCK being tasked with cracking down on the Shanghai black market. Currency dropped by half between mid-November and this Dec 2 report.

                    US$60 million US stop-gap aid being recommended to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs “this week.” Not clear if that is in addition to $300 mn previously signaled by Secretary Marshall.
                    https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...000100010043-2
                    Trust me?
                    I'm an economist!

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                    • #40
                      Wasn't most of that WWII surplus? In other words, 'free' ?
                      the equipment was WWII surplus but the re-supplies, logistics, training, etc was all provided by the US. that's also not counting the enormous japanese stockpiles and arms that were turned over to the Nationalists...in addition to captured Japanese soldiers "persuaded" to fight on in the name of CKS.

                      and CKS got a bunch of direct financial aid, not just from the US but from the UN.

                      CKS had a bunch of beautifully trained and equipped divisions (the Burma troops) at the end of the war, an Air Force that was completely rebuilt along US lines (he had so many surplus bomber aircraft that he asked the US to help the pilots re-qual to transports), and even the beginnings of a Navy.

                      he managed to screw things up so bad that in the less than one year that the US finally had enough of his corruption and stopped the re-supply/arms sales, all of the hard work the US did in training the Chinese military collapsed from within, as evidenced by the disastrous battles of 1947-1948.
                      There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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                      • #41
                        Originally posted by astralis View Post
                        he managed to screw things up so bad that in the less than one year that the US finally had enough of his corruption and stopped the re-supply/arms sales, all of the hard work the US did in training the Chinese military collapsed from within, as evidenced by the disastrous battles of 1947-1948.
                        How likely did the US consider an eventual possibility of a Communist victory to be when this aid was cut off?
                        "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

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                        • #42
                          Dec 1948: the KMT is losing, discredited, impotent.

                          US military aid can only have a limited effect on the course of the civil war. “The funneling of US aid to Taiwan (Formosa) or South China, no matter on what schedule, would serve chiefly to maintain the legal fiction that there is in China a government still resisting the Communists.”

                          “To the extent that expedited military aid would prolong the civil hostilities without affecting the final outcome, such aid would have a weakening rather than strengthening effect on [the] Nationalist economy.”

                          “The political effects of expediting US aid to the Nationalists might be positively harmful to US interests.”

                          https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...000300010001-3
                          Trust me?
                          I'm an economist!

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                          • #43
                            Originally posted by astralis View Post
                            think CKS could and should have leaned on them more. i mean, what were their options? japan or the commies, pretty much.
                            Particularly hard when some of the noncriminal elements were CKS's own in-laws.
                            All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
                            -Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.

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                            • #44
                              Originally posted by DOR View Post
                              It’s really, really hard to reform land ownership without taking it from those who have it and giving it to those who don’t. And, as the landed gentry and business were the main (noncriminal) supporters of the KMT, such a move would have been suicide. The Nationalists paid lip service to land reform in the early days, but after 1931 it was more about minimizing the fallout from the Japanese invasion than about land reform.
                              IIRC, post-retreat from China, the KMT implemented land redistribution in Taiwan, followed by a state-ordained reduction in agrarian rents. Some historians have argued that since Taiwanese gentry were not CKS supporters, the reforms carried less political pain, and the fact that their loyalties to the KMT was dubious to being with means depriving them of land killed two birds with one stone.
                              All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
                              -Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.

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                              • #45
                                Originally posted by Triple C View Post
                                IIRC, post-retreat from China, the KMT implemented land redistribution in Taiwan, followed by a state-ordained reduction in agrarian rents. Some historians have argued that since Taiwanese gentry were not CKS supporters, the reforms carried less political pain, and the fact that their loyalties to the KMT was dubious to being with means depriving them of land killed two birds with one stone.
                                That's right.

                                The KMT took the land from the Taiwanese elite and redistributed it to (mainly) mainland demobilized soldiers. It not only 'punished' families who had 'collaborated' with the Japanese for 50 years (including the last dozen years of the Qing Dynasty), it also effectively destroyed any effective base of future resistance. The token shares they were issued in exchange for their land were in confiscated companies such as Taiwan Cement.

                                As long as you weren't an actual Taiwanese land owner, the land reform was painless.
                                Trust me?
                                I'm an economist!

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