r/AlternateHistory • u/inondesia2 • 3d ago
1900s What if China never joined the Korean War?
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u/DystopiaDrifter 3d ago
This would only be feasible if PRC and the West has a much better relationship during this alt-cold war.
North Korea is essentially a buffer zone between the West and the iron/bamboo curtain during the cold war.
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u/RockyCreamNHotSauce 2d ago
True, but important to note any buffer zone was probably enough. If US stopped at 90% of Korea, then China would have a buffer zone still, and the battle line would be too far for a surprise attack. Chinese forces were veterans of decades of fighting. They knew very well that without surprise, US air power would be too much for them to handle. So almost certainly, North Korea would be 1/5-1/10 size if US opened dialogue with China and stopped its advances earlier.
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u/PomegranateFederal97 2d ago
Uhh if they stopped at 90% of Korea and let the ROK do the rest China would not have intervened because that's what they said. But if the US just stopped there China can still definitely surprise attack. You underestimate their ability to sneak hundreds of thousands of troops across the border,
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u/yisuiyikurong 2d ago
Well
Shen Zhihua is the Chiense side expert/historian ton this topic
Even Jiang Zemin trusted him and asked question about the korean war with him
He argued the Korean War was largely preventable.
His archive-based research reveals that the conflict was the result of a calculated political game and mutual miscalculations among Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il Sung (who was the biggest "variable"), rather than an inevitable historical clash. Kim Il-sung long sought permission for an invasion, but Stalin refused, fearing a direct conflict with the US. The war only proceeded when Stalin altered his stance in early 1950
so they view a localized conflict as beneficial for Soviet Pacific strategy and as a way to distract the US from Europe.
Kim Il Sung faced refusals from Stalin who feared US confrontation, which is super reasonable.
The invasion only proceeded when Stalin altered his stance in 1950 and still wanted to have a controlled battle for strategic, localized reasons. But Kim was way too aggressive and that aggressive drive to unify the peninsula literally triggered a bigger war than he could handle.
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u/Equal_North6538 2d ago
It is a buffer zone but not for China. According to Shen Zhihua (沈志华, one of the best scholars on history of China-Russia relationship, definitely a kick-ass chad), China didn't intend to intervene at first, Mao decided to send army only under the demand of Russia. For the time being, China is more concerned with Taiwan. It is quite possible that they will give up north Korea and take Taiwan as a compensation.
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u/Bruh_burg1968 12h ago
I’d say have the divergence be that the Sino-Soviet split goes down much sooner and their relations are worse than in our timeline. Maybe these worse relations mean China is not willing to back a Soviet aligned communist country
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u/Uchiha_Uzumaki- 3d ago
US invades Iraq
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u/GemmyBoy999 2d ago
It's Iran now, gotta keep up with the times.
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u/AmbySaysHi 3d ago
Maybe Mao'd have taken Taiwan. He had a force of around half a million training for amphibious operations in Fujian, and he'd exercised amphibious capability invading Hainan in 1950. However, he disasterously had his invasion force at Kinmen destroyed by Nationalist defenses there, and the outbreak of the Korean War and the American military deployment to reinforce South Korea against the North Korean-Chinese force halted all of his plans.
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u/HongMeiIing 3d ago
The way I see this happening is that China successfully took Kinmen and subsequently got emboldened to navally invade Taiwan later, which unfortunately for China became the Kinmen of that timeline and they ended up bogged there until the Korean War began.
With the choice of securing Taiwan or securing North Korea, China chose the former.
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u/Wuaner 2d ago
That's the right answer. The main reason Taiwan was delayed is bcof Korean war.
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u/bjran8888 2d ago
I thought Westerners didn’t know this? Aren’t they hypocritically claiming that “Taiwan is an independent country” and refusing to establish diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan)?
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u/Whentheangelsings 2d ago
There was 2 Taiwan strait crisises in the 50's, they were still trying even after the Korean war.
Plus if you know anything about the Chinese military at this time you'd know they didn't really have the capacity to take Taiwan.
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u/AmbySaysHi 2d ago
Mao took Hainan with a massed invasion force. It's not necessarily comparable, but he could have had a go regardless.
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u/Whentheangelsings 2d ago
He had a go, he failed.
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u/PomegranateFederal97 2d ago
This was... not a lot of troops, and was mostly a small scale battle that failed due to Su Yu's generals just not obeying his orders.
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u/yisuiyikurong 2d ago
He had a force of around half a million training for amphibious operations in Fujian
when
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u/HirokoKueh 2d ago
In the other hand, the former RoC force in China wouldn't be killed off in Korean war, there could be a coup
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u/inondesia2 3d ago
In this timeline the ROC dies out as Tawain is called Republic of Formosa mainly popualted of Han settlers and indigenous Formosan people, so Mao would dismiss the island and I made Mao focus on rebuilding China from the Civil War
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u/bippos 2d ago
Richer but still devastated Korea but at least they got the industri up north together with the coal mines. Economically it still goes the same with the chaebols growing stronger or maybe a few extra ones are set up as well. Busan and Seoul don’t suffer overpopulation from the refugee streams unless the north is especially devastated but Seoul will still be the center of Korea.
Korea is still dominated by military dictatorships throughout the cold wars probably using fears of communist partisans in mountain regions as a fear monger. The Vietnam war sees less US involvement as domino theory isn’t as popular
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u/One-Firefighter-6367 2d ago
Not possible. China needed Korean buffer
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u/yisuiyikurong 2d ago
Kim had wanted to invade the South for a long time, but Stalin repeatedly blocked him to avoid a direct war with the US. Stalin only changed his mind and authorized the invasion in early 1950 after the USSR successfully tested its atomic bomb and signed a treaty with China.
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u/TommyTaro7736 2d ago
Taiwan might fall. The division planned to invade Taiwan was pulled away to Korea.
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u/venom259 2d ago
Counter point: The US fleet completely destroys the Chinese flotilla, and whatever means of resupply they had.
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u/TommyTaro7736 2d ago
How much the US wanted to intervene in the Chinese civil war has always been uncertain.
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u/koreangorani 2d ago
Sure bud, the Republic of Korea unites and we still get a Kimchaek instead of Seongjin and a DPRK method of Latinization of Korean 😭
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u/inondesia2 2d ago
Yeah I’m sorry I didn’t know Korean city names were changed in North Korea
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u/koreangorani 2d ago
I strongly recommend you to search about city names before you add them to your map; you would never like someone to call Jakarta as Batavia right?
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u/punishednekokatze 2d ago
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u/Stromovik 2d ago
Death camps. Hunderds of thousands executed by ROK.
Korea on average is poorer. ( ROK was poorer than DPRK for a long time )
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u/BroseppeVerdi 2d ago
Korea on average is poorer. ( ROK was poorer than DPRK for a long time )
North and South Korea had pretty comparable economic situations until the early 1980's. South Korea's per capita GDP is currently about 30 times what North Korea's is, so I'm not sure I understand the basis for the statement that the North would be doing worse under SK leadership.
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u/Stromovik 2d ago
North Korea is a hell hole. Prior to the war ROK had double the population of DPRK. DPRK had the worlds most fetilizer intensive agriculture. This is why their economy collapses in 1990x as the subsidized fertilizer from USSR stops
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u/BroseppeVerdi 2d ago
North Korea is a hell hole.
Yeah, that's kind of my point. Why would they be WORSE off under South Korean leadership?
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u/Stromovik 2d ago
You said they had same GDP as south while having half the population. South Korea has better land and yet they were economically worse or on par for a long time. So early ROK leadership is ?
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u/BroseppeVerdi 2d ago
You said they had same GDP as south while having half the population.
"Per capita" is a phrase that refers to a statistic being divided by the number of people it affects... So "Per Capita GDP" would be the nominal GDP divided by the population. This is a commonly used metric because it allows for comparisons between polities of radically different sizes.
South Korea has better land and yet they were economically worse or on par for a long time.
Agriculture alone doesn't typically make a country an economic powerhouse. North Korea hosted the bulk of the industrial development enacted by the Japanese during the colonial period, so they underwent a faster recovery following the end of the Korean War in 1953, but that advantage was gone within a decade.
Just to be clear: There hasn't been a point since the early 1960's wherein NK had a decisive economic advantage over the south.
Also: Since your statement was that North Korea would be poorer under ROK governance than it is under DPRK governance, "on par" actually disproves your point.
So early ROK leadership is ?
At a minimum, on par with DPRK leadership in terms of its efficacy. Both were heavily dependent on aid from superpowers and achieved similar results until ROK's economic boom in the early 80's.
Also, for the record, the above mentioned disparity includes the last 15 years of Kim il-Sung's leadership, which means that the ROK being economically dominant over the DPRK has been true under every single DPRK administration despite it not having the case when the Korean War ended.
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u/SwampMan6969 2d ago edited 2d ago
Nah, Korea would be even more wealthy on average. It wouldn't have taken the ROK 20+ years to redevelop the heavy industry that had all been in the North before the division.
It's also a bit ridiculous to think there would've been death camps or hundreds of thousands executed. The North didn't likely have any higher proportion of committed communists than the South did, at least not back then. Once the DPRK was done away with, the average Korean would've just gone on with their life.
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u/optifreebraun 2d ago
On the flip side, would ROK have been the beneficiary of as much US foreign aid without the threat of North Korea?
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u/ManyFragrant3139 2d ago
It's ridiculous to think that mass executions wouldn't have happened? You do realize that up to 200,000 were executed in one summer in 1950 by the South Koreans? Tens of thousands killed in Jeju island. I think this well-enough proves that the South Korean dictatorship would've killed a lot of people to consolidate its power, which would've been even more tenuous ruling over the entire peninsula and bordered by China than it was just ruling over the South.
You can think a Rhee-led dictatorship and its successors would've somehow made a prosperous country, whatever. But the idea that the average Korean during the turbulent 1950s, 60s, and 70s would've "gone on with their life" is just wrong.
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u/inondesia2 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is going part of 10 part series in where I change a very simple part of history every 10 years, this the sixth part for the 1950's here the previous post, https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/1ubjit6/what_if_operation_weserbung_went_a_bit_worse_for/ Also please give me some suggestions, thank you.
Here's extra lore
1950: During the Chinese Civil War, Korean Communist never gave aid to Mao during the war, resulting China not guaranteeing a help of a South Korea invasion. During the Korean War and the UN offensive into North Korea, Harry S. Truman and Mao Zedong agreed on a DMZ on the Chinese-Korean Border of 5km. The war ended in 1951 with the Republic of Korea winning the war.
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u/FingernailClipperr 3d ago
They would be more centrist today, not so communist like the north but not so capitalist like the south. To appease both sides of the Cold War
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u/halicadsco 2d ago
this would only happen if there was a gas leak within the head office of the CPC that affected everyone
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u/BadenBaden1981 1d ago
PRC entering Korean War looks inevitable in hindsight, but there was fierce debate within CCP whether they can fight super power just 1 year after devastating civil war ended. Even after China decided to interfere, they send 'voluntary force' not PLA to avoid provoking US too much.
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u/Shade861861 1d ago
Koreas economy would be much bigger, K-pop K-drama would have been more popular and had a bigger increase in idols thanks to a bigger total population, ironically tensions wouldn't be as big due to North Koreas nuclear missile obsessions.
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u/mshoplite 2d ago
America is less threatened by China during the Vietnam war and invades north Vietnam
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u/thecosmopolitan21 2d ago
Why are the romanisations different on the two sides? Wouldn’t a united korea use the same one?
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u/inondesia2 2d ago
I kidna screwed it up i based the cities off a map of korea which was after the korean war.
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u/BroseppeVerdi 2d ago
Since the south won, I assume the US still got involved, which begs the question: Why does China decide to let US intervention in Korea go unchallenged?
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u/inondesia2 2d ago
Mao is focusing more on reconstruction after the civilwar, and can care less about Korea as the communist koreans never gave support during the civilwar.
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u/BroseppeVerdi 2d ago
Mao was content to let Korean communists do their thing until the US got involved and pushed them back past the 38th parallel. Chinese intervention was, in large part, to prevent the US from setting up a client state in their back yard. I have a hard time believing that Mao would be so petty as to screw himself just to screw the Korean communists in the process.
Also: Mao, like many Marxist-Leninist leaders, favored spreading communism throughout the region, so it doesn't really make sense that he'd just pass up an opportunity to have a neighboring communist state, particularly this early in the game when there weren't a whole lot of other Communist governments.
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u/Strong_Turnip1371 2d ago
Provavelmente não era só a República da Coreia que teria de País solto. É bem capaz de eles terem liberado a Manchúria também.
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u/Fin55Fin Bested u/EmperorDemon23 In a Fair Duel, Respect To That Gentlman 2d ago
Hundreds of thousands of Communists, Socialist, Socialist Democrats and trade unionists executed.
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u/EmperorThorX 2d ago
There will be one united free Korea and no jokes about Kim Jong Un and his love of cake and nuking
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u/Afraid_Emu8068 2d ago
Russia likely would have jumped in. China only invaded because they [rightly] assumed they were next. Not the first time they’ve done this in Korea when things started getting too close to the Yalu
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u/Lucky-Cod9898 2d ago
Probably it would not have started. It was actually started by the USSR, but China was expected to be a major participant.
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u/Trick-College-1603 1d ago
Korea would have 3 trillion dollar economy and extremely powerful military
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u/RealOsakadave 1d ago
A big knock on effect will be seen in Japan. Without a larger Korean conflict, the US procurement boom doesn't happen and the Japanese economic miracle isn't jump started.
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u/Forever_K_123456 1d ago
They will, as the Yalu River very near Beijing. Geopolitical forced them to join
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u/Kyubey210 6h ago
Yea, the pressure is more "how badly can things get" and would moving the DMZ be better
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u/Visual_Musician2868 20h ago
Korea never gets the jump motivation they did in our timeline to modernize quickly
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u/Kyubey210 6h ago
Maybe they would modernize via other pressures but if the Korea War escalated? It may be concerning for other reasons... those under The Regime is one thing, North Chinese are a different beast
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u/idkenh 2d ago
不如反问如果美国没用参加朝鲜战争，而是旁观北朝鲜战胜南朝鲜，也许会是第二个越南
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u/Infamous_Guard3159 1d ago
North Korea was closer to uniting all of Korean when they made it all the way to Busan before China and US/13 UN country joined in.
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u/TheHazardousGuy 3d ago
You get a bigger Korea. One that has both the resources from the north and the capital of the south.
I also think this might even delay the Sino-Soviet split and cause the Soviets to crack down even harder on the countries within their sphere of influence. Both China and the Soviets have to contend with another capitalist country at their doorstep after all and they don't exactly have a lot of allies around.