Chiang Kai Shek

>Was he preferable to the Communists
Yes, objectively.

>was he just a warlord who would have ruined China even more
Yes, objectively.

ROC IS REAL CHINA
MAO GET OUT REEEEEEEEEE

Mao was a much better

>>1620354
Pretty much

China definitely wouldn't be in one piece with him in charge though

Zhang should have offed him in Xi'an tbqh

>>1620346
warlords are always preferable to ideologies because you have more control=power over the situation

>>1620455
I'd wager China would come out either like a bigger India (stupidly many internal divisions based on culture, religion, ethnicity, race, history, class, caste, etc) more so than outright breaking apart, but I can certainly see that happening to.

On the plus side, none of the cultural revolution or general Communism bullshit happens.

Incompetent fool who couldn't even stamp out the CCP at even their weakest.

Chiang's rule was marred by a complete lack of national unity, rife with corruption and an unimaginable level of poverty for the Chinese that was at least somewhat rectified by the CCP before the GLF and the Cultural Revolution.

Had Chiang remained in power and his KMT with him, China would be nowhere close to the level they're at now.

It may not last forever but at least Mao took China out of the century of humiliation.

>>1620491
And is 60+ million dead due to lolcommunism an acceptable cost for everything up until Deng Xiaoping? A pragmatic nationalist like him was able to rise out of the mess that was Maoism, whose to say something similar couldn't happen out of the Republic of?

>>1620491
Taiwan is prosperous today though, I know it's on a smaller scale but it worked out in the end. His rule over China coincided with the Japanese invasion and his forces bore the brunt of the fighting, economic/social development surely took a secondary importance.

>>1620483
It'd be better than India for sure.

But it is so hard to know "what if".

It was highly likely the Soviets would have continued cucking him over for decades leading to heavy instability.
Eventually, maybe in the 60's, they'd invade and conquer a still weak China.

America probably wouldn't have intervened and started WW3 over that.
It may have led to the Soviets being eventually more powerful than America with 600 million more people.

>>1620508

Academics usually agree on about half that number. But let's not into a statistics battle.

The difference is that the KMT had absolutely zero popular support outside generals and wealthy entrepreneurs.

The CCP however had enormous rural support (2/3 of the Chinese population) and actually had a party which was unified with very few factional problems.

The KMT however had incredible fights between left and right factions, they couldn't control warlords or even trust them to turn up to the fight and they also had made no attempts to address poverty in China.

Chiang couldn't even rule Taiwan properly. It only became a decent country when his son took over.

>>1620514

Taiwans success is due to his son. Not Chiang.

>>1620514
Let me interject.

1. The RoC Taiwan v. PRC argument is really inaccurate to say the least.
2. The Japs invaded Manchuria in 1931. Something Chiang didn't touch. The real war didn't start till 1937.
3. Chiang was in power 1920-1937 before the Japs invaded.
4. Chiang had the relative success of the Nanking Decade in that he temporarily stopped the constant warfare for long enough to establish some semblance of government.
5. He was still a really shitty leader 1930-onwards. He made bad choices, was paranoid, and corrupt to say the least.

>>1620520
>Chiang couldn't even rule Taiwan properly
and this was even with MASSIVE American support
a larger china would have been a mess, the fact that he lost even with overwhelming Western support is testament to this.

>>1620346
DESU anything is preferable to communism, especially if they managed to ruin china. Might have stopped them becoming so powerful and wrecking the environment. Also, being a shithole would've been nothing new to the chinks.

>>1620542
China has produced far less pollution than America.

Furthermore, China is 1.4 billion people while America is 320 million.

Look in the fucking mirror before criticizing others.

>>1620531
Sure he was corrupt and paranoid, but still preferable to the communists. A better successor could have arisen out of the KMT, one that actually could address the issues of the peasantry without going full great leap forward. I know there are a lot of 'what ifs' in this discussion.

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>>1620555
>China has produced far less pollution than America.
Epic

>>1620558

Preferable to whom? To you maybe. Not the Chinese. Even with 30 million deaths the Chinese still largely support the Communists. KMT was simply a continuation of Imperial abuse of the Chinese.

>>1620555
>implying I live in america
silly chinks don't know that many countries speak english

>>1620568
Then they're fools to support that government. it's a human rights nightmare that's acting increasingly belligerent towards its neighbors, with a GDP per capita lower than Iraq.

>>1620615
I don't think you're quite understanding just how fucking shitty life was for the average Chinese under the Qing and Warlords. No matter how bad the CCP is, it's still a huge step up over what came before.

>>1620622
And the KMT could have been even better still if it wasn't ousted.

>>1620630
lolno

>>1620632
There's no proof either way desu.

>>1620638
True enough but we can look at the complete lack of support for the KMT and the rampant corruption to get a good idea of what it'd be like. Someone earlier in the thread suggested it'd be like India and I'm inclined to agree

>>1620658
I find it interesting that Chiang laid the foundations for the PRC in a way. He unified the country so that the CCP didn't even have to, which is ironic.

>>1620697
I'd say more than anything it was hating the Japanese that unified China

>>1620705
Plus the Northern Expedition. It centralized power.

>>1620707
Yeah def

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Just came across this book online, I think I've found a goldmine on this topic. It's criminally understudied in the west.

>>1620697

>unified warlords
>no support from farmers and labourers

Naw dawg

>>1620773

He honestly only had reluctant support from warlords as well. And there was that little incident at Xi'an

>>1620780

True. Most warlords during the war against Japan refused to help and actually fled the battlefield rather than fight with Chiang.

>>1620837

Or did the "Sure we'll help you , unless it involves actually fighting or spending money." thing which was one of the reasons the Indo-China expedition was such a fiasco.

Chiang is great leader I love Chiang. I read all the biographies and visit all memorials. Sexy Chiang kills Communists and Japanese while protecting the innocent Chinamen. I would do anything for Chiang.

>>1620881
t. RO"""""""""C"""""""""

>>1620961
Kek

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>>1620346
Now we had a country made by this demon.