OSS WORLD FACTBOOK
COUNTRY PROFILES: REPUBLIC OF CHINA
COUNTRY PROFILES: REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Official Name: 中華民國 / Zhōnghuá Mínguó
Short Form: China, Blue China (unofficial)
Capital: Nanjing
President: Zhou Tienong (KMT)
Government: Presidental democratic republic with dominant-party system
History:
China suffered more than any country bar the USSR in the Second Great War, which was not helped when the powerful militias of the Communist Party declared neutrality in the conflict against the Japanese. The Nationalists would be fighting the Japanese alone and without the benefits of wunderwaffen of their own to match Japanese Sentinels. Despite defeat after defeat, the Nationalists were able to claw their way back against the Japanese. Japanese focus on the Pacific after 1941 helped the policy, and in addition the OSS began supplying the Chinese with wunderwaffen and Sentinels of their own to help combat Japanese mecha. Chiang Kai-shek’s death at the hands of a Japanese assassin (not a ninja, as the story sometimes goes) put the left-leaning Wang Jingwei in charge of the Kuomintang in 1943. China fought on for four more years against the Japanese, slowly reclaiming ground on a long march to the coast. Over Wang’s loud objections, in the closing days of the Pacific Theater, the Soviets declared war on Japan. Predictably, they occupied Manchuria and refused to leave once the war had ended. Many in Moscow wanted to absorb the rich province into the USSR directly, but the Americans would not allow such a bold move. Stalin instead stuck to the legal fiction that Manchuria was in fact rightful Japanese territory that they were occupying as part of the broader Allied occupation of the Japanese Empire. In 1948, the Manchurian Soviet Republic was created out of the portions of China that the Soviets still occupied.
An attempt by the MSR to invade so-called “Blue China” in 1950 against the wishes of their Soviet masters backfired. Chinese communist militias had been fighting against the central government since the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, but the Manchurian invasion brought down the full wrath of the non-communist UN upon their forces. With Allied help, the Republicans were able to both defeat the domestic insurgents and drive the Manchurians, or "Red China", back. The USSR allowed this, but warned the allied troops to go no further; they would defend the MSR by force if necessary. Wang was forced to back down by the other allies, and the current status quo has persisted since. Oddly, while most UN member states recognize both Red and Blue China, the Axis almost universally asserts that the Republic of China is the only legitimate government of China (which explicitly excludes Taiwan, which the RoC also claims in addition to Manchuria.)
China can be best described as a one-and-a-half party state. Elections are held and there is an organized opposition, but the electoral process heavily favors the Kuomintang; the main opposition, the Chinese Progressive Party, has only held the Presidency for two terms, once in the late 70s and more recently in 1992. The KMT itself is a very broad-tent party, but generally falls on the center-left side of the spectrum. China is still institutionally a free country, and experienced extreme economic growth from the 60s on, culmanating in a huge boom in the 80s that prompted many to envision a Chinese-dominated future. It was not to be, however, and the economy is only just starting to recover its vitality after a “lost decade.” It remains, however, one of the richest countries in the world and is a major contributor to the UN. Contentious issues today mainly relate to continued Japanese control of Taiwan, claimed by the RoC (which have abated recently as the results of successive referendums make clear that the population wishes to remain part of Japan and special rights for the Chinese population have been worked out) and Manchuria under the increasingly unstable, and now nuclear-armed, Mao dynasty.
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