FairAndUnbiased
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To be fair though, I think if the ROC had managed to stay in power, ROC China would be in no way comparable to India. I think the ROC would've made much better economic progress than the PRC during the 50s to the 70s. Today, China would undoubtedly already be the world's largest economy and would probably have a much higher per capita GDP because it was integrated into global trade much earlier. The West would probably be inundated by Chinese pop culture and Westerners would be cooing about taking a trip to Shanghai like they talk about going to Tokyo or Singapore. But at the same time, China would probably be subordinate to Western powers and be a follower and not a leader. It's innovation would likely have gotten handicapped by the US somehow as well like what the Plaza Accords did to Japan back in the 80s and Chinese women would be nowhere as powerful and liberated as they are now. China would be far more confined by traditional hierarchies as well.
What the PRC is doing now is setting new ground and testing new systems which the world has never seen before. It is among the most, if not the most, dynamic and innovative society today and all this in the face of unmitigated sabotage, hostility and hatred from the West. Framing things this way will probably make most Westerners think of you as some kind of lunatic, when in fact, it is a reflection of actual facts. The same Westerners think 90s era Japan who still uses fax as a major method of communication is somehow more advanced than cashless China today who is the only peer rival to Silicon Valley.
I disagree and here's why: in 1920's KMT was already integrated into global trade and people were getting poorer, not richer. Previous performance is correlated to future performance.
But let's not look at the past. Let's say we are transported back to 1949 and CPC didn't exist. What do we see in the ROC?
1. Economic statistics: 80% illiterate population. Average life expectancy 36. Steel production per year: 158,000 tons (lower than even during WW2 and some of the lowest in the world). Total national electricity generation per year: 1.85 GW (for comparison, a single power plant in the US produced 1 GW in 1967, see pg 32).
2. Internal politics: An absolute military dictator who would later put his son (Chiang Ching Kuo) in office like the Kims in North Korea, and who has zero motivation to reform because he already won against his domestic ideological opposition. However he did not win against domestic nonideological opposition such as warlords and gangs, meaning that the government still lacks the stability to conduct reforms.
3. International politics: The US hated Chiang. They were planning on making Japan their #1 Asian ally long before the CPC took over because Chiang had already stolen $750 million from them. Xinjiang already declared independence backed by the Soviets. Mongolia declared independence long ago but were agitating for Inner Mongolia. Tibet would've never been recovered and could've been absorbed by India. The Soviets would've been overtly hostile. How many weapons you think Chiang would need to import from the US to suppress his internal rivals like armed warlords and gangs on one hand and Soviet Xinjiang, Soviet Greater Mongolia, Indian Tibet, etc on the other? And yes, that'd be import, not made.
So no... every indicator was that the ROC was on its way to becoming either a military dictatorship like North Korea (best case scenario) or balkanizing into warlord states (worst case scenario).