Republic of China
Capital: Shanghai
Government Type: Dictatorship
Head of State: Li Ting?
Language: Cantonese (and dialects)
Population: 1.4 billion
Formed: December 1, 2129
The Republic of China is an autocratic state in southeast and central Asia, and one of the major powers in the world. With a population of nearly one and a half billion it runs second to the Union of Russian Federations as the most populous state in the world. Located south of Russia and sharing borders with minor powers India? and Korea, China is the central player in the most prosperous and wealthy area of the globe.
The Chinese take pride for, alone among the world's major powers, not having lost a square metre of territory in the last eight hundred years. They have, instead, added to the possessions with the acquisition of the former nation of Nepal as well as much of Pakistan and Mongolia.
Though styled a Republic, China is as far from a democratic state as it is possible to get. Power is controlled strictly within the National Council, made up of high-ranking members of the official party. Its leader is essentially whichever technocrat has managed to gain the support of the major apparatus of the state. As a result, though powerful, China has often been too focused on internal divisions to extend its influence around the globe.
The current Chairman of the National Council and, as such, leader of the Republic of China is Li Ting?.
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1. Early history
In the twenty-first century, the ancestor of the modern Chinese state was a major industrial power as well as the most populated nation in the world. Though ruled strictly by the Communist Party of China, the People's Republic of China had been steadily liberalizing since the mid-twentieth century, abandoning many of the trappings of Communism and, increasingly, much of its dictatorial control as well.
By the 2050s, free elections were taking place in China on a local level, and in 2064 this was extended nationally. Initially these gesture bought the Communist Party considerable goodwill from the population and they were given heavy parliamentary majorities.
The situation soon turned downhill. Crop failures in the 2070s and 2080s gripped the world, and famine began to hit those states that lacked self-sufficiency. Concerns about resource stability led to the accords between the European Union and the North American democracies that eventually led to the isolation and occupation of the old Russian Federation. China, with a dense population and few allies, was left exposed, and famine gripped the nation.
For the next twenty years, China descended into a state of civil war. Rural communities capable of growing their own food banded together for their own survival, while urban militias and the military launched raids to fill their plates as much as possible. The countryside burned and farmers were forced to abandon their crops, meaning that even when world food levels returned to normal China was still gripped by starvation. The United Nations proposed a massive aid program, but this was opposed both by China's traditional rivals and more pragmatic politicians who saw the impossibility of fairly distributing food to a billion people in the middle of a civil war.
1.1 Taiwanese-American intervention
Meanwhile, the government which claimed the name "Republic of China" was based on the island of Taiwan off the Chinese coast, having been driven off the mainland by a civil war in the 1930s and 1940s. Having a much smaller population as well as extensive foreign aid allowed them to not only survive and thrive during the food crisis, and as the world regained its breath Taiwan looked covetously at the mainland.
Taiwan was also a strong ally of the United States?, which in that part of the century had not yet suffered the bloodying that would lead to the formation of the Blessed Mexican Empire. Together, the Taiwanese and American governments hatched a daring scheme to seize China's increasingly abandoned and ruined major port cities, trading food for loyalty.
On October 9, 2099, Taiwanese soldiers supported by the Americans landed unopposed on the mainland and took Shanghai without a shot being fired. Runways were cleared and transport planes full of food landed, whereupon soldiers distributed food to a desperate populace. There were chaos for several weeks, but the military commanders were well-prepared.
For perhaps the first time in the history of invasions, the foreign aggressors were truly greeted as liberators.
2. Civil war
Only the inertia of a hundred and fifty years kept the old regime from toppling entirely. What was left of the Communist high command launched an attack to drive Taiwan out of Shanghai that mostly got a lot of underequipped and unmotivated Chinese soldiers killed. An epidemic of desertion seized the pro-government forces, as rumours spread that the Taiwanese were spreading food and finance around almost freely.
The reality wasn't so rosy, but it was still an improvement of life under the Communists, whose only remaining asset was control over the few crop-producing areas remaining in the country. Bolstered by experienced deserters, the Taiwanese began to launch a general invasion of the interior. In this they overstepped the intentions of the Americans, who had planned only to pressure the Communist government and bring about peace talks followed by stability. But events had now taken on lives of their own.
Driving the remains of the People's Republic of China out of the mountains and the fields was a time-consuming undertaking, but with urban China onside the matter was never in doubt. The Americans pulled back their aid but the Russians, going through the most anti-European and anti-American years of their history, more than replaced it.
3. An old state reborn
Major combat operations had effectively ended by February of 2128, but the leader of the military operation, General Qu Qiubai, had pledged not to give up the war until the last Communist had been sent to the gallows. In November of 2129 the government leaders decided this had been accomplished, and the restoration of the Republic of China was officially proclaimed on December 1, 2129 with a government headed by General Qu.
The new Republic's first issue was dealing with the Russian problem. Tensions between the Russians and the European Union were reaching a breaking point and, mere months after the Republic had been re-established, a daring European raid led to the capture of the Russian general staff and the death of President Mikhail Kurosov. The Europeans took possession of Russia in all but name, trying to ensure that the Federation could never be a threat to Europe again.
Sensing a power vacuum, General Qu moved to fill it. Fresh off a bloody civil war his armies turned north, driving into mountainous Mongolia in an unprovoked attack. Their intent was plain: they coveted Siberia and planned to take it while the Russians were too fractured to resist. The exhausted Chinese army, however, was bogged down in fierce mountain fighting by the tenacious Mongolians, and though over half their country wound up under Chinese occupation the Mongolians eventually forced a peace treaty and earned the Republic's grudging respect. An invasion of Japan was far more successful: the islands surrendered within three weeks and General Qu was lauded as a hero.
Once the European occupation of Russia ended in 2235, however, old emnities were forgotten and friendship was renewed. Both shattered powers provided the best of their foreign aid to the other, the Russians providing the raw resources and the Chinese the manpower to bring both nations back to the first rank of the world's superpowers.
The buildup of the two nations was not unnoticed by the international community, but a potentially devestating double alliance was perverted by the two allies' distrust of each other. By the end of the century the two allies were friends in name only and when in 2285 a Chinese expeditionary force entered Siberia to crush an alleged "rebellion", the breach became permanent.
4. The Pacific War
Russia was determined to strike a devestating first blow, launching a combined forces attack on the Japanese island of Kyushu on October 6, 2314. The Russians had managed to take each of the islands before reinforcements were available, and the Chinese counterattack launched in earnest what would be called the Pacific War?.
The Pacific War was the first major battle between powers in centuries, and it demonstrated acutely how far combined arms had come. Dancing between islands and atolls in the Pacific the war was essentially one of maneouvre, of each side trying to encircle and defeat the other, of armies yanked from the jaws of death and pincers closing from thousands of kilometres away. It was only in 2320 that the two nations stood and fought, when the Chinese main force was caught, forced to enter the nation of Australia, and met in turn by the Russians who ravaged the neutral state with fierce fighting.
The Chinese army in Australia was constantly on the back foot and it was soon driven into the ground. But the Chinese had another trick up their sleeves: their troops landed in Japan once more, taking it back from the Russians and putting a considerable force at Russia's Siberian backdoor. With both sides exhausted from fighting peace was agreed upon, and the Russians kept possession of Australia as poor compensation for six years of warfare.
Strict media and political controls in China meant that the domestic backlash from the war there was minimal. In Russia, however, the war led to the overthrow of the Russian Federation, leading to its eventual replacement by the Union of Russian Federations.
5. The Russo-Chinese War
I'll get to this.
6. China today
In recent years, China has persevered mainly as an industrial power. They've tended to keep their eyes fairly close to home and constant infighting for power has limited their foreign ambitions since the Russo-Chinese War.
However, they have made significant contributions in some fields. The taikonaut force has always been a pinnacle of prestige, and the Chinese built the second Martian colony in late 2414. China also built and outfitted the SV Marco Polo? for the United Nations-directed Persephone project, and many of the residents of Persephone are of Chinese origin.