[TGLS]

I'll just concede that Soong Mei-Ling was very important to the rise of Jiang Jieshi.

Originally Posted by Astromancer

FDR wanted China to actually fight the Japanese. As that would expose Chang to real risk and make his future control of China less certain, Chang declined. Besides, why bother complying with US demands? Madame Chang could always get her pet senators to make FDR back off because of the wider war.

Chang probably lengthened the Pacific war by two years. Had the USA been able to establish air bases in China and have the Chinese Army guard them, the Japanese home islands would have come under heavy bombardment two years early. With an equally early collapse of the Japanese economy.

Unlikely. Even as late as 1944, the Japanese demonstrated the ability to take whatever they pleased in China. While Jiang Jieshi wanted wait out the Japanese and focus on the Communists, the warlords of China would have made it very difficult for the central government to go on the offensive against the Japanese, showing up to show the flag but evaporating before combat. Besides this, the Americans would have had a difficult time pulling off a beatdown on the Japanese like this. The Allied strategy was always "Europe First", and the CBI was prioritized after the Pacific theaters because of political concerns. In order to get sufficient materials to the Chinese to pull off this strategy, at least the Ledo Road would have needed to be opened (maybe even the Burman railway or a naval route).

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Without Madame Chang, Chang Kai-Shek never becomes as prominent. He is assassinated by a petty warlord in a minor dispute. The man who becomes the leader of China (also with the family name Chang) sees the vital need to fight corruption in China and to give the peasants reasons to support the government against the Communists. This Chang promotes land reforms throughout Southern China (he has little authority in the North) and reforms the Army. FDR gets Chinese armies defending American Air Bases and Japan is forced to surrender in December 1943. Stalin, desperate to keep American aid flowing in, gives Mao and the Chinese Communists no aid for two years.

The local year is 1950, China is divided into a Communist North and a Capitalist South.

Without a brazen anti-communist like Jiang Jieshi, the First United Front would likely have held together. It would form the basis of the Chinese government after WW2 and would have given Stalin, or whomever gave the Chinese the most support at the critical time, sufficient influence to control the country.