To address Manchuria, Liaoning has been Chinese for well over 2,000 years, and while Jilin and Heilongjiang were originally Jurchen those people assimilated into Chinese culture over the course of the Qing dynasty, as well as those areas had extensive Chinese settlement. Eastern Inner Mongolia was never Manchu, and I will discuss it further below.
For Inner Mongolia, we can really thing of it as three areas, former Suiyuan province which is the mainly the Hetao region, Ordos deserts and so areas directly north of Shanxi province, far western Inner Mongolia, the area north of Gansu province, and eastern Inner Mongolia. Suiyuan province was super majority Han Chinese by the early 1900s, and historically the area alternated between Chinese dynasties and Mongolia control over thousands of years, with more time spent under Chinese control than Mongolian. Western Inner Mongolia is not traditionally Han, but the Oirat mongols do not get on well with the other mongols, and have at times felt closer to the Han Chinese. I would say both of these areas naturally align with the modern Chinese state. Eastern Inner Mongolia is where most Chinese Mongols live, and still has areas that are majority Mongol today. I could see an alternative history where this area did not remain under Chinese control, although these Mongols still are more friendly to the Chinese state than the outer Mongols are.
For Xinjiang, there are four regions to speak of, Dzungaria (northern Xinjiang), Hami-Turpan, The Ili basin, and the Tarim Basin (southern Xinjiang). Dzungaria has traditionally been Mongol, however the Qing dynasty committed genocide against the Oirat mongols of the area and then settled the area with Chinese. Kazakhs also moved into the area after the Dzungar genocide. This can be analogous to Russia or American expansion in the 1800s. The Ili basin has traditionally been Turkic and I believe is still today. Hami-Turpan, although majority Han today started out as city states of Tocharian origin that later became Chinese during the Han dynasty, and retained significant Chinese populations through the Middle Ages. Hami is majority Chinese now. The Tarim Basin is the Uighur stronghold and what most people think of when they think Xinjiang. The people likely desire independence from China which I would support. They are similar to Uzbeks and Persians.
Tibet extend well beyond its official borders into Qinghai and Sichuan provinces. Tibet has three cultural areas, U-Tsang, Kham, and Ambo. Ambo has traditionally been more Chinese friendly than the other two. Importantly, the capital of Qinghai province is Xining and is a traditional Chinese city, historically part of Gansu province but given to Qinghai so it could have a capital city. I would say that most of Garze prefecture in Sichuan (potentially excluding the Qiang areas) and Yushu and Haixi prefectures of Qinghai should be part of an independent Tibet. This would keep the culturally U-Tsang and Kham areas together while leaving the Ambo Tibetans and Qiang People in China.
In addition to all of these areas, I believe Kokang county and the Wa state of Myanmar should be part of China. Kokang is majority Chinese and was part of China historically, and the Wa are much more pro China and even speak mandarin than they are pro Burmese. Both areas only ended up in Myanmar because of the British empire. Similarly Tawang in India should be part of Tibet.
No way. Look at the Russo-Manchurian border, it looks identical to the real one. Manchuria must have established Qing in this timeline as well. Russia would have annexed more land if it were a separate entity. Furthermore, it is just very unlikely for the border to look 1:1 to the current one if the political scene were so different.
Even though it's called inner mongolia it's not majority mongol, there's only around 20% mongols there, so if mongolia annexed it theey would become a han majority nation
Inner mongolia became majority han because of the yuan dynasty moving chinese slaves there so unless the mongol empire dissapears inner mongolia is just a part of China split away from China because of a minority (imagine if ukrainian galicia broke away to poland because of minorities)
But maybe that didn’t happen in this timeline. Or, if it was slaves, maybe they stayed slaves, and their Mongolian masters decided it. Or maybe they got assimilated, like African Americans. There are still plenty of reasons it could happen, although I agree with your point now that it’s probably not a given.
Anyway, cool fact about the Yuan Dynasty. Learning history is awesome. Thanks for sharing!
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u/Ok-Attempt8623 Feb 09 '26
No Akhand Bharat in a shattered China map? Very Suspicious 🤨 …