Flamefang
commented
3 years ago This is an alright suggestion, but it'd require a lot of adjustments for what would ultimately be a bit of late game map painting. I'll note it down, but it's very low on my list of priorities.
Quick questions HOI4 version: 1.10.5 Kaiserreich version: 0.17.1
Describe the specific change you would like: Currently Chinese foreign policy is rather lackluster in my opinion, offering little to no interaction with most of their neighbours. At the moment, after the unification of China your only option is to quite simply reclaim the various treaty ports and it basically stops there. Out of all the unifiers, then, only 3 have the ability to assert their claims on Tawang (CHI (Only if the player chooses to do so), QIE and FNG) and only CHI can declare war on puppets of foreign powers in SEA and Russia (Provided it is RUS and not SOV). Let me preface that I also don't want nor like China to go after territory which the Manchus have, even if reluctantly, agreed to cede in the so called unequal treaties. Rather this post would like China to have the ability to pursue territorial claims created by unclear or undefined boundaries with foreign powers that conquered territories surrounding the former Chinese empire.
The region of interest in this case is the Kachin hills area or, as it seems more commonly known, the Jiangxinpo region. To give you a bit of background history regarding the area, the British finalized the annexation of Upper Burma in 1885/1886. Following this, the British the based the extent of their territorial claims in region on the information provided by the officials of the Burmese kingdom. However, the information provided often included states that paid only nominal tribute to the Burmese leaders and areas where the kingdom had very little influence. The neighbouring Qing empire also showed interest in the region and in the next two decades the two powers (As much as you may define the Qing to be a power at this point) called various negotiations to finally settle on a definite border. This partially succeded in the Burma Convention of 1894, where most of the modern boundary between Burma and Yunnan was defined. Nevertheless, the convention had failed to delimit two distinct areas on the Anglo-Chinese frontier, one in the north, the region of interest, and one in the south, which I feel like is too small to be represented and that gained much interest only later in the late 1920s during the reign of governor Long Yun.
The Chinese based their claims on historical connections to the area and on connections with the local chieftains (Boundaries which were also sometimes rather vague and flexible in nature due to the handling of the frontier areas by the Manchus) while the British favored a boundary based on easily recognizable and permanent natural features, demanding a hard fixed boundary and territory over which they would have exclusive sovereignty. Thus, after a period of unresolved negotiations, in 1910 the British finally launched the Pianma Expedition led by W.A.Hertz, the Deputy Commissioner of the Burmese Myitkyina District, to secure the Jiangxinpo area for themselves and destroy any eventual sign of Qing presence in the area, to settle the issue once and for all. The expedition reached its objectives successfully by securing the boundary claimed by the British and destroying a border pillar erected by the Chinese a couple of years earlier. However, as Mr. Hertz denoted in one of his reports, the expedition reported evidence of taxation by the Manchus and teaching of Chinese education among the villages found on the claimed British frontier, further demonstrating that the area was already under Tusi (The local governor) administration and that thus it was indeed to be considered part of China, at least when viewed from the Chinese perspective. Hertz, then, further admitted that the claim laid by the Chinese was indeed not a particularly strong one but yet it was stronger than that of the British. However, in the interest of preserving their image, Britain refused to acknowledge any Chinese claim to the area and subsequently opted to continue with the occupation of the region.
Eventully the border dispute got solved in our timeline in 1960, after the PRC signed a treaty with the Burmese government.
Here's the maximum extent of the Chinese claim (The bright red line):
This would require the split of the state of Kachin (Which is already quite big) into two, roughly along the blue line (Use the above image as a reference as my drawing is a very rough representation):
Explain the reasoning behind this actionable change: With the collapse of British control in the region I think there's little in the way of China to pursue this claim against the Burmese government. In the case of a German guarantee on Burma, China can already go to war with them anyways over the treaty ports and in the event of the collapse of the German control in Indochina the Chinese position would only be strengthened. Moreover, it would be nice to finally expand on the rather lackluster Chinese foreign policy. I'm not sure if all Chinese tags should have the ability to claim this piece of land (The Federalist government comes to mind as they don't even get to claim Tawang) but some tags like Fengtian, the Qing themselves and the KMT should have the ability to pursue such claim.