Balkanize China

to give japan a free walkover?

I’ve seen this before, and Claudio’s comment sums it up perfectly. Nationalist China already loses pretty often to Japan… and I’m assume that they wouldn’t even have cores on all the lost land. All those other players would either be NPC’s or go inactive 70% of the time, so Japan would have a very very easy time conquering the area. The Chinese United front has formed by this time anyway, and nationalist (or communist) rule over China if Japan was defeated was certain. You also mentioned pre-ww2 states. HWW starts in 1939! There is simply no more good reason to Balkanize China….

While it is true that those warlord states did exist throughout the 1920s and 30s, by 1939 (when HWW takes place), most of them joined either Nationalist or Communist China to fight against Japan. Also, like @Carking the 6th said, breaking up N. China into 10 different nations would just make Japan's path to victory a lot easier.

Deb wrote:

I suggest that in HWW, Nationalist China should be broken up into several factions to represent the warlord states that existed pre-WW2. These included the Ma Clique, Gansu, Ningxia, and more.

Woah, while the conversation may be flawed this is in no way Sinophobia. Calling someone racist over a minor historical mistake is a huge waste of that word, and makes the word racist itself-and racists too, far more normalized and less cardinal and contemptuous than it truly is.