Introduction to the Committee

"The Warlords: China in Crisis" is an alternate history crisis committee set in the year 1925. The term alternate history is used to describe a fictional genre, in which a change in some minor historical events produces an incredible series of changes in the world, diverging from Our Timeline (OTL) and creating a new, alternate world with its alternate Timeline (ATL). The Point of Divergence (POD) refers to the departure points (the change) that led to the creation of the ATL.

Alternate history have been used as a literary device by historians to explore how changes in the past may have affected events in OTL. With our scenario, we explore the possibilities of an early conclusion to Warlordism in China. Central to our POD is Sun Yatsen, regarded by many Chinese as the founder of Modern China. What if, instead of dying from liver cancer, he either avoids it entirely or manages to survive for 5 more years? To understand this POD’s significance, here is a brief history of the OTL leading up to the POD:
 * OTL: With the Republic of China announced in 1912, the country slipped into anarchy as local military governors break off from the central government. Known as Warlords, they fought against each other in alliances called Cliques.


 * POD: All of this changed when in October 1924, a provisional government was created with Sun invited to lead talks on national reunification. Whereas this failed utterly in OTL due to his early death, Sun’s survival in ATL allowed the talks to succeed. It led to the creation of a high level committee lead by Sun to reunify China. However, much has to be done as a mixture of domestic and foreign crises threaten to break the country apart.

Therefore, committee delegates are tasked to bring all of China under the control of the Republican government. They must work as a coherent team in order to survive this struggle.

A note on word pronunciation: The Pinyin system is the main phonetic system for translating Chinese into English. It uses the mandarin dialect to Romanized Chinese words. The other phonetic system is the Wades Giles system, which uses the Cantonese dialect for romanticizing. Most of the names in this background will be using the Pinyin system, except for ones that were famous in its Wades Giles format (i.e. Sun Yatsen)