Canton in 2300 AD

[general_tiu]

Um, guys, I'm not actually that new to the 2300 Ad world, but I've never played the game because I don't have the money.

Question: was Canton in 2300 the present-day Republic of China?

 

[Waldemar]

No, it is one of the three post- WWIII successor states to the People's Republic of China.

Manchuria is northern China, parts of Central Asia and parts of Siberia

Canton is southern China

China is a buffer state sandwhiched between them by the Yellow river

 

[general_tiu]

But then, they didn't mention how did Canton spring up. Besides, Taiwan wan't mentioned, and it was supposed to be included with Canton, right?

 

[Dunryc]

Maybe the 2300/Twilight Timeline will help to clear things up:

1995 - WW III, The Twilight War, began.

1997 - Nuclear exchanges - a limited nuclear war between Russia, China, and the U.S.A.

...

2020 - Left alone once the USSR had retreated during the Twilight War, but supported by the Ukraine, Armenia declared itself a nation (carved out of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey), and absorbed the rest of the Caucasas. The Kurds likewise declared themselves a nation, incorporating parts of Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

2030 - The Indochina Action. Canton moved to occupy Indochina's oil fields, but was forced back by the French.

2038 - Kamchatka and the Pacific coast regions, ignored by Russia, declared their independence as the Far Eastern Republic.

2048 - Manchuria occupied part of Siberia claimed (but abandoned) by Russia, along the Amur River.

...

Please have a look here (Twilight War):

http://sewell_thomas.tripod.com/2300/index.html

...
In this world, Gorbechev died in the 1980s and the Soviet Union did not fall apart at the beginning of the last decade. Instead, the Soviet Union drifted into a war with China.
...
China was broken up by the Twilight War and eventually coalesced into three nations: Manchuria, Canton, and a remnant "China" between the Hwang He and Yangtze rivers. Manchuria is the most powerful of the three and the largest, including not only the traditional Manchurian provinces but the Area around Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang, Tibet, and quite a large portion of the formerly Russian areas including Vladivostok. Manchuria is one of the leading powers in space as well. Canton is a lesser power but still dynamic. The remainder of old China has become a sleepy backwater.

 

[Marchand]

I'd be really interested in a Chinese person's view of 2300AD's China (or even all three of them). Is the scenario even remotely plausible? My guess: "not very". Much as I love the 2300 setting, some of the paring-down of big powers required to make a world where the likes of Britain and Germany are big-shots again is a bit hard to swallow. (And that writing as a proud Brit!)

 

[epicenter00]

I'd be really interested in a Chinese person's view of 2300AD's China (or even all three of them). Is the scenario even remotely plausible? My guess: "not very". Much as I love the 2300 setting, some of the paring-down of big powers required to make a world where the likes of Britain and Germany are big-shots again is a bit hard to swallow. (And that writing as a proud Brit!)

Hear hear. I agree wholeheartedly, Marchand. I'd like to read that as well.

If you look at the types of products GDW put out during its history, you can tell GDW's core designers had a fixation on the world around the age of European Colonialism. You had Space: 1889, Traveller was very much an Age of Sail game, even Twilight: 2000 had all sorts of nutters thinking they were various personalities from America around the same period and an (excessive in my opinion) emphasis on the re-emergence of black powder weaponry.

2300 was in many ways Space: 1889 with "futuristic" technology. A brief flip-through of Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook shows a definite slanting of the table towards recreating a world order roughly similar to Europe before World War 1. My friends and I have a number of theories on why this was, ranging from marketing to plain old Eurocentricism (it's not "racism" per se - have anyone from Canada read that section in the Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook and see if they don't shake their head or laugh out loud, it's really bad - it reads like an American social studies textbook from the 1970s). Either way, the trend is that non-historical non-European powers can garner power, but for whatever reason they seem to be content to be second place (or third, fourth, or ...) to the Western Europeans.

Africa somehow manages to still be marginalized and colonized in 2300. Africa (besides "good neighbor" Azania) does so little you can sum up the continent in a single sentence. Bad deal, GDW.

Sadly, besides some fantasy-driven "peace to the Mideast" view, the "arab" world doesn't really do much more than Africa.

South America strives mightily around the first missions to Alpha Centauri, enough to challenge the ESA when nobody else could. There's hints that Brazil and Argentina are heavily industrialized and modern nations in 2300 from looking at weapons listings and descriptions of the Rio Plata War. However, by 2300 they're marginalized again buying second- and third-hand starships to do their interstellar commerce and flying 100 year old warships. What the heck happened? I can accept that perhaps their sun has set and they're in the twilight of their power. So why is Western Europe still mighty throughout it all?

Asia's even worse. Most of it literally just sits there as a convenient battlefield for a cast of nations that sounds suspiciously like the hooligans in China around the time of the Boxer Rebellion (replacing the US with France). India is some strange feudal relic with lots of ministates somehow constantly fighting each other for 300 years while the rest of the world moves on. China splitting into three separate states, Manchuria fulfilling the role of the "Soviet Union of the East" (militarized, aggressive, but handily they're inferior technologically to Europe so you can be sure they'll be defeated by "our side"), while Canton and China seem to be like most nations and just seem to be content to sit there and do absolutely nothing for the next 300 years. Japan returns to its un-Democratic roots as a bunch of hostile militants - I suppose we should be glad that GDW didn't list Taiwan and Korea as Japanese colonies - the Philippines as part of Japan seems questionable enough to me (and I say that as a Japanese person myself), I mean, enough is enough GDW!

 

[mbrinkhues]

Strange, last I looked at 2300AD:

+ Stellar expansion was based on who has Tantalium and who has not

+ Japan was a colonial power but no mention that it was along 1930s lines

+ Both Manchuria and Canton had colonies

+ At least on of the Arabian Nations had colonies/outposts

+ Azania was actually a mixed race/predominantly <insert PC term> nation, not Bore-Run South Africa

+ Quite a bit of the why/how Africa got short-handed again is quite logical within the timeline. How much of it could survive suddenly loosing all First World Imports?

+ South/Middle America actually is quite strong in space

====================

As for the rest, a game has to sell and most people don't care to play <insert obscure African nation> explorers in space. GDW had enough problems making the USA a second class power (resulting in stuff like Operation Overblown and Mission Arcturus)

Ironically 2320s one weak point with my group is the rise of America and the fall of the European nations - nobody here wants to play an Ami.

 

[Plankowner]

I always considered Canton to be the Commercial parts of China, including Taiwan and Hong Kong. Manchuria was the Military part of China and "China" was the left over parts...

In my version of 2300, I broke up the USA even further, creating a new nation of Pacifica, consisting of Northern California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska with parts of Idaho, Montana and Nevada (basically everything west of the Continental Divide). Texas included Oklahoma and there was an independent "Deseret" formerly Utah. French Quebec was also independent, but the rest of the US and Canada were now one country. I gave the Canadian Colonies to Pacifica and allied them with Manchuria, that fractionalization of the old US and Canada greatly reduced the power in the American Arm.

I increased the tensions in the European Arm, thus reducing the size of their colonies a bit and made the Chinese Arm the dominate space region.

 

[epicenter00]

Strange, last I looked at 2300AD:

+ Stellar expansion was based on who has Tantalium and who has not

Not quite. That's pointed out when it's convenient to the 2300 writers but glossed over otherwise. To my knowledge, most nations in Europe don't have large Tantalum deposits. No, people who really want it have to be getting it from somewhere else ... perhaps through this thing called trade? If the Europeans can do it, why can't anyone else?

+ Japan was a colonial power but no mention that it was along 1930s lines

There's a mention in the Earth/Cybertech sourcebook that the Japanese return to the "old" values of absolute obedience, veneration of the Emperor, and strong re-armament following the Twilight War. These are certainly the kind of values that came in force in 1930s Japan. The Japanese annexing the Philippines seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Certainly, stranger things have happened in history (like ask someone in the 1930s if Germany and France could be such strong partners in a single organization like the EU and people probably couldn't imagine it) but that part's always been a stretch to me. Perhaps something like an Economic Federation (no jokes about Greater Co-Prosperity Spheres, please) but not outright annexation. It's obvious that GDW's "The Game" had a lot more do with the boardgame "Risk" than anything else.

+ Both Manchuria and Canton had colonies

They do, but they're certain second fiddle to the Europeans. The Manchus in particular are continually referred to as technologically backwards and poor and their colonies not well supported compared to (you guessed it) those of France and (and your favorite, mbrinkhues ) Bavarians. A single sub-state of Germany being able to fund a colonies better than Manchuria? I find that a little to Eurocentric for my tastes.

+ At least on of the Arabian Nations had colonies/outposts

Arabia has one on the Eber world.

+ Azania was actually a mixed race/predominantly <insert PC term> nation, not Bore-Run South Africa

Ah, I didn't say it was run by Boers. Just that they seemed to be the only African nation that had done anything besides be the possession of some European power or an unimportant backwater and only because they play ball with the Europeans.

+ Quite a bit of the why/how Africa got short-handed again is quite logical within the timeline. How much of it could survive suddenly loosing all First World Imports?

Things would be tough in Africa, yet perhaps without the meddling of the First World bringing out the very worst in human nature they finally might be able to sort things out. Azania (depending on how badly it was savaged during the Twilight War - I'd imagine not as severely as Eurasia or North America) could have reindustrialized early, then spread out to develop the rest of Africa to help exploit the minerals there and to create markets for goods close to home. This would have led to a "brain drain" as much of Africa's best and brightest move to Azania, but a sufficient number might move back to start developing things in their home countries.

+ South/Middle America actually is quite strong in space

If they're so strong, where are all the modern South/Middle American products? They seem to be a reasonable leader in laser weaponry, but exactly how long are these guys going to continue using those destroyers they made to challenge the ESA? Look at ships they're using in the Star Cruiser scenarios and for how long.

As for the rest, a game has to sell and most people don't care to play <insert obscure African nation> explorers in space. GDW had enough problems making the USA a second class power (resulting in stuff like Operation Overblown and Mission Arcturus)

Ironically 2320s one weak point with my group is the rise of America and the fall of the European nations - nobody here wants to play an Ami.

That's most certainly true. They're writing for their market, ironically. One of the reasons why 2300 probably didn't sell was that GDW's primary market was the US and Americans didn't like playing second fiddle. 2320 sort of fixes that (by making the Kafer War sort of like WW1/WW2) at the cost of alienating European gamers (who tend to be quite loyal and less fickle that the ones here). Apologies to Colin, but that sort of falls into the same historical trap that 2300 did.

Personally, I'd liked to have seen a more cosmopolitan world in 2300 instead of a rehash of European history. The entire tone of the Colonial Atlas is that the Frontier worlds are rough and tumble, but of course, with the triumph of European technology and power, conditions in the French Arm aren't as terrible as those primitives in the Chinese Arm or those bumblers in that dead end American Arm with their multitude of marginal planets and nearly failed colonies.

Indeed, a great way to make the future sound more like the future is have your "Bokamba-Mercer" and "Weyland-Yutani" corporations. The emphasis could have still been on the French/American Arms, but mention of how Manchu or Brazilian colonies were so much better off could have changed the entire tone of the game without overshadowing things.

 

[mbrinkhues]

The Bavarians are explained quite easily: The rest of Germany hoped that by funding them colonies we would finally get rid of them

The books often make it quite clear that Tantalium is the make or brake element. And that some of the European nations only have it due to their ESA membership.

 

[kapitan]

future history

well, since this thread moved a little from china in 2300 towards the general geopolitical situation in gdw future history, i'd like to offer my five cents.
generally i must say, that (and you surely can prove me wrong by citing the book) i never got the impression that the chinese were too backwater in 2300. second rate power, okay (but the world stands only so many superpowers), but strong and with a huge potential (and i find it more interestin to play for a power with potential than for one at its peak). also, i find the breakup of china not unreasonable.
but i would like to offer a different look at what gdw did to create their world, even if i cant totally diagree with what you wrote.
one could say, what gdw did was ingenious (i am provoking)
if you come up with a new world, you could go different paths: you could extrapolate this new world more or less linear from our world, but then you end up more or less with "todays world plus spaceships" (and i am afraid a little that this is what 2320 is gonna do, when fixing the "america is no superpower anymore" issue)
you could write a totally original future world from "scratch" (well, not scratch, since you whant to link it to the past), but that would require a bunch of really, really creative people and a LOT of sourcebooks.
or you could lend your setting from the past, an epoche everyone has an impression of and were only a few words will spark a whole bunch of associations, the readers mix of imagination and pseudo-historical knowledge filling the gaps.
i think gdw did the latter, and did so not too bad. the world in 2300 so closely resembles the world of the 1870s. alien enough to be more than today with fancy lasers while close enough so everyone could relate to it.
the events of the 1870 eventually led to ww1, so we are again living in a highly unstable (thus exiting) time in 2300 again ;-)
actually, this background was the reason why i liked 2300 so much (i played only one campaign back then, but that went on for years and was set in the secret service milieu from before reunification to the end of the kafer war - so LOTS of politics were played)
as long as you cant write something completely original (and that would be really hard), i think this option isnt the worst.
when i read the 2320 (which in most parts i like), i was afraid colin (no offense meant) will be going for the first option with the us beeing the superpower and the world pretty much as it is today. especially when i read the "germany is militaristic and genocidal" part, i went "oh, no, not THAT story again" (i dont mean to be rude. just those were my first thoughts)

and one more thought about the tantalum: as far as i understand it, tantalum isnt traded at all. france, britain and germany (or bavaria, it just hurts my guts thinking of it ;-) i dont feel different 'bout them than mbrinkhues *grin*) get it only from esa (as azania is a member, which explains why it is top notch in africa)

well, generally, i do agree 2300 was eurocentric (but so was the world in 1870), but if you want to create a politically explosive world it is gonna by centric somewhere. and dont think a us-superpower would be less eurocentric. i think, folks outside europe and america dont really distinguish so much (when my girl (she is chinese) is really mad at me, she says: "you ameuropeans are SO <insert_undesireable_attribute_here>!")

 

[Marchand]

Wow - I kicked something off there!

Apologies to OP for thread divergence - hope you got what you needed.

Just to add to what epicenter00 had to say, it's the treatment of India that I'm least happy with. "It's split up into 6 or 7 countries that we can't be bothered to describe properly, but it doesn't matter because all they do is fight pointless wars with each other all day. Australia on the other hand..."

I agree that the 2300 setting is basically the latter 19th century, but with spaceships. I also agree with kapitan that it should create a wonderfully unsettling experience for players... (like the modern world but just shifted slightly).

Although I wouldn't know, because I've never actually got to play it... (woe is me)

 

[BwapTED]

Hear hear. I agree wholeheartedly, Marchand. I'd like to read that as well.

If you look at the types of products GDW put out during its history, you can tell GDW's core designers had a fixation on the world around the age of European Colonialism. You had Space: 1889, Traveller was very much an Age of Sail game, even Twilight: 2000 had all sorts of nutters thinking they were various personalities from America around the same period and an (excessive in my opinion) emphasis on the re-emergence of black powder weaponry.

2300 was in many ways Space: 1889 with "futuristic" technology. A brief flip-through of Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook shows a definite slanting of the table towards recreating a world order roughly similar to Europe before World War 1. My friends and I have a number of theories on why this was, ranging from marketing to plain old Eurocentricism (it's not "racism" per se - have anyone from Canada read that section in the Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook and see if they don't shake their head or laugh out loud, it's really bad - it reads like an American social studies textbook from the 1970s). Either way, the trend is that non-historical non-European powers can garner power, but for whatever reason they seem to be content to be second place (or third, fourth, or ...) to the Western Europeans.

Africa somehow manages to still be marginalized and colonized in 2300. Africa (besides "good neighbor" Azania) does so little you can sum up the continent in a single sentence. Bad deal, GDW.

Sadly, besides some fantasy-driven "peace to the Mideast" view, the "arab" world doesn't really do much more than Africa.

South America strives mightily around the first missions to Alpha Centauri, enough to challenge the ESA when nobody else could. There's hints that Brazil and Argentina are heavily industrialized and modern nations in 2300 from looking at weapons listings and descriptions of the Rio Plata War. However, by 2300 they're marginalized again buying second- and third-hand starships to do their interstellar commerce and flying 100 year old warships. What the heck happened? I can accept that perhaps their sun has set and they're in the twilight of their power. So why is Western Europe still mighty throughout it all?

Asia's even worse. Most of it literally just sits there as a convenient battlefield for a cast of nations that sounds suspiciously like the hooligans in China around the time of the Boxer Rebellion (replacing the US with France). India is some strange feudal relic with lots of ministates somehow constantly fighting each other for 300 years while the rest of the world moves on. China splitting into three separate states, Manchuria fulfilling the role of the "Soviet Union of the East" (militarized, aggressive, but handily they're inferior technologically to Europe so you can be sure they'll be defeated by "our side"), while Canton and China seem to be like most nations and just seem to be content to sit there and do absolutely nothing for the next 300 years. Japan returns to its un-Democratic roots as a bunch of hostile militants - I suppose we should be glad that GDW didn't list Taiwan and Korea as Japanese colonies - the Philippines as part of Japan seems questionable enough to me (and I say that as a Japanese person myself), I mean, enough is enough GDW!

I am very much inclined to go the other way with it.

France is the European power of note, and that's in large part because of its African empire/network of client states.

German states and the UK? Only about as important as minor developing world countries today. No colonies, or fewer colonies.


The American Arm is so-called because a coalition of South, Central, and North American nations have explored it and settled it. Spanish and Portuguese would be probably be more commonly spoken than English in that stretch of space, but a good number of ''gringos'' made it out to space...
on Brazilian and Mexican ships.

The Manchurians would be a bigger deal, a rising power not only in the Far East but in space.


Not sure about the rest. I'd have to see the books. I'm going by memory from the last time I saw the material...which was back when there was still a real life USSR.

These are my initial thoughts. I might change my mind after looking at the material.

 

[McPerth]

Asside from any comercial strategy, 2300AD was based on first half of 1980's geostrategic situation as a starting point, with the Twilight war thrown on it. Now things have changed and I guess so has our perception of what is possible.

Without entering in nowdays RW politics:

It's hard to me to believe that China, one of the most ancient nations in the world would be so fragmented in the twilight war and would not rejoin latter (as it happened to US when fragmented along Milgov, Civgov and New America in its background).

While it's hard for us to see Japan and Philipines uniting in 2300AD background, I guess so would ahve been for the average citizen in the firts half of 20^th century to see Germany and France as allies...

About India, in MgT 2300AD is told that it was external (moslty Manchurian and Irani) influence and meddling what kept it as warring states in all this time, so preventing it to become a power again. I also guess that the Indian-Pakistani war was one of the most vicious in the Twilight war.

As for Europe (in his case, as someone has already said, I include US), as much as historically we have killed one another, there has historicaly been a sense of "us vs them" when confronted with othr powers since the First Exploration Age (in 2300AD terminology). Also, in 1980 eyes, this zone had them main knowledge/investigation respostory of all humanity, adn the fact of France remaining more or less intact would have helped to recover.

 

[Peter Schutze]

>While it's hard for us to see Japan and Philipines uniting in 2300AD background,

this is one of the things I think was *underdone* from an 1980's standpoint. Back in the 80's Japan held the economic powerhouse status for many countries that china is growing into now

despite their history most filipinos would happily have turned to a stable japan as a substitute for the USA. if you think im nuts try googling the government ranks that ferdinand marcos's family holds and have held since his ouster

since many of the island countries of the pacific are below the radar in 2300 materials Ive always included them as part of Japan

 

[McPerth]

>While it's hard for us to see Japan and Philipines uniting in 2300AD background,

this is one of the things I think was *underdone* from an 1980's standpoint. Back in the 80's Japan held the economic powerhouse status for many countries that china is growing into now

Here you touch one important point to 2300AD background: it must be seen with the early 1980's as starting point, and that is quite different from nowdays (e.g. in the 1980's China had quite less influence on Africa than it has today).

despite their history most filipinos would happily have turned to a stable japan as a substitute for the USA. if you think im nuts try googling the government ranks that ferdinand marcos's family holds and have held since his ouster

since many of the island countries of the pacific are below the radar in 2300 materials Ive always included them as part of Japan

That's quite posible. IIRC Japan was relatively untuched by the Twilight War, and was left with a sizable merchant fleet (as I understand it it became the main fleet in the Pacific), so your scenario is quite believable, as it would have used this strong asset to make the Pacific it's own free commerce zone, with no competitors, so ending up by economically dominating the area.