China must have been a fucking disaster pre-communism if Japan dunked on them like that
it was barely even a state for a decent period - after the downfall of the Qing dynasty, the first attempt at democracy went to shit, since as a compromise they had to appoint a general from the previous government to be the president, and he tried to reestablish the monarchy with him as the emperor, causing the whole country to dissolve into literal warlord states. The KMT under Kai-Shek officially "united" the country by the '30s, but in practice they didn't actually subjugate all the warlords, they had to cut deals and compromises with some of them, so it still wasn't a completely centralized state.
Additionally, Tibet wasn't part of China yet, Xinjiang was the one warlord state that the KMT never managed to get, Manchuria and a part of Inner Mongolia were under Japanese control even before the war proper, so in reality China was a lot smaller, and even within that territory you still had powerful warlord sub-states like the Ma and Yunnan cliques. It was a complete mess, it's really a testament to the power of communism what achievements were attained from this starting point.
it was barely even a state for a decent period - after the downfall of the Qing dynasty, the first attempt at democracy went to shit, since as a compromise they had to appoint a general from the previous government to be the president, and he tried to reestablish the monarchy with him as the emperor, causing the whole country to dissolve into literal warlord states. The KMT under Kai-Shek officially "united" the country by the '30s, but in practice they didn't actually subjugate all the warlords, they had to cut deals and compromises with some of them, so it still wasn't a completely centralized state.
Additionally, Tibet wasn't part of China yet, Xinjiang was the one warlord state that the KMT never managed to get, Manchuria and a part of Inner Mongolia were under Japanese control even before the war proper, so in reality China was a lot smaller, and even within that territory you still had powerful warlord sub-states like the Ma and Yunnan cliques. It was a complete mess, it's really a testament to the power of communism what achievements were attained from this starting point.