Imperium OffTopicum VII

[UPDATE #7 2076

Great Asian War - Chinese Theater from the view of a Latino

It was a cold and stormy night in Yantai, near the east coast of China in Shandong province. Zhou Xinran, however, did not fear the cold as she was well prepared with a Latino-Nation-crafted thermal suit, hidden underneath of her unassuming business casual suit. In typical Chinese style, she carried an umbrella that doubled as both a sun umbrella and a rain umbrella, and she put it to good use now as she marched in a down-trodden fashion, so as to not attract suspicion, on her way to the train station, from which she would catch a ride to Shijiazhuang, the capital of the neighbouring Hebei province.

Zhou Xinran was a Chinese national who had been studying for he PhD in Advanced Biochemistry at the internationally-renowned University of Cartagena, located in Colombia, South America, on the border with Panama. She kept tabs on news from both Chinese and other nations' television stations and internet sites and what she saw coming from the Chinese government disgusted her.

The propaganda spread by her home country's government was misleading at best and consisted of outright lies in most cases. ADAS continued to portray Japan as being led by a ruthless dictator, long after his death--a nation that did not support democracy nor the right to free speech--while these things were as far from the truth as could be possible.

It appears that Japan's request to join the so-called The Alliance of Democratic Asian States (ADAS) was not only coldly turned down but somehow twisted into a reason to declare war! Japan had bent to the whims of those in the world who cared, had gone through a tumultuous revolution, and come out on the other side as a democratic nation that put aside the sword, minus its prior dictator, and had closet communists and other voters flock to the flag of freedom, such that they finally felt free and confident to express their opinions without fear of reprisal. Yet, when Japan reached out the hands of friendship, asking for friendly relations with every nation, ADAS saw this change in policy as a weakness and decided to strike while Japan was still vulnerable, hoping to catch them before their could regain the respect of the international community.

Watching aghast, Zhou Xinran was witness to her own government hiding the news of a reformed Japan and presenting forged videos with badly-dubbed changed words which showed Japan as the aggressors in the war! It was so shockingly far from the truth that Zhou Xinran couldn't stomach watching much of it.

To top it all off, after war was announced, all pleas from the Japanese people to at least come to the table and talk were completely ignored. ADAS was interested in one thing and one thing only: the complete and utter annexation of the Japanese lands and the virtual enslavement of the Japanese people.

As events in the world theatre heated up, and as several nations joined together, thereby putting a cold stop to the invasion of Japan, she set aside her studies and got more and more involved in pouring over the news, getting engaged in chat room discussions, and doing her best to inform her fellow countrymen and women of the truth. What concerned her was that her government was still running ads about the cruel Japanese dictator, long since dead, as though he was calling the shots in an international attack on Chinese lands.

Old footage from World War II had been preserved in archives and digitally restored, depicting foreign troops laying slaughter to Chinese people. She knew people in Shandong province and what she heard from them couldn't be further from the truth: the invaders were only interested in engaging the military in an effort to bring the government to reason.

However, the ADAS coalition, publically led by the Chinese Union, declared that its intentions were not to broker peace but instead declared martial law in an effort to further push its perverse goals of bringing more death and destruction to the world. The leader of the Chinese Union maniacally declared that others' understanding of their government was laughably wrong but refused to elaborate when pressed for specifics.

Deciding that typing in chat rooms wasn't getting her voice heard, she vowed to do what it took to free her people from lies and insanity of the current leadership. Xinran got in touch with one of her professors who knew the Governor of the region personally and asked what she could do to help. Before long, she joined a peace coalition that sailed from the Latino Nation to the shores of China, in the hopes of ending this needless conflict in exchange for the truth being published about the changes that had been wrought in Japan.

However, the peace coalition was stonewalled and the Chinese ambassadors refused to give them anything but evasive answers and empty promises, all the while buying time for further war preparations. It was then that she sought out the leadership in the Latino Nation's forces and volunteered her services at helping to take down the corrupt Chinese government from the inside, with the hopes of freeing the Chinese people from their government's tyranny.

Fast-foward to a few minutes prior, where she had been in touch with Ahmet Chagatai of the Kipchak Horde, just after the close of a crash-course session in espionage. At a three-full-day intensive training course, she felt prepared for nothing but had the confidence to be ready for anything. Ahmet's parting words were as much a caution as a reminder: do your best to blend in, keep your true revulsion of the current government hidden, and act with the same dejected air and feeling of hopelessness shared by other Chinese citizens that were forced to get into and stay in a war that none of them really wanted.

It was on this bit of advice that she trudged her way to the train station, despite her air of excitement and expectation about finally being able to contribute to her country's citizens in a significant manner.



Every step of the way was a challenge: the guards patrolling the train station scrutinized her closely and spent ten whole minutes going over her falsified identification papers before letting her pass; the ticket seller twice sent her to the back of the line for having an out-of-province accent, for she herself hailed from south of there, from Lianyungang in Jiangsu province; border guards at the Hebei provincial border stopped the train and searched its passengers thoroughly, putting the citizens through humilitating public strip searches, herself included; and finally, a strict curfew upon arrival in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, that forced her to find immediate lodgings in a flea-ridden hostel adjoining the train station, in which she was hardly able to get any sleep due to the frequent clickety-clacking of trains passing over the rails.

All of these injustices, imposed by the Chinese government's declaration of martial law, were humiliations that she forced her troubled mind to set aside, realizing that her ultimate goal would help the people far more than speaking out against any of these individual injustices could hope to accomplish.

The next day, with her forged credentials, Zhou Xinran was able to gain entrance to the province's main governmental offices.



Fortunately, her training allowed her to target a unsuspecting intern, who more than willingly shared crucial intelligence of exactly where she needed to go and when the relevant person would be out of their office. This part of the plan went surprisingly smoothly, as she was able to gain access to Chinese military intelligence thanks to a login password written conveniently on a sticky note underneath of the official's keyboard tray. Armed with crucial intelligence on the distribution of Chinese forces, Xinran slipped out of the building unnoticed amongst the stream of other down-trodden citizens who were flowing in and out of the building's entrance, each one, herself included, using their id tags as access in and out of the building, past the dozen guards that were manning the intrusive body scanning machines that had been put in place after martial law was declared. Having no need for weapons, she suffered the indignity of the scan both going in and coming out of the building and soon found herself on the streets of Shijiazhuang in a swarm of people.

Her local contact was Baharah Sang, a half-Kipchak, half-Chinese citizen who had taken the time to inform herself of the truth behind the lies and propaganda of the Chinese government and had offered her place as a base of operations for Kipchak Horde and Latino Nation intelligence officers alike.

However, when she arrived, something tickled at the back of her mind and made her keep her distance. "But, what's wrong?" she thought, as the hair stood up on the back of her neck. Then, she noticed the unlatched gate, the slightly ajar door, and the two military officers standing casually on the other side of the street but most definitely staring at Baharah Sang's household. Xinran slunk back into the shadows and watched as a brutally beaten Baharah Sang was dragged out into the street and shoved into a military van that pulled up at the last minute and drove away, all before Xinran could even think to react or do anything to help.

With her contact being hauled away, likely to be further beaten due to the lack of purity of her ethnicity, she was further enraged at her government's injustices and was emboldened to do whatever it took to make the government come to reason and set aside its militaristic ways.

Catching a train back to Yantai was not a good idea; her identification papers authorized her for a visit to see her aunt for a week-long vacation--it would look highly suspcious for her to return after only one day, yet she had to get the information out. Resorting to the emergency backup, she dialed a phone number that offered only a recorded message in Turkish, after which she left brief instructions on the voice mail.


In another part of Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, Berk Korkmaz felt a buzz in his pager. It was there only for the direst of emergencies, so he knew that this matter must be of the utmost importance.

Berk worked for the Kipchak embassy in the city and until the current conflict had been helping to petition for closer ties between his people, the Kipchak Horde, and the Chinese Union, at least until ADAS showed its true warlike tendencies. Recently, he and his fellow countrymen had been put on house arrest inside of the embassy but were allowed to have food delivered in, as long as it was delivered by Chinese citizens working for the embassy.

Checking the voice mail message that his pager had alerted him to, Berk Korkmaz sent instructions to one of the Chinese officials for a batch of pork dumplings, carrot steamed buns, and the fetching of a small package that was to be left taped to the bottom of a nearby park bench.

Soon, the waiting began as he nervously shuffled his feet, hoping against hope that the message would make it through the close scrutiny of the military personnel that had he and his fellow countrymen on lockdown. Fortunately, a bribe of half of the food going to the military guards allowed the remainder of the food, and the crucial message, to be delivered.

Berk could not believe his eyes. He had detailed instructions of the entire Chinese military's distribution. Using a series of encoded phrases, he shared this valuable intelligence over unencrypted phone lines, trusting that the best way to hide something was in plain sight, knowing full well that the conversations would be listened to. Meanwhile, he instructed another fellow countryman to use the encoded phone lines to call home and talk about Chinese government propaganda as a screen for his own discussions. The ploy worked and the complete plans of the Chinese military were laid bare before the commanders of the Kipchak Horde and the Latino Nation. Of course, they shared the intelligence with their allies--allies who were known to the world only as the semi-secret group called The Pythons--such that the entire task force was prepared and fully equiped to end the Chinese threat to peace in the world.

The Great Asian War - Korean Theater (Latino View)
Strike forces had already landed on the beaches of North Korea, but now new troops, fresh from the homelands, were brought to bear, relieving those who had maintained the bunkers and blockades that had kept the remaining Korean military forces at bay.

With nearby staging areas in Korea, eastern China, and the Philippines, the Latinos, Kipchak Horde, and Carthaginians joined together in a pincer movement and struck the Koreans from all sides, causing mass chaos and confusion amongst the enemy.

Korean troops did not know where to head and thus tried to run in two or three directions at once--stumbling over each other in their haste to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, but in their haste just as quickly tripped over each other, putting themselves in vulnerable positions where they were systematically eliminated by enemy fire, or accidentally triggered their own sprays of bullets, causing friendly fire to damage and wound nearly as many Korean troops as the enemies were able to hit in their initial assault.

Pinned down from multiple sides, the Koreans surrendered in waves.

However, communication was sparse and isolated groups continued to fight on, not realising that the war was already lost. Despite this fact, the attackers were well co-ordinated and knew exactly what to do, where to attack, and how to avoid friendly fire. It was as though they had come in with a solid plan, had set clear goals, and communicated amongst each other at each stage the success or failure of each goal, such that relief troops could pour into the regions exactly where they were required to complete each of the initially-failed goals.

The attack was so well co-ordinated that the Korean military commanders were completely caught off guard--many Korean military leaders found themselves facing enemy troops arriving in their command centres before even realising that their bases' troops had been flanked, out-manoeuvred, and thoroughly defeated.

Later, one Korean military commander, who had surrendered and in the future joined the Latino forces, was known to have said "They came upon us like a wave of locusts; there was no way to predict it, no way to stop it, literally nothing that we could do but give ourselves up and hope for their mercy. Oddly enough, troops that surrendered were spared and were soon treated as full citizens as parts of their new respective nations. It was a glorious day, for it was a day that freedom was brought to our lands."


The North Koreans decided to side with the Latinos and willingly joined their fellow countrymen as part of a nation that respected and valued its people highly and used their opinions and ideas for the betterment of the nation's society as a whole.

The South Koreans decided that they wanted to be different for a change and decided to forge for themselves a West Korea and an East Korea, in a bid to be unique across alternate histories everywhere.

The West Koreans were more than happy to join the Communist ranks of the Kipchak Horde and thereby received membership in the Commintern.

Meanwhile, the East Koreans found a welcoming home in the Carthaginian Republic, enjoying universal suffrage and many other important rights as full citizens of the Republic.

At the end of the day, all of the Koreans were happy, except for their forgotten former leader, who is believed to have put a bullet through his brain shortly after news of his forces surrendering in waves reached his ears.​