Empire Without Sunset?

Mar 17, 1946, the C-47 VIP transport (CAF s/n 222) exploded in the mid-air near Nanking, none of the 11 on-board survived, included the Nationalist intelligence chief Dai Li (戴笠).  Amidst four factions struggled for dominance of the post-WWII Chinese Navy, Britphobic Dai was the figurehead of the pro-American faction led by Chiang Kai-Shek.  Chiang’s regime had already been hopelessly infested by Red’s spies, right under Dai counterintelligence’s nose.  Even Dai’s arch enemy, Mao ZeDong, was not a de facto inheritor of his death.  An unproven theory suggested the C-47 s/n 222 was blasted by a incendiary device planted by the British M-16, carried aboard by the unaware pilot. Di’s mysterious crash was only beneficial to the sunset empire for paving the way for its reclaim to China.

As wishful thinking to restore its pre-war imperial adventures, the British invested a flotilla for rebuilding the Chinese Navy and trained its cadets at Portsmouth in 1946.  Facing a huge US naval aid to China, the Royal Navy reluctantly proposed one light cruiser, two corvettes, and two T-class submarines as gift to the exhausted Chinese Navy.  However, most of the bubble flotilla were delayed then canceled under various excuses.  Furthermore, when one of the corvette (靈甫)- which had already been operated by the Chinese Navy- refueled in Hong Kong in April, 1949, UK simply confiscated it.  Eventually this ex-HMS Mendip ended up in Israel as Haifa.

Despite facing unavoidable setbacks in China, the UK had relentlessly pursued its impulsive agenda to Far East from Hong Kong.  Since Malayan “Emergency”  began, the Sunderland flying boat patrol bomber squadron transfer from Hong Kong carried out hundreds of sorties over Malaya.  During the guerrilla war in 1948-60 the Chinese freedom fighters-who were treated as disposable trash after their community had borne the brunt of fighting the Japanese occupation-were painted as Communist insurgency by UK and overprivileged Malaysian.  The anti-British liberation war draws the Commonwealth forces and British Special Air Service into the fight against jungle fighters, they were eventually crushed under the colonial force’s modern fire firepower and war crimes.  Just like Britain assisted Japanese building its navy and air power, backing up Hitler in the Munich Conference, exporting jet engine to Stalin, provocateur always backfired its self.