A colony of two powers in the previous 2 centuries and a fence not to keep the colonisers out but to keep out the relatives. So yeah, you’ve been propagandised somewhat 😛
I don’t know much of China’s history, but I’ll take a simplified swing, why not??
The Qing dynasty was destroyed by Queen Victoria and the drug lords she empowered, who eventually became the Nationalist party (starts with K in pinyin?? I should look it up) But they weren’t good at keeping control. Even though they became landed gentry along with what was left of the aristocracy. How they treated the populace got worse (think USA right now) So many eventually had to run to Hong Kong/Taiwan in the 1910 or 20s and again after the war to save themselves.
During the same period, the Academics created what is now the CPC, but the CPC were also shit at the job eventually got pushed out of the cities when they went to bush created division within the country folk. They were successful eventually, mainly due to the famines in WW2 that were created by the landed gentry (helped by the invasion of course) but a good parallel is the Irish famine. It’s the same playbook rich fucking over the poor. So that allowed Mao to gain control
The CPC learned the language of division didn’t really take lessons that Marx, Lenin or Confucius tried to teach, so the Cultural Revolution didn’t achieve what it could have as it allowed people with grudges to have others locked up on spurious charges. However, that wasn’t just the fault of the CPC, if you look at the violence everywhere in the 60s and 70s this wasn’t just party political. The violence of the wars still rippled if you’ve ever watched, This is England/Romper Stomper/American History X it was a violent time and whilst those movies portray the violence as mostly racial, that’s far too simplistic.
If you read what the Foxconn arsehole wrote when he wanted to run in the Taiwan elections, the ideology of his forebears is still in place. He holds most Han actually lets expand that humans as lesser than.
The west is ruled by a gerontocracy that no longer allows new blood into the system beyond the dolts like Trudeau/Scholz/Macron, so like the Politburos of both China and the USSR in the 80’s, the collapse is going to get really, really messy and as the populace is far more ignorant of the propaganda compared to those in Asia. It’s probably going to expand beyond Ukraine/Gaza however the good thing is the war profiteering means we don’t have the weapons. Ukraine has already depleted most stocks, but we still have the worst weapons. Enough of this I’m bouncing all over…
Watched a movie the other day https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515202 if you like slow - burn slice of life movies, it’s a nice watch. It’s autobiographical - shows life during the revolution. I’m a similar age my childhood was a lot more violent than hers though so was a tad envious to be fair as her home life was nice EDIT: Except the whole parents locked up for probably nothing more than a neighbours grudge.
But I played on the train tracks and at the oil/petrol terminals in Melbourne as a kid, so was oddly familiar. I’m really rambling huh…