Post Qing/Early Republican China was an absolute mess of competing factions, and it’s here that the CCP - with strong Russian backing was born.

The 1920s and 30s saw the government of the Republic of China decide that defending itself from Japan was less important than crushing the Communists, and was embroiled in civil war (and a continuation of the warlord battles consolidating power post-Qing collapse) with both sides receiving foreign support.

In the end, the Japanese invasion became big enough Chaing Kai-shek was forced to work with/not actively fight against the CCP, which the Communists took as an advantage to resupply and restock and engage in guerilla war against Japan while letting the Republic’s forces waste manpower and supplies with the pitched battles, so the Communists were able to overwhelm the Chinese Government in the reopening of the civil war after the end of the Second World War.

Early Communist China spent its life on a war footing, expecting (quite validly as declassified US documents show) the Korean War to push into China itself if the UN forces weren’t held in the peninsula, or the Civil War to warm up again with Chiang trying to retake the mainland with US backing.

This led all led to, from during the Long March in the first part of the Chinese Civil War and into Mao’s rule of the PRC, the establishment of a strong authoritarian government ideology. And while after the failing of the Great Leap Forwards and the resulting famine, led to Mao’s politiking ending the push to a less centralised power body with the Cultural Revolution and his taking back centralised power over the country.

Mao’s legacy has lingered, and the '89 protests led to a decided nailing shut of the slow shift wider democratic rule in the PRC, at least until Xi is gone and his picked successor is deposed, as the CCP feel that remaining in power is more important than anything else.