A few outside observers thought the post-war years might bring liberal democracy to China. It was wishful thinking akin to the naive nonsense Westerners wrote during the early days of the recent ‘Arab Spring’, which, as with China, was based on a lack of understanding of the internal dynamics of the people, politics and geography of the region. Instead, nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek and Communist armies under Mao Zedong battled for supremacy until 1949, when the Communists emerged victorious and the Nationalists withdrew to Taiwan. That same year Radio Beijing announced: ‘The
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