What went wrong with both the Republic and People's Republic

Taiwan is not a dictatorship anymore. At any time, it was never as bad as communist China.
The answer is in Communism.

Taiwan because it needed to be held as a base for further Chinese invasion, which required dictatorial power to get the Taiwanese moving and suppress local warlordism once the mainland was reached. Jiang Jieshi had a policy of dictatorship until China could be normalised.
As for why the communists won, they were better operators, more fluid, gained themselves more legitimacy, and got tons of weapons from Russia.
They also had a tremendous intelligence service, believe me.

The KMT had no democratic legacy. Sun and Chiang subscribed to a belief (whose name is unfortunately slipping my mind) that China was not ready for a democratic republic and required a dictatorship beforehand, to prepare the country for eventual democracy. And this wasn't necessarily like a military coup for a few months or years, but was intended to be long-term. Exactly as it played out in Taiwan.

IIRC Chiang actually went to the USSR to evaluate Marxism-Leninism-Revisionism but decided that it wasn't the right system for China.

>>1938192
>>1938212
I know the ROC right now isn't but at the time KMT came to power, it was already a noinal dictatorship.

>>1938218
I guess with the long civil war and the political fractures they could have had a point.

Problem was, how do you stop a period of emergency power from becoming permanent?

>>1938173

Because those claims were just that, nominal ones to satisfy western powers they had to deal with.

They never "devolved" into dictatorships, they were always advocates of the one party system.

Also, for Leninist parties such as the KMT and the CCP, democracy is intra-party, not societly.

ROC is a full functioning democracy today and the CCP holds fairly transparent local elections at a village level for over 700,000 villages. However, the CCP has zero intention on allowing this to go any further.

File: OMaA463_Chinese_Warlord_Armies_1911-30-21.jpg (907KB, 1876x2576px) Image search: [Google]

907KB, 1876x2576px

>>1938173
Because Sun Yat-Sen was an Idealistic Goody Two Shoes who think China will just follow muh nationalism and muh democracy, without even planning to organize an actual fucking military.

Chiang Kai-Shek was a product of ROC Weakness, so he whipped it to shape. A dictator and a stronkman was necessary to fight the warlords of China.

PRC are communists, so fuck obviously it descended into dictatorship.

But to call both ROC and PRC Chinas dictatorships today is ludicrous. ROC is a bonafide republic. While PRC isnt one, the PRC lacks a fucking dictator, in addition the PRC practices "Hierarchical Democracy." Direct elections happen up to the local government level. Said representatives elect cunts on a national level. In addition, there is no more autocrat up there, more like an oligarchy of technocrats and various old hands.

>>1938218
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dang_Guo