Sorry but China is about as monolithic as you can get. The CCP had an incredibly tight control over the entire country. It doesn’t allow anything except for a monolithic view.
Local officials are highly corrupt and also are terrified something they are responsible for will come to the attention of the central leadership in a bad way. Thus they will bodge things for personal gain against the policies of the central leadership, and will try to ensure the central leadership don’t hear about things they very much want to hear about.
This is a terribly high risk strategy, but it’s the only one that actually works. That’s the problem with corrupt bureaucracies.
Of course once central leadership is aware of a situation they can mobilise vast resources and have absolute power to impose whatever strategy they choose. Anything or anyone in the way gets flattened. This is now happening in Hong Kong.
> The CCP had an incredibly tight control over the entire country.
And your comment below really disagree with one another?
> Of course once central leadership is aware of a situation they can mobilise vast resources and have absolute power to impose whatever strategy they choose. Anything or anyone in the way gets flattened.
I'm totally ignorant on this matter but to my reading there seems to be more in common between your two viewpoints than not.
Here is a report titled "Understanding china's political system"
Which doesn't really square up with the extensive border smuggling operations into and out of China, the defusion of illegal portable media players and thumbdrives carrying outside news, or the methamphetamine epidemic they're suffering.
And yet somehow even the most ill-informed Americans hear all about things the CCP doesn't want anyone to hear about. Doesn't sound like very tight control.