Taiwan is the leftover of the fascist faction, is it not? Not exactly a paragon of Chinese cultural history. We're just looking at a very, very slow civil war.
Since then, they have been a democratic country mostly governed by the DPP ("greens"; formerly an anti-authoritarian dissident movement), which also leads the Taiwan independence movement, which aims at creating a "Republic of Taiwan" rather than a "Republic of China".
That being said, the modern day CCP under Xi's rule has started becoming more conservative, while Taiwan's relatively free political climate has given rise to their own versions of progressive political parties.
> often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
the first part of that is the defining part of fascism - the state ideology. There's also common co-features like authoritarianism, a cult of personality and anti-democratic tendencies but neither are especially universal (for instance with Pinochet and Franco).
It is pretty commonly used to describe just authoritarianism in general though.
I dislike the usage of "fascism" to mean "authoritarianism I disapprove of" (I used to use the word that way). It's an unhelpful word, because people use it in so many ways. Now, I only use it to refer to the Italian state under Mussolini. For other uses, I try to say what I mean.
This is the definition I'm drawing from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palingenetic_ultranationalis...
I agree that it's hard to use european political categories in east asia, but I think the KMT is a neater fit for fascism than a lot of european fascists (e.g. Spain's nationalsts). I think the problem is less an east-west thing and more just that fascism is a really vague category.
[0]: dunno if that counts as an ethnicity, but dunno if that matters.