CKS had the full support of the US.
Ah but he did not have the “full” support for the last 20 years of his reign due to his insistence on using foreign aid to bolster his holding in Nanjing instead of pushing out the Japanese from the mainland to the north and in Burma. He was more concerned with losing power to the communists than losing his country to Japan. While his role was viewed as “democratic” in the eyes of the US media his role was nothing short of a one-party dictatorship that suffered from the same inability of subordinates being able to notify the powers that be of anything even resembling bad news.
It reminds me of the demographic collapse nonsense that people have been spouting for 30 years. It's all such cope, it's pathetic.
No one is seriously claiming that Xi is crazy. However, even perfectly sane and intelligent people tend to make poor decisions when they're fed inaccurate information.
The demographic collapse due to the one child policy is literally happening right now. Their population is aging faster than most of the rest of the world, although their neighbors in East Asia have similar patterns.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/05/key-facts...
For one example, Xi's pointless and counterproductive measures to contain COVID-19 are certainly reminiscent of Mao's four pests campaign. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.