It sounds like that's what I'm talking about. It was Imperial -> ROC -> PRC, not Imperial -> PRC.

The only progress was ROC. PRC was worse.

It's like saying "Oh you don't like Trump fucking up everything in our government so it's way more authoritarian? Well it's much better than when the US was imperial England, so it's still progress."

There's a step missing.

As much as I despise the PRC, thank you for making this point. It always bothers me when people ignore the progress made in the modern era - things may be horrible now, but goddamn were they worse in the past.