Why alternate post WW2 US presidencies tend towards China screws?

I couldn't stop myself to wonder how the tendency in writing US post World War timelines is usually going towards China being screwed. I just wish to inquire more in detail why.

Events like Korean war, ideology/border war with the USSR, Vietnam wars and cultural revolution are sufficient reasons to send on tilt China if just one of them went bad for Beijing? Or eventually, China on the eyes of you is so really vulnerable respect to the Soviet Union? (which makes me wonder also how here Soviet screw TLs post WW2 are rare)

Or generally, whenever the US are going on those scenaries (better ATL presidencies to internal distopian scenaries) is usually considered as counterweight a Chinese collapse or crisis? Is because without the Mao-Nixon agreements or the defeat of the far-left wing in the cultural revolution, the general opinion is China wouldn't fare better or stay in a certaib stability without those or other events?
 
Here's my take. The majority of TLs centered on a country depict said country being in a particular way, "better" that OTL. This means that most US post WW2 TLs tend to involve USA-wanks, and thus the defeat of her enemies as the author percieves them to be, of which foremost are China and Russia. the OTL Soviet collapse was a fairly big Russia-screw, so Soviet screws are generally "been there, done that"; while China-screws in comparison are more "alternate history-like", so to say.
 

Archibald

Banned
Maybe its because Mao was really, really a crazy S.O.B that managed to screw China two times in a decade - Great Leap Forward and Cultural revolution) killing 50 million people in the process ?

The scary thing with 1964-1978 China is the cultural revolution mixed with nuclear weapons (A-bomb 1964 and H-bomb in 1967) Neither Hitler nor Staline nor Pol Pot (the other three members of the 20th century league of butchers) ever had nuclear weapons. Mao and his cronies had.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards_(China)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
A litany of horrors. You really don't want such kind of fanatized people toying with nuclear weapons.
 
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raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Stalin did have atomic weapons, whether or not he had a thermonuclear.

Actually when did Mao get his H-bomb?
 
in 1964! There is a wonderful propaganda video called the Little Red Video. President Kennedy had explored a joint US-Soviet strike to prevent this.
 
because China got really really lucky.

They managed to successfully thread the needle and survive some really scary times it could have easily gone much much worse.
 
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