China isn't a "Actually Existing Socialist" country to be clear. I've lived there, nothing socialist. Parents were stuggling so much just working all day. My maternal grandmother had to take care of me and my older brother.

I don't think the "socialist" thing really can appear out of nowhere. Japan had just destroyed China, I think it's really unrealistic to leap from a war-torn country into a Socialist paradise, just not realistic. Not in this timeline, neither in the "KMT Wins Civil War" timeline.

In the other timeline, it's either with the KMT as the sole party, or with a multiparty democracy, I think it's just gonna be capitalism for most of the 20th century. Then as the country gets richer, there would eventually be calls for more socialist/social democratic policies. If it's a democracy, KMT would eventually lose power (like are struggling with losing power in RoC controlled Taiwan right now) and hypothetically a Social Democratic or Socialist party would get into power democratically. I don't think Socialism would've been acheived by 2025, but I think there would've more social policies helping the poor.

I think the best way to acheive Socialism is to democratically capture an existing prospering "capitalist democracy" and turn it into socialism from the inside. I mean violent revolution has been tried and they have failed. The current China doesn't really have much social programs helping poor people. It's state capitalism. My family was one of those poor families, I remember parents just be away from home all the time, its the reason why I fight with my older brother a lot.

Norway, although not entirely "socialist", has more success with socialist policies because it was slowly reformed, it was done bottom-up. I mean you can't really just force "democracy" or "socialism" to the people, it has to be grassroot. I don't think "Vanguard Parties" work, they get eventually get corrupted by small amount of bad actors seeking power, and it ends up becoming a tragedy, the opposite of what egalitarianism is supposed to be.