There is a narrative by politics scholar that the current CCP is a reaction to Mao's CCP and is radically different. Mao was an anti-intellectual and a lot of t

There is a narrative by politics scholar that the current CCP is a reaction to Mao's CCP and is radically different. Mao was an anti-intellectual and a lot of the problems of the Great Leap Forward policy came from the decision to put uneducated people in charge and replacing knowledge by ideology. This was such a disaster, and it harmed so much of the former elite (who ended up working in the fields and, predictably, sucked at farming) that they manage to unite and take over the CCP instances. Nowadays, CCP leaders are highly technocratic and having a strong education is mandatory to rise in the hierarchy. > That same party is still in power today, and currently putting millions of Muslims into concentration camps. Yes, and even if they don't have an extermination policy that looks at least like STASI policies there. The reason (and I only state a reason, not an excuse there) why China is so sensitive about religion is because it caused the most deadly civil war in human history, the revolt of the Taiping, when a guy believing he was the brother of Jesus brought half the country to worship him and fought the emperor. They started their anti-muslim policy when ISIS was starting to have antennas in several countries. Religious movement triggers alarm in them in the same way as nazis do to Europeans: they know they can lead to 20 million death.