Perfect. The points I was trying to make was included within.
I still don't get your point. You putting random fact together with very vague qualitative terms, which infers nothing of substance, because those facts are not comparable. Only amateur gets persuaded by what you are trying to imply. I basically fail to see what you are trying to imply, because I don't see how apples can be compared to oranges.
You're saying that "Great leap forward" and "Cultural Revolution" are terrible. Yes, they are, but they are by no means worse than the living hell of 1840 to 1949, in fact even the worst is much better than that 109 year of turmoil. So if you are trying to compare apple to apple, then compare China mainland from 1840 to 1949 to China from 1949 to 1979. I won't even include the post 1979, in your favor. Use any real parameter commonly used for measuring quality of life (life expectancy, infant mortality rate, population growth against fertility rate), you will find that the PRC is by far BETTER than ROC and the Qing dynasty, as well as anything the Japanese could come up with in China proper.
Yes it's true that Taiwan and Korea are good under Japanese Rule. But how does that justify the invasion of all of China? Taiwan and Korea are tiny compare to China, and they were a province and a vessels state formally and legally begotten by Japan from Qing dynasty. They retained the old pre-May-Fourth old traditional Confucian culture, making them automatically subservient to a sovereign. All their experience is getting transferred as subjects from one incompetent backward sovereign (Qing Emperor) to a more modern and progressive Sovereign (Japanese Emperor). This means that Japanese had the least amount of frictions and difficulties governing these two tiny places, not even at the same time. And even then, the little Taiwan that only has a fraction of its population of it today, were deemed as a huge difficulty to govern by the Japanese at first. How do earth do you Japanese all of a sudden gained the confidence and audacity to invade a chaotic China, that has already abandoned "Mandate of Heaven" structure? That would be immensely difficult. Only arrogant fools like the Japanese would do it.
Japanese are fools because all they do is “Monkey see, Monkey want, Monkey grab", they don't think about consequences, they don't think about potential threats, they don't think about societal trend, they don't think about culture, they don't think about how their rivals will act, they only think about what can see and what they desire. They see Manchuria and say: "me want this!", and they dig in. And that is the start of their doom.