But you could paint such a dramatic story for many parts of the world.
At the start of the 20th century the UK controlled so much of the world they said the sun never sets on the British Empire. It led the industrialisation of the planet, lost millions of men to the trenches of the first world war, then was nearly wiped out and turned into a slave state by Hitler before successfully liberating Europe with its allies. It went through enormous social turmoil in the middle of the 20th century: socialist governments and ultra-militant unions repeatedly damaged its economy so badly that by the end of the 1970s it was significantly worse off economically than Germany - a country it had flattened in world war just 40 years earlier, and which had then been split in half by the Soviets. Professional and well armed terrorists repeatedly attacked the government, in one case almost managing to assassinate the Prime Minister [1].
That all sounds like a much more traumatic modern history than China's. Despite that there has never been a revolution in the UK. The closest you can find is probably the English Civil War in the mid 1600s, which ended with the king being invited back to become King again after the revolutionaries turned out to suck more than he did.
So I don't think we can just write off China's history or concerns of its leadership by saying it's merely large, and not naturally unstable or violent. For whatever reason China does seem to have gone through far more revolutions than other countries have done despite the apparent lack of external events that could have triggered such instability.
"That all sounds like a much more traumatic modern history than China's."
That is so far off the mark.
China was turned into a tributary state by the Western powers. It was repeatedly - successfully - invaded by Japan. Tens of millions died in the fires of civil war and revolution. It industrialised within a span of 50 years. It was hit successively by waves of nationalism, communism, and capitalism in a single century. Nothing compares to ANY of that in the UK's recent history.
The UK was one of the world's great powers at the start of the twentieth century. It drew men, wealth and geopolitical advantage from its empire. It enjoyed the sympathy of Canada and the United States - already far and away the most powerful state in the world. It fought into two world wars, yes, but that did not tear at the fabric of Britain - it never suffered a land invasion, or the realistic prospect of one. Even if Germany had won the air-battle, Britain's navy would always have precluded the possibility of a German armada crossing the channel.
It was not turned into a vassal state by a strange and more powerful civilization. It did not undergo revolution. There were not major ideological explosions. The same political system and governing class stayed in place. Britain had the advantage of industrialising first, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
The modern history of the UK is exceptional for being so stable.
"Socialist governments and ultra-militant unions". The Labour Party was Keynesian in economics, social democratic in politics, supported NATO and trident and yoked itself to America in the Cold War, and was hardly the direct cause of the crisis of the 1970s - a crisis, by the way, that was general to the West. Unions are, almost by definition, on the soft side of the socialist spectrum - certainly in the context of socialism in the 20th century - hence Lenin's quip about 'trade union consciousness'.
I guess my point wasn't specific to the UK, but rather that quite a few countries have had dramatic and society-redefining events happen to them without experiencing a large number of revolutions as a consequence. So we can't say that China's revolutionary past is an obvious consequence of anything in particular that happened to it.
With respect to which country has had more drama in the 20th century, I'm not sure there's a scale that can be applied to compare them - to me it seems both countries have been through a lot. And that's what I'm getting at. Clearly, experiencing war, invasion or very real threat of invasion (Hitler was trying his best to destroy the navy!) and rapid industrialisation is not by itself sufficient to lead to revolution. There may be something else at work beyond mere events, perhaps a cultural aspect.
The British political parties of the 50s and 60s were hardly Keynesian except in the sense that they liked spending money, and no the crisis of the 1970s wasn't "general to the west". The USA was busy putting a man on the moon in this era, the German economy was outstripping the UK's quite significantly. The UK had to go to the IMF for a bailout its economy was so sick. The cause was pretty clearly and directly militant socialism - once Thatcher got the unions under control and liberalised the economy, the UK caught up with its erstwhile foe and was no longer the 'sick man of Europe'. There was a lot for Thatcher to do because at the time she came to power the British government owned huge quantities of ailing industries, including things like hotel chains and removal companies. Not so dissimilar to China's model where so much industry is state owned.
"Quite a few countries have had dramatic and society-redefining events happen to them without experiencing a large number of revolutions as a consequence. So we can't say that China's revolutionary past is an obvious consequence of anything in particular that happened to it."
This argument is obviously fallacious.
It does not follow from the fact that lots of societies (L) have had X happen to them that no number or combination or tempo of X's can have an effect that was not present in L.
I'm not sure if the proposition that we can't ascribe China's revolutionary past to 'anything in particular that happened to it' is even coherent. How else do you think historical change takes place? From nothing?
"The UK had to go to the IMF for a bailout."
It's now historical consensus that the UK didn't have to do this at all. It was based on a miscalculation of the UK account (not that the economy wasn't in dire straits).
"The crisis of the 1970s wasn't "general to the west".
It was, for at least three reasons: (i) the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the beginning of dollar seigniorage; (ii) the OPEC crisis in 1973; (iii) and the emergence of widespread stagflation in 1973-1975.
"The cause was pretty clearly and directly militant socialism - once Thatcher got the unions under control and liberalised the economy, the UK caught up with its erstwhile foe and was no longer the 'sick man of Europe'."
I'm not going to get into this, because it's a rabbit hole. But that is clearly a highly simplified and ideologically charged perspective. I would mention that the rate of growth under post-war social democratic Keynesianism was higher than under Thatcherism and her epigones. I would recommend the work of David Edgerton, probably the foremost scholar of British economic history in the twentieth century - whose work reveals a quite different story to your own.
At the start of the 20th century the UK controlled so much of the world they said the sun never sets on the British Empire. It led the industrialisation of the planet, lost millions of men to the trenches of the first world war, then was nearly wiped out and turned into a slave state by Hitler before successfully liberating Europe with its allies. It went through enormous social turmoil in the middle of the 20th century: socialist governments and ultra-militant unions repeatedly damaged its economy so badly that by the end of the 1970s it was significantly worse off economically than Germany - a country it had flattened in world war just 40 years earlier, and which had then been split in half by the Soviets. Professional and well armed terrorists repeatedly attacked the government, in one case almost managing to assassinate the Prime Minister [1].
That all sounds like a much more traumatic modern history than China's. Despite that there has never been a revolution in the UK. The closest you can find is probably the English Civil War in the mid 1600s, which ended with the king being invited back to become King again after the revolutionaries turned out to suck more than he did.
So I don't think we can just write off China's history or concerns of its leadership by saying it's merely large, and not naturally unstable or violent. For whatever reason China does seem to have gone through far more revolutions than other countries have done despite the apparent lack of external events that could have triggered such instability.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing