China was (at that time) also a pretty backwards agrarian empire after its more glorious days. I do not want to delve too far off-topic, but then you are talking about two completely different things:

A) An internal revolution (borne out of people's desire to change their system in the idealised version);

B) An already-failed-at-communism totalitarian state's external enforcement of totalitarianism upon a mostly unwilling populace.

The latter will, of course, not work. The former might.