China has never been a democracy though. It's always been a one party system for thousands of years, CCP is just the current name but it is not that different than what was there before. When you take this into account, it makes sense to consider CCP and China the same thing (ie the one party system in place for thousands of years).

In fact it is quite an improvement at least since Tchang Kaï-Chek (the Mao era was for the most part horrific and worse than what preceded it).

I'm sure people living in Honk Kong and Xinjiang would disagree with your assessment.

Xinjiang surely wants to be left alone but I doubt they're looking for a progressive liberal western style democracy. Hong Kong has been under heavy influence of the British so they have indeed developed an attachment to Western style democracy but to what extend I don't know.