> Your average Chinese student is more likely to have immediate family members who participated in revolutionary activity than just "being rice farmers"

I think you are misinterpreting the situation.

I didn't come up with this rice farmer and cowboy example and I do not advocate for it as it is a complete nonsense. Cowboys aka cow herders were just one very limited part of the American society, it misses everybody else who were free in their lives.

Chinese communist regime (as it has been with all communist regimes) first deceived the population with good sounding promises and then created another oppressive regime. Chinese peasants didn't push personal boundaries, it was a collective action where they stepped right into one of the biggest blunders of the century that led to the death of tens of millions people (close to 100 million). "Cultural" revolution displayed to them that they have to learn to walk on the rope or else. They went from one serfdom right into another one.

What you have constructed here is called a straw man argument.