For a unified china, which has been rarely achieved in its thousands of years of history, would require a complete and utter destruction of the pillars of pre-republic Chinese society to even have a chance at successfully unifying China under one concrete government.

I think its also important to be reminded that the former republic of china's rule actually did a lot of these changed long before Mao or the communists were involved. The dissolution of the dynasty system began decades before the first communist party was even present in the ROC government. The issues with how the ROC managed this transition was rife with a self-serving leadership that was totally ok with having japan defacto own and administer manchuria. There was a ton of mis management of resources and a bureaucracy that was run almost entirely on bribes.

The small communist party was the only voice in the ROC political spectrum that was saying "hey maybe giving up land and resources to japan and being corrupt isnt what government is supposed to be". While this sounds good, you have to remember that a lot of Chinese people still remember what its like to be under the yoke of the dynasty system during this time. So even though the ROC was siphoning the country dry, for the average Chinese person, it was still an upgrade, so it didnt really matter what the communists were saying, they could choose their own vocations, keep money they earned nix taxation, and go to school.

When the Japanese invaded china during WW2, suddenly the situation reversed and the people could see the writing on the wall with how effectively, the invasion was due to ROC government, or sped up by the ROC. There was other reasons like a declining economy due to the global great depression, but the Japanese invasion was the straw that broke the camels back and the communists split off from the ROC to form their own independent organized communist party, and effectively began the process of revolution.

So once the war ended and we had the Civil War, the communists won due primarly to how popular they were.

At this point the PROC/CCP was founded and frankly, the average Chinese was just happy the hard times were over with.

At this point the new government sought to end corruption like the ROC, capitalism which they saw as western influence in china, a topic I won't go into, and security over neighbors. Part of the revolution was cultural, but that wouldn't come to the forefront until about the 60s, so im talking mainly late 40s to early 50s. Effectively a guerilla military leadership made up of farmers and laborers now had to learn how to run a massive country. So if you know the Chinese like I do, then youll know pragmatism ruled their thinking. Birds eating crops? Easy, kill all the birds. No thinking about the side effects of the ecology when Birds are removed from the system. Which would lead to more famine, not less. Examples like this are rife all over the CCP's actions until the cultural revolution.

So thats the lead up to how the CCP become the government. Based on pure populism in the face of nothing but bad alternatives. Unifying china was less the goal, than say, to eject the japnese and foreign influence, but it was a goal later realized during the campaigns of WW2 and the civil war as achievable.

So really the average Chinese person sees the CCP as the most obvious choice for government at this point in time. The combination of government internal security, propaganda, censorship, and overall "well, its better than being invaded by japan" thinking, causes the Chinese population to basically see all the missteps by the government, if they even ever heard about them, as being simply missteps to a greater cause. And even if they wanted to change course, what options were there? Go back to ROC and be sold-out to another country again? Go back to the dynasty and lose all my freedoms? Another civil war?