Taiwanese citizens want the status quo, not independence nor reconcilliation. Framing that as the PRC "bullying them" when the US regularly tries to provoke the PRC into invading is silly. Hong Kongers were liberated from British Colonialism and the majority are happy to be folded into the PRC. Tibet is an autonomous zone currently, the Dalai Lama worked with the CIA and when the PLA liberated Tibet they freed the vast majority of people from the slave-based economy where the ruling class would relentlessly torture them. Xinjiang is also constantly misrepresented and distorted purely to discredit the PRC as an alternative to the US Empire's constant genocidal invasions.

It isn't just a "lesser evil," it's the only realistic option that can be considered good. The US murdered 1 million Iraqis, hundreds of thousands to millions of Koreans, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Nicaraguans, Palestinians, and many, many more, just to keep feeding the Empire. There is no comparison, the US is unfathomably evil and the fence-sitters that try to paint China as somehow being equivalent are entirely wrong.

Whether intentionally or not, this idea that China can't be better than the US is rooted in eurocentric chauvanism that tries to desparately cling to the idea that Western countries cannot be surpassed morally and materially. There can only be morally good countries or materially prosperous countries, because the US is morally bankrupt but materially wealthy. China shatters the idea that these sins are necessary to preserve this wealth, which sends the "neither Washington nor Beijing" folk into logical pretzels and existential crises.