One interesting part of living in China has been the different sets of orthodoxies and heresies people have. Things that are unspeakable in the US are conventional wisdom here, and things that are unspeakable in China are conventional wisdom in the US.
Of course, the conventional wisdom in the US as it exists among upper-middle class, college-educated white folk in 2020 is exactly right about everything, but it's interesting to see just how wrong people in a different society can be without even realizing it.
Talking with Chinese expats in America, one that really sticks out for me is:
Despite massive economic backslide under Mao, China would not have industrialized without him. I've heard people who are otherwise very critical of Mao say this, seems ubiquitous. The American perspective of course is that Mao was only a negative and stunted Chinese growth. I think the idea is that land owners were overly conservative with capital investment and Taiwanese/Hong Kong growth is explained by foreign investment that Republican China would not have received.
And not as ubiquitous but several have said that the Japanese military is a major threat to China, which seems absurd. Haven't gotten a real justification for this other than "they make good technology", like they're secretly developing a Gundam.
Interestingly, the people I've spoken to here are perfectly happy to criticize the Cultural Revolution. My impression is that saying anything negative about Mao in his later life would be fine, so long as you couched your denunciation in a way that didn't implicate the contemporary CCP.
I suspect that an impassioned defense of the Red Guard would get more blow back here than in the USA, actually, based on my friends' opinions.
Of course, the conventional wisdom in the US as it exists among upper-middle class, college-educated white folk in 2020 is exactly right about everything, but it's interesting to see just how wrong people in a different society can be without even realizing it.