Indeed, the last time I played as China I was going for a quick reform and let a lot of militancy build up in the hopes of a heavenly kingdom uprising, but ended up with that massive reactionary rebellion.
Generally, I like playing the medium-sized nations such as Sweden, Japan, and the South American nations. This last time, and what prompted me to post was me Swedish play through. I was going for full industrial victory and was micromanaging my economy as such, managed to get to Great Power status and even 5th place on the chart, but got effed over when I formed Scandinavia which changed my political parties and gave me previously mentioned interventionist government. So now, capitalists do a good job of expanding my industrial capacity, but it's causing me to import a lot of goods where as before I was only importing a little fruit. So now i'm stuck with a biggish-sized nation with almost no ground forces, no navy whatsoever (though that was a consequence of my play style), and little control over my economy. I'd like to actually switch to a socialist government, but I spent decades of raising conservative loyalty which leaves me in a poor position altogether. I would cause a rebellion, but I think by the time I raised enough militancy I would be bankrupt, out of even secondary power place, and with a lot of restructuring to do.
EDIT: Actually, in my first play through that I posted in the Ownage thread, I ended up as a highly liberal Japan that played quite interestingly if probably inefficient.