i thought the us hated USSR not China why in fallout are the Chinese the bad dudes

In the Fallout Universe the China emerged as a major player in the Cold War, eventually becoming the rival of the US.

In the real world China was certainly an important participant in the Cold War if you look beneath the US/USSR foundation. I'd elaborate but I'd promptly cross in to the politics restriction

Moa Zang dong.

I think it was so it would be more believable perhaps, people might not think it possible for the USSR to last into 2077 so they used the only other remaining Communist superpower as the enemy, having the Great War be against a Democracy would take away from the 50's anti-commie feel.

China in FO became an economic super power...

At the same time of the collapse of Europe ( I presume this also involved ex soviet block countries, Russia and maybe Turkey but could be wrong on any / all counts ), and the middle east after a shortish war between the two factons over resources.

With most of the global reserves of power and marterial dried up China stuck a claim on the last known off shore oil bed, leading America to respond since it was in already disputed territory.

Not much else is known but I presume China anexed land all round itself, using modern tension only as an example I would say Australia - NZ, India and Korea - japan form many alliances.
During which after many proto conflicts, were either anexed by China or America in all but name, or destroyed in some fashion.

Because they're still a communist country and compared to Russia in size and available recourses, industries, etc. well capable of becoming a super power. If they aren't already.. I wouldn't underestimate the Chinese people, they have spirit something we lost in the West a long time ago. Not so hard to imagine actually.. if China was led by a future Kim Jong-il or something.

I'm a political science major.....China is second greatest economy on the planet behind ourselves, before Nixon, who expanded indo-chinese relations. We saw china as a biblical threat...there is even a quote from the bible that warns about the army from the east, we saw this as the forces of russia and china.....[censored]in Commies..

The Fallout timeline diverged from ours somewhere in the 50s I think. I forget where I read that. In the 50s, there was the Korean War. We very nearly went in to an all out war with China. The US not going to war with China directly is what caused the stalemate that still exists today. So China being the US rival instead of the USSR makes sense for that reason too.

For all anyone knows, the US and the USSR did have a cold war and the soviet union did collapse in 1991 in the FO universe. Again, from what we've been able to extrapolate, the US government seems a bit more "hard core" about commies that in RL. It's possible that the Soviet Union collapsed and then the commie-haters in the government shifted their focus to China. Or that the US and China more or less got along until the resource wars, then the US government began ramping up the "red scare" rhetoric.

There's a lot we don't know about the history of the FO USA. We know it diverged sometime after WWII, we know they fought wars with China over natural resources, and we know they helped blow up the planet. There's like a 130 years that aren't accounted for. Who knows what could have happened during that time.

No, we know the USSR survived. A Russian Consular was one of the original inahbitants of Vault 13.

Also Mao Zedong. ;D

I'm not sure that Black Isle believed china would actually be the Power that it is today, but I have to say that it was very fortunate that they did pick china because we can somewhat related to that story given the power make-up of today's world.

Look at something like Ender's Game (I hope someone here has read that), The main Terrestrial rival was still the Warsaw pact/ Eastern Bloc. The Setting was very far into the future IRCC, so if Enders Game was made into a movie, i don't think many people could buy that element of the Setting. I know I had a hard time getting past that element of the Setting even though it was a great book.

The first game was made just a couple years after the Soviet Union collapsed. I think they realized the "red menace" wasn't russia anymore, so they picked the next best thing.

Without the real "Cold War" taking place in the FO Universe, the Soviets didn't have Stalin starving his people and using Gulag labor to build up the Iron Curtain. That or the Soviet Union existed in parallel, but without the Cuban Missile Crisis, Korea, or Vietnam occuring, and they collapsed under the weight of the Resource Wars or were annexed by China in a power grab by the 2060's. That would explain the Russian female character template in FO1 who was the child of Russian diplomats escaping to Vault 13. China just made a good bad-guy, I think it was foreshadowing of real life on Sawyer and Uruquart's parts, too bad the U.S. will likely lose the Resource Wars because of China's currency manipulation, exponential economic growth, and the fact that they own our b@lls with debt... I think the headline on October 22nd, 2077 before the Great Atomic War will read, "Chinese power armor troops march on Washington D.C." Glad I won't live to see it...

they're the "most probable opponent" since the USSR went bust.

Plus some people still consider direct cold-war paranoia in games to be insensitive since, you know, it lead to Vietnam, Korea, and four or five near-averted mass nuclear holocausts.

Keep in mind Fallout was developed and released in the mid-90s. The Soviet Union had already collapsed. Yet they wanted to do a Post Apocalyptic Game with 1950s undertones of Soviet Paranoia.

So they went with the next available Communist State.