Modern state is when you fund yourself off of opium profits, you appoint your gangster relatives to be in charge of state finances, your officials occasionally run off to form collaborationist governments with Imperial Japan, and you're so corrupt and incompetent that your own allies are disgusted by you and you lose a war against your own people despite the military and financial backing of the most powerful country in the world.

Democratic and republican ideals is when you retreat to an island because you got your ass handed to you and then perpetrate the White Terror against your people for 40 years.