First, they are not "beloved" by anyone except professional threat-inflaters like you.
Second, the lineup will be Agricultural China vs. Smokestack China vs. the "Shang-Kong" International Trader China.
China is three nations, none of which really like the other two. Agricultural China takes the attitude that they're the "traditional China," and should run things. Smokestack China is roughly akin to the US Cotton Belt of the 1850s--clinging to an gradually obsolescent economic model, complete with chattel slavery, and unable to cope with modernity. The International Trader end of China--the region between Shanghai and Hong Kong, inclusive, which just happens to be the only region that actually makes a profit--is just sick and tired of carrying the other two deadbeat sections of China on its back.
Peasants with their pitchforks and the PLA with their tanks and machiner guns?
Nope. This will NOT be a typical foco guerrilla war. Fielded forces: Elements of the present-day PLA in each of those regions. They will be given their orders by those who happen to be senior Party leaders of those three regions when the trigger for disunion is pulled by one or more of those regions.
Think of the US Civil War--but fought with the weapons of 1961 instead of 1861.