The Effects of Enviroment on the Same People

One of the room for debate articles that I personally choose was “Can Trump Get Tough With China?” has a lot to say about China and Taiwan. This reminded me that at one point they were one, but ended up becoming very different entities with different goals despite both having their largest ethnic group being Han Chinese. This gives them a shared culture and history up to a certain point. After a civil war, the People's Republic of China was born in the mainland, and the Republic of China was the losing side that fled to Taiwan. China’s goals can be seen in how much it wants to keep its territory under control and subverting threats like Taiwan. Giving it an authoritarian like nature to control these things. Current events depict this as their often many calls on social media for action against the treatment of minorities in China. China does this by trying to brutally rid these minorities of their culture such as their religion and other ways of life, and by trying to replace them with Han Chinese through forced marriage and migration. Trying to spread the Chinese culture across China has been a theme in its modern history with the push for simplified characters as the standard script for all languages in China in the 1950s-60s, to increase literacy. Taiwan in comparison is a lot more focused on itself. Having aspects such as traditional scripture, and seeking an appeal from the west. This search for appeal has resulted in a democracy and an overall friendlier relationship to it, in contrast to China's aggression. This contrast to development is almost a  reminder that it's not race or ethnicity that shapes people, as the largest ethnic group China and Taiwan are the same, but rather personal influences such as needs, experience, and environment. Due to such factors, the fates of China and Taiwan became very different, despite being ruled by the same people. Do you know of any other examples of where something like this has happened? Or do you know of any other aspects of China and Taiwan that have developed differently? Or if you don't know about these types of situations, then what are other forms of parallel development, such as in people.