I actually didn’t even get what you meant by “4 nations” until boonhet pointed it out, heh.

I don’t know what you’re going on about; Earth Kings, Queens, tons of Earth Kingdom names and places (like the Forbidden Palace) are clear references to ancient Chinese history. Including the Dai Li. It doesn’t have much to do with modern China though; the Earth Kingdom never moved out of the past until it burned to the ground.

Air Nomad names are Tibetan. Tenzin. Gyatso. If those mountain temples aren’t Tibetan, I don’t know what is. And they all died to imperialist invaders, simply because they wouldn’t cooperate. They were quite traditional in their own way though (including living with sexes separated), and all we really see of their government is some kind of elder council.

The Fire Nation islands were largely ruled by regional, despotic clans until Fire Lord rather shrewdly and brutally consolidated power into a single royal lineage. Then they decided to spread the “gift” of their industrialization and culture around the world, trying to enforce a singular culture. The only thing “liberal” about them (for a time) was some social norms, like those around gender; we see a lot of female Fire nation troops in all eras, for instance, and some progressive feeling institutions within.

The Water Tribes were notoriously close-knit, traditional, conservative. I think they were more of an elder theocracy until the modern era, and even that was kind of a struggle.

Republic City was modeled after New York and Hong Kong, but TBH has a lot in common with the rest of modern China too? Some of the structures are Southeast Asian. The origin complicates things too; they were Earth Kingdom, invaded and modernized into a Fire Nation colony, who then gained their independence post-world-war.

…We have the subcultures I guess. Or the villains. Amon was basically a populist communist (and right about a lot) with some family issues, Unalaq a megalomaniac theocrat, Zaheer was an anarchist straight from db0 (who made some good points), Kuvira was kind of Tech Bro Hitler, but she also saved the Earth Kingdom from total anarchy. The context is different though. They never really have the context of those ideologies in the worlds’ history.

The references aren’t pure; the creators were clear that each place is multicultural and fictional, not an expy of a nation, but I think that makes the references more interesting.

But the whole theme of the franchise is that no one nation, no individual, no political system or movement, is really a pure good or bad. They all exist in a difficult balance with each other. So I don’t think using the four nations as some kind of “liberal analogue” is very constructive.