A brief about Buddhism

China is not a very religious country by the strict view of monotheism. Buddhism might be the most "religious" religion in China. And even this religion is not domestic, it was imported from India longtime ago (around the first century). The original Buddhism was very much of "Indian style" which was ascetic and abstinent. Later, especially at Tang dynasty, Buddhism had adapted some Taoist concepts and became more "Chinese style", which was more "down to the earth", much less formidable.
Generally speaking , in China anything can be divided into northern and southern, same as ideologies. Buddhism, just like art or life styles, also divided in to this 2 different styles: Northern sect focused more on stringent practice and southern sect enjoyed more on suddern enlightment. Zen, as an huge influencial Buddhist sect, was famous on its' artistic "practices" --- reach the truth by following natural path of life itself. Zen went to Japan after Tang dynasty and later came to western world in earlier of last century, through the efforts made by artists, philosophers and psychologists.
I dont' think Buddhism to Chinese people has same impact as Christianity to western world. Especially during culture revolution, Buddhism was limited in a very small community. Now, as more Chinese people started to pick up some ancient religions to fit their spiritual needs, Buddhism seems more popular than decades ago, but still within very limited population.

Are all communists evils?

I think they all are human. However, about all the disasters happened under the rule of communist party, I personally believe that we cannot blame them only to a single political party.
China was a feudal empire with long history. Along over 2 thousand years, Confucianism, both as a philosophy and political idea, successfully controlled Chinese people's minds. The core of Confucianism is its strict moral doctrines set for relationship within family members and social roles. These well established principles did hugh contribution for the feudalist monocracy. Thus the individualism could never take place in China. I believe that under this cultural background, individuals would take any opportunities to explode their oppressed ego, thus man-made disasters occur time to time, and the terrible events happened under communist government were just a continuation of the consequence of this extreme "collectivism".