Hello @Revenant, I'm the co-editor of the demodatabase site you mentioned in your post. Really surprised that the demo song of ct-877 is created by Ed Alstrom, I feel that this demo song sounds like chinese style but might not composited by Chinese, but I never thought it is Alstrom's work. Amazing! Do you have more details on this demo and other Alstrom's demo work?
Yes China-specified models continues to use CT prefix until 2005-2007, almost all modesl ended with the number 8 (CTK-738 / CT-588 / 688 / 788 / 888) and are the variant of CTK models of the time. The difference between china version and global version are Chinese ethic instruments, some chinese styles and the panel printed in Chinese, and contains internal Chinese Song as demos.
You can also listen to CT-788/88's exclusive demo (Spring Festival Overture) on the demodb site. I'm also trying to collect more demos from CASIO's china localized models like CT-588 and CTK-6320.