Can I get confirmations before double-spending a transaction?
No. This would only be possible through a 51% attack, where you would mine more blocks faster than all the network miners, in order to create and broadcast a longer blockchain (that would get accepted by the network). This would be pretty expensive, however.
It is possible, just highly unlikely. Miners in China sometimes have issues broadcasting their block past the GFW, and what could happen is that a Chinese miner found a block around the same time a non Chinese miner found a block. What would likely happen is that the Chinese block would have good propagation in China, but poor propagation elsewhere, and vice versa. If your node is in the US, it would likely accept the non Chinese block. We can't have two blocks with the same number though, so one of them gets orphaned. If the next block is found by someone who received the Chinese block first, the non-Chinese block is orpahaned, and your 1 confirmation might go to zero.