I think you are buying into two major fallacies and succumbing to one major bias. First, the fallacies:
- The fallacy that leaders, even dictators, have anything resembling absolute power or are able to govern without some degree of consensus from other powerful interests within the country.
- The fallacy that a system with two very similar parties (such as in the US) is significantly different from a nation with a single party.
The bias is the idea that there is something more sinister about the reported information suppression activity being done by China than is done in the US. States must do this to maintain/launder their reputation/legitimacy in the eyes of the majority.
Look how the US has treated Julian Assange. If anything, China simply has more people with the level of courage necessary to take the kind of risks that Assange took and must in some ways apply authoritarian power to stop it.
- The fallacy that leaders, even dictators, have anything resembling absolute power or are able to govern without some degree of consensus from other powerful interests within the country.
- The fallacy that a system with two very similar parties (such as in the US) is significantly different from a nation with a single party.
The bias is the idea that there is something more sinister about the reported information suppression activity being done by China than is done in the US. States must do this to maintain/launder their reputation/legitimacy in the eyes of the majority.
Look how the US has treated Julian Assange. If anything, China simply has more people with the level of courage necessary to take the kind of risks that Assange took and must in some ways apply authoritarian power to stop it.