Many Western critics of China seem to suffer from the same fallacy as some police detectives and anti-pornography activists who believe that porn turns people into rapists. You may find porn in the personal collections of some serial rapists and sadistic killers, but that’s because statistically, most men and some women also use porn.

America’s authoritarian turn didn’t need China. It didn’t start with US President Donald Trump and has been decades in the making. The “imperial presidency” has been a long time coming. Blame the United States’ extreme domestic inequalities and the progressive destruction of the middle class, rather than China, for the turn to the strongman populism characteristic of Trump and the dominant Republican Party.

Don’t blame China for America’s authoritarian turn
https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3333069/dont-blame-china-americas-authoritarian-turn