The authoritarian lens is a useless one since every single nation in the history of humanity uses authority.

The Hong Kong protests were a great example of the difference. In the US you have protests because a cop killed a man in cold blood and the cops come out and tear gas protestors and some died. They even let a vigilante kill people and then let him off without punishment.

In Hong Kong, which was a colony of Britain, the youth of Hong Kong decided to protest and it got really violent - on the part of the protestors. They were throwing molotovs at police. And the police just backed off most of the time. The protests went on for weeks and the police exercises significant restraint compared to US cops.

The important thing to note about Hong Kong is that it was violently ripped away from China and turned into a British colony because the Brits wanted to sell opium to China and China said no. For most of the British occupation the Chinese in Hong Kong suffered immensely, but when the Brits realized they weren’t going to be able to hold on to Hong Kong they changed all their policies to create social conditions that would lead inevitably to this exact conflict. That’s partly why there was such a generational gap in the Hong Kong protest movement. Many of the older generation knew what Britain was about and wanted to rejoin their country but the youth were fed a lot of lies and propaganda so when China moved forward with the national security aimed at preventing foreign interference the students protested.

As for Xinjiang, I encourage you to look at a map. The US military establishment has openly stated that they are collaborating with East Turkistan separatists as part of their strategy in the region and have been for some time. This is an extension of the US strategy that developed the Mujahideen into a terrorist group to fight the USSR and ultimate spawned Al-Qaeda and ISIS. In short, the US has been training, arming, and organizing terrorism in the region as part of their strategy to destabilize any opposition, and for China specifically they targeted Xinjiang.

If you look at the number of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang over the years, there was clearly a problem, but it’s equally clear that China launched an anti-terrorism campaign and the number of attacks has plummeted. This again shows the difference between the Western use of authority and the Chinese us of authority. When the West does anti-terrorism they carpet bomb countries, commit mass war crimes, destroy infrastructure, and kill millions. China’s anti-terrorism campaign focused on economics, education, social integration, and counterintelligence. Not only did it work, 50+ countries have inspected Xinjiang and approved of the program. The Uyghurs still govern the region as an autonomous cultural zone. They still openly practice their religion and cultural practices, they still teach their children in their language. Birth rates have come down to stabilize at the same rate as Western societies, or higher, which is inline with social progress women getting more autonomy, better health outcomes across the board, and better economic prospects.

So yeah, I won’t disagree that both the US and China are authoritarian, but I don’t really see any country in the world that isn’t authoritarian. It’s the way things are right now. So given that there will be authoritarianism, who is actually working to improve lives and who is working to destroy them?