Trump is an anomaly in the US and don’t think there will be anyone like him again. So things will go back as before after he leaves office.
so I don’t think it’s a big deal to try and be purging those we think might have different opinions over some issues. The only time they should be an issue is when they take action that threaten the country’s core interests, sovereignty and national security. Apart from that I don’t think the government should go around policing people for their views over some issues.
Don’t forget that some conservatives in China today(just like back in the days) will consider Deng Xiaopings policies of open up to western and Asian investment and his capitalist reforms will be consider as traitorous and even a western lapdog/puppet, even though it wasn’t the case. Sometimes it’s also about how perception to some people not really facts.
I agree, but freedom of expression/speech certainly has limits, like when they threaten the country’s core interests, sovereignty and national security, as you mentioned. As with China's case, HK's separatists threaten China's national security by challenging the country's territorial integrity and engaging in aggressive disinformation. China's radical feminists (not feminists who support gender equality and LGBTQ rights, but those using feminism to justify gold digging, scamming, hatred toward Chinese men, etc.) are the main culprits behind country's upcoming demographic disaster (yet, their voices are still dominant in the cyberspace). China's corporate and financial liberals (as well as corrupt officials who have millions of illicit gains) want to pocket public funds into the pockets of themselves and cronies, so they support full privatisation at the expense of the country's long term economic prosperity. Think Yeltsin and possibly Zhao Ziyang. The Uighur and Tibetan problems have only been temporarily suppressed, but they remain ticking time bombs. Finally, without extradition treaties, Chinese corrupt officials, their cronies, traitors, and all sorts of criminals could always find safe havens abroad to continue carrying out their criminal activities, sometime in coordination with foreign intelligence services.
I am not against intellectuals or average citizens using academic platforms to make evidence-based arguments about the supposed superiority of western liberal institutions in an academic critical thinking environment. This is what education is about; exploring all kinds of different, if not abstract, ancient or modern, ideas.
But for the issues listed above in the first paragraph, those appears to be genuine national security threats China faces, and the current law and security apparatus seem somewhat ineffective in handling them.