Following the assault on the U.S. Capitol last month, the Chinese Communist Party wasted no time in painting the episode as representative of the chaos sown by democracy. It even used this rhetorical sleight of hand to undermine the legitimacy of Hong Kong’s democratic protest movement.

China is just one of a number of authoritarian regimes hoping to seize upon the recent turmoil in U.S. politics to support a self-serving narrative: that dissent breeds vitriol and that democratic governance, which requires dissent, is therefore an inherently unstable, violent form of government. The CCP claims personal freedoms and liberties must be sacrificed in order to achieve what it calls a “harmonious society,” and it has used this ideology to justify the subjugation of Hong Kong and numerous other peoples.