It's a lot more complex than this because if the CCP does officially characterize themselves as 'left-wing', it is only to maintain the charade of continuing to be socialist rather than fascist. It has nothing to do with East vs. West defining the spectrum in opposite ways. https://twitter.com/SailorJanitor/status/1326228353200906240

In HK politics, the pro-Beijing camp has long comprised of deeply conservative corporate elites with a superficial and illusory understanding of 'order', and 'security' while many social democratic activists who deeply value human rights comprise the pro-democracy camp.

In global politics, the pro-Beijing camp is indisputably classified as right-wing while pan-dems would be left. In Taiwan, again, KMT is right-wing and DPP is solidly left-wing, esp. so if mapped onto US politics.

The greatest irony that HK & Taiwanese Trumpsters don't understand is the nature of Western politics relative to global politics, where many pan-democrats would be progressive even for the US Democratic Party. Demosisto, for example, would be seen as center-left wing at least.

As a Californian, I can also explain that what makes leftists in the US *seem* extreme is the magnitude of their passion for their platform, even where it in fact aligns more with centrist parties in Canada and Europe, not the distance from a vague midpoint on the spectrum.

And in the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping's faction within the CCP itself is far-right, *not* far-left, because its ideology thrives on ultra-nationalism, a police state, political realism, and coercive rule. The former Hu Jintao leadership would be somewhat left of that.

I recognize that our left–right political spectrum is a false binary in the end, but it is a model useful as an introduction into the basics of a country's politics. That being said, it should be recognized that the quality that make a political party right-wing is conservatism.

And conservatism is not some ideology with a consistent platform across all societies. Conservatism is an insecure state of mind grounded in a subconscious need for stability above all else in the face of an infinitely intricate, complex and diverse reality.

It is characterized by a desperate need to impose control onto that chaotic reality and so privileges security above all else, above human welfare & an idealistic value system. Privileging security means privileging established models, such as social norms one was born into.

This is why conservatives so often fall into nationalism and loyalty to socially constructed categories over values. Most of all, the hallmark of conservatism is a fierce anxiety when met by elements which challenge that fixed and secured worldview.

Such challenges, in the form of dissenting opinions, in the form of the 'different' or 'unusual', in the form of change or ideas demanding time-consuming and painstaking nuanced analysis free of rigid definitions and inclusive to every individual reality...

...is viewed with suspicion as inefficient to problem-solving & understanding of the world—inefficient in the sense that it risks that sense of security where simpler, more direct solutions would seemingly suffice, even if the casualties and collateral damage would be inevitable.

Conservatives invariably favor repressive measures because it is simpler and more direct. And they favor racism or sexism or other prejudices because it is simpler. And they favor steadfast loyalty to a state rather than to transnational values because it is simpler.

And they favor a police state because there they do not have to 'risk' security, not just of society but personal and psychological security, in dealing with the arduous task of cultivating peace through empathy, communication, and remedying structural violence.

Because conservatism is this state of mind that can be found across every society, it is like a chimera which manifests in wildly distinct visages, all contingent on the society the conservative was raise in.

But while their bias for political realism ensures they will battle one another like mortal enemies, polar opposites, at the end of the day, conservatives in every society are one and the same at the root of their values. They are loyal to their tribal group, not to values.

Sure their professed ideals and ambitions may seem antithetical: capitalism and socialism, liberalism and authoritarianism, Christianity or Islam, Confucianism or Legalism, but the true values of conservatives underlying the myriad visages are security, control, and power.

That is how, even though they are raised on a classically liberal culture, which would have been leftist in the 18th century, the US Republican Party is conservative. The classical liberal culture is the identity they are loyal to, their status quo.

And in the PRC, the conservative right-wingers are those most fanatical and obsessive about glorifying their established culture, which is the toxic one-party regime modeled on the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist structure and the cult-like worship of Mao's insanity.

Xi Jinping is alt-right. Calling themselves socialist does not make them left-wing. The left–right spectrum is one that maps the range from progressivism to conservatism. A conservative and ultra-nationalist in a socialist society is still a rightist.

I think it is important to recognize that the notion that the CCP is extreme-left is in and of itself CCP propaganda because they wish to portray themselves as the archrival to a corrupt and imperialistic America & inheritors of the socialist cause.

To describe this discourse as Eastern also ignores the fact that it is a common narrative among American rightists, who are still trapped in an outdated Cold War binary between communism and the liberal, capitalist world.

And those HK Trumpists decrying 左膠 everywhere have been misled simultaneously by both American and Chinese conservatives (i.e. right-wingers) because in the realm of global politics, the pan-democrats and localists have always been center-left to radical left.

@SailorJanitor
I apologize that this may be too long-winded, but this was the best way I could explain this without delving into even more complex semantics like why I consider operative definitions of rightists as conservatives and leftists progressives.