Australia has been slipping hard right for quite some time
Would you consider China to be "hard right?"
Silencing dissenting viewpoints seems to be very much a modern "left" thing to me.
As a liberal, I've been dismayed at how the modern left seems to have completely abandoned the mantle of liberalism.
For the record, calling these policies "left" or "right" is silly as authoritarianism isn't inherently one or the other. But whether China even qualifies as "leftist" is extremely debatable even if it was already quite authoritarian under Mao.
I was commenting on what I am seeing coming from those who described themselves as being ideologically aligned with the "left" today.
I see censorship, speech limiting, "canceling", compelled speech, etc, coming from that area today.
When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s this was very much the kind of thing I saw coming from the "right", limiting expression for political and religious reasons.
Like I mentioned, as a liberal (which I don't belive is inherently left or right) I've been disappointed in the modern "left" which seems to me to be taking a step back from liberalism. I see a lot of authoritarianism coming from that direction right now.