Literally noone could have seen this coming. /s
edit: XCabbage better explains what I was trying to say. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21191253
That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.
What I'm saying is, China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship (edit: in the West).
There is no "liberal censorship", unless you can point me to an instance where a bunch of liberals imprisoned someone for offending them.
When people complain about liberal censorship, they're really complaining that other people have the right to respond negatively to what you say. Cancel culture is also not censorship, and it would be childish to conflate those two things.
'Cancel culture' may not be censorship in its technical definition, but isn't that effectively what it's achieving? A comedian, for example, tweets some half-baked remark that some (loud minority) find offensive. Of course, they do respond to this negatively but the media also runs with it and this group of loud people call for the cancellation of shows, appearances, and sometimes even call for the firing of the person.
You are correct in that this person, even after all of this, has outlets and ways to practice their freedom of speech - but it's essentially sending other people a not-so-subtle sign that there are certain things they simply shouldn't say, lest they would like a twitter mob aimed at them.
Occasionally, older public remarks are even dug up by journalists and used to smear the character of those people who made the remarks today. There needs to be some form of restitution, but one currently does not seem to be well defined.
Moreover, my above comment is grayed out right now as some people downvote it. Let's all think about that irony for a moment.