Why China Loves Conservatives?

Conservatives in the West see in the People’s Republic of China a daunting nemesis: an oppressive tech dystopia ruled by a Leninist party that negates conservatism’s attachment to civil society, Christianity, and individual liberties. You might expect the intellectual mainstream in mainland China to denounce Western conservatism in return. China is still formally communist, and its leading traditions of political thought—New Confucianism, Marxism, and Dengist reformism—do not overlap with Western conservative outlooks. What affinities could there possibly be between Western conservatism and the intellectual mainstream in China?