Poland, and Hungary even worse, are trending authoritarian/undemocratic. There is still a very long way to go before they even begin to approach totalitarian dictatorships like Belarus or China (or even Russia).

But to me Poland and Hungary are more immediately worrying because they are EU countries and they only very recently took a turn for less independent courts, less free media and so on. There is still time to change course there, while in Belarus there isn't.

Alliance of Democracies Foundation's yearly Democracy Perception Index from 2021[0] had 77% Chinese people seeing their country as having "just the right amount of democracy"[1], which is the exact same percentage as they found in Denmark so it really isn't as simple as that. It also isn't about Right Vs. Left because on a simple left-right axis the US is located further to the right than Saudi Arabia and Hitler[2] and however you see US politics it isn't comparable to Nazism. You need to include more than just left right to get a reasonably useable result.

I'm neither agreeing or disagreeing with your point of view here just saying that when "just the right amount of democracy" can differ so much that #7 on Most democratic countries in the world[3] and #157 on the list agree they have the right amount of democracy then it isn't a surprise that countries that might differ a lot are seen as comparable by some and not others.

0: https://www.allianceofdemocracies.org/initiatives/the-copenh...

1: Alliance of Democracies Foundation is chaired by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. This isn't just some cranks rating China based on scared citizens not daring to say otherwise.

2: Obama is pretty close to Hitler on a left-right-only axis but Trump, Bush, etc. are far to the right of Hitler. It is a broken comparison outside of local politics.

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index