Well to be honest, in dictionary terms, China’s system somewhat tips the line between liberal and authoritarian polarities, with an authoritarian leaning. But this is not the kind of stuff that dishonest Western media extrapolates and feeds lies about what socialist state governance means.

Authoritarian governance would simply mean that the government is a central body that governs the state, and in that sense, no government really can be non authoritarian. A liberal decentralised government is some kind of anarchist or feudal type of system, one popular model of this type being direct democracy, which can never work beyond populations of tiny villages.

I think the last line you mention is a bit of a stubborn misunderstanding that lies with the European or MEA anarchists or anti-government sentiment bearing hardcore believers of individual civil rights and individual privacy. The people that believe this have a noble cause and are very paranoid about dystopian kind of surveillance systems that West has, and they fear inside that a centralised government is more dangerous in that respect.

Edit: noticed someone downvoted you to try and create rift possibly