I think it's important to keep in mind how censorship like this honestly works. Every stat has censorship and it comes in many forms. In capitalism if you write a book you are limited by the bureaucratic structures around publishing and releasing books. If it doesn't seem like your writing or message will sell to the various people that gatekeep that industry, you won't get published. Indy publishing and self publishing are getting more popular but these greatly limit exposure.

In socialist states like PRC and former USSR things work a bit different. Since publishing organs are generally state owned there tend to be various commissions/boards that act as gatekeepers and editors instead. Rather than judging profitability they also judge others stuff. They only have so many resources and can only do so much and so they use their knowledge. These boards maybe function more like academic boards do except they are not necessarily specialists. Often they can be made up of other writers and artists. These boards can have their own weird biases and demands of authors just like publishers in other nations make demands and requests for changes. The idea that Harry Potter or whatever was just published as it was sent to the publishing house with only spelling corrections or whatever is absurd. People got involved and said what they thought would and wouldn't work.

So anyway these boards are made up of people. They may be appointed or elected instead of hired like in the US, but in the end its a group of "people who know what they're doing" judging resource allocation in both cases. These boards can have their won weird biases and vary immensely.

I read about the Strugatsky brothers in the USSR and the struggles they faced. Mostly the changes they had to make were not related to politics directly, but rather to the same stuff authors were fighting in the US in the 50s and 60s. They were asked not to include crude language, open sexuality, etc. They were asked to change the setting of Roadside Picnic to be in the US because their editing board didn't like the idea of a book about a petty criminal in the USSR. IS this good? Not really, but it's not some top down state directed thing. It's just hoops that have to be jumped through to get published. Like in other nations sometimes it weakens elements of the original work. Just like writers in the west do with publishers Chinese and formerly Soviet authors can go back and forth and insist on keeping X or Y thing while at other times changing stuff.

Anyway I'm not saying the way Chinese publishing works is GOOD but I am saying that there's a habit westerners have of "othering" countries like China to the point that when people have to heavily change their writing in the west it's just par for the course, part of normal life, and a totally understandable business move, whereas in China it is treated as though the head of the Communist Party demanded X be rewritten. In the end either way you have gatekeepers you have to appease to produce mass art.