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Well, let me try to run with your question, because I think my speculation is a bit orthogonal to it.
Sure, as a great power, the Soviet Union didn't suffer meaningful consequences for operating gulags. Rather, the fact that it was a super power and operated gulags meant that all other nations in its sphere of influence certainly could use similar tools with impunity, AND the U.S. was often forced to turn a blind eye, in the case of various unaligned or less aligned nations, to similar local policies that were offensive to U.S. sensibilities when the U.S. was competing for influence against the Soviet Union. The fact of the Soviet Union having and enacting different policies and norms changed the political environment that all other nations were operating in, especially in places like Sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia that were decolonizing and not in the firm orbit of either superpower. Great powers shape norms in their sphere of influence, and those norms can be an attractive draw for possible members of their orbits. They can be a crucial form of soft power.
So my speculation isn't that China (a rising great power) demonstrates that it can do things that are offensive-to-U.S.-norms, and thus random nation x (a small, non-great power) can also now do things offensive-to-U.S.-norms without consequence. My speculation is that China (trying to end U.S. hegemony and shift to a new world order of multipolarity, with China being one of the poles) could, among many other initiatives, be offering up support of the use of demographic management approaches the U.S. current forbids as one of many carrots for smaller nations to pull out of the U.S. orbit and consider transitioning into a multipolar future where they see their interests draw them closer to China's orbit.
As I say, this is all just idle speculation, of course.
India got closer to the US while at least talking about sterilizing Christians. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were targeting the civilian Houthi population until Iran made them stop, not the USA. And of course Israel.
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