This seems like the fundamental problem with political repression.
The actual area of social life involved in dissent is small, many if not most average people don't care but once you create a repression machinery, the area which must be repressed will always grow and grow into areas that are completely irrational, to the point it smothers a large part of society.
And no one can say to stop because that would be dissent.
> the area which must be repressed will always grow and grow into areas that are completely irrational
I'm from a former Eastern European communist country and one of the main reasons why my dad grew up a moustache back in the 1970s and why he chose to keep it later on is that our former dictator's wife hated moustaches, and as an unwritten rule none of the Communist party higher-ups had one. My dad told me how once how his former boss had scolded him for said moustache, looking back it's ridiculous for a civil engineer in his late-30s (my dad's age at the time) to be scolded for facial hair, but, like you said, repressive regimes very quickly become irrational.
What people fail to understand about China is that while the magnitude of repression might be very large, the surface area is tightly constrained to a few key areas the Chinese govt cares about, namely political speech, organizing, international geopolitics and whatever "correct moral behavior" fad is in right now.
I always tell friends that, if you're someone who isn't particularly interested in political speech or organizing, China might just be the most libertarian country you've ever lived in. Things that I used to expect thickets of paperwork for and approval from all sorts of various departments back in the West, in China, it's just a couple of forms and a shrug from largely indifferent govt officials.
The actual area of social life involved in dissent is small, many if not most average people don't care but once you create a repression machinery, the area which must be repressed will always grow and grow into areas that are completely irrational, to the point it smothers a large part of society.
And no one can say to stop because that would be dissent.