China’s approach towards foreign policy in the modern day is strict non-interventionism and win-win cooperation, which includes working with unsavory governments. They want to establish allies and trading partners to build their belt and road initiative which undermines old imperialist economic structures. While China is doing something progressive here, they have chosen to strictly respect international law wherever possible while constructing this project to prevent any imperialist powers from finding an excuse to sanction them/wage war/etc. This is why they end up working with reactionary governments, to build partnerships which allow them to create a successful and wide-ranging alternative system of international trade which undermines the old economic order to create the conditions for a less exploitative, mutually beneficial world.

While this model is less directly revolutionary than that of the USSR, which aided revolutionaries abroad quite directly, it is still a form of mutual aid to the existing revolutions and provides greater flexibility for the imperial periphery to seek independent economic policy without as great of a threat of sanction or invasion. China is doing everything it can to prevent the isolation and proxy wars that the Soviets and their allies faced during the first Cold War, but still supporting AES countries with their trade deals and infrastructure aid projects etc

Sorry if this is a roundabout way of answering your question but I think addressing the roots of these sorts of relationships is more important than this particular instance, because it also explains China’s actions in other nations such as the Phillipines