I imagine that conservatism across Asia looks very different than conservatism in the US; i.e., questions of trust in government, whether COVID is serious, or whether people should own guns.

I think that just trying to project strict left-right dichotomy as contemporary American politics produced on other countries is already bad start. It is not something universal, it is being exported to some extend, but still. The aliances elsewhere and political splits dont copy America.

I do agree with that.

The American right is insofar an outlier as it is deeply distrustful of the state. Many conservative movements across the world tend to be more statist than their leftist compatriots. In general, right-left is a pretty insufficient category for classifying politics, something like milieu theory