What metrics are those?

The US has the biggest prison population in the world by a big margin, 655 per 100k people (El Salvador is in second place with 604/100k and China is at 118/100k). I'd call that state repression.

In other measures it does better, like the so-called democracy index, where it ranks #21 (flawed democracy), which is better than China at #139 (authoritarian). In the reporters without borders press freedom index it's at #45, with China at #176 (almost dead last, out of 180).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

I would argue that state repression is not only about direct interaction with police and other agents of the government, and that economic inequality and poverty is less direct, but just as real, relevant and serious form of oppression. If you buy into that premise, then the recent UN report is pretty damning.

http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1

Some quotes:

"About 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty."

" Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies, eradicable tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent, and it has the world’s highest incarceration rate, one of the lowest levels of voter registrations in among OECD countries and the highest obesity levels in the developed world."

"For almost five decades the overall policy response has been neglectful at best, but the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship."

I'd say that compared to China it really is better, in most regards, but "by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet" is a stretch, to say the least.

Within the scope of my comment I was using a far narrower definition of internal repression than you are. That being said, I don't disagree with you to any significant degree, although I would not count obesity or tropical disease. The only aspect in which the U.S. is somewhat exceptional (in the good sense) still is its legal support for free speech, which is still arguably the best in the world.

I would also note that even including all of the damning things you list, the U.S. on average falls behind most rich democracies in the world, but is still far ahead of most other states, except in the incarceration rate [1]. Rich democracies are an outlier.

[1] I'm not sure that's quite true any more if you count in all the Chinese internment camps and other non-disclosed facilities - the U.S. never had secret prisons at scale, other states do.

Sure, rich democracies are outliers, but you did say "one of the freest societies on the planet", which I parsed as somewhat stronger than "one of the rich democracies" or "not third world".

I think you're wrong about the incarceration rate though, by a lot. China has an official prison pop. of about 1.5 million, to have a rate close to what the US does it'd need to have 7.5 million [1] people in the internment camps, which AFAICT is way higher than anyone estimates (I couldn't really find any good estimates, but for scale the total population of Uyghurs in China is 11 - 15 million)

[1]

(def us-pop 325719178)

(def us-prison 2121600)

(def china-pop 1403500365)

(def china-prison 1649804)

(defn rate [prison population] (float (* 100000 (/ prison population))))

(rate us-prison us-pop) ;=> ~651

(rate china-prison china-pop) ;=> ~117

(rate (+ china-prison 7.5e6) china-pop) ;=> ~651

I think it's fairly conservative to estimate the Chinese incarceration rate at twice their official number when you factor in not just the Uyghur internment camps (which account for up to a million people by some estimates, though the true number is probably smaller than that), but also other undeclared internment facilities, political prisoners and a fair number of people who tend to just disappear in corruption purges, etc. You're probably right in saying they haven't reached the U.S. rate quite yet, but they seem to be closing the gap with alarming alacrity.

Note, however, that none of those speculations is in any way meant to excuse the incarceration rate of the U.S., which is an exceptionally outrageous state of affairs. It also goes to show that using incarceration as a tool of social engineering is by no means the sole province of totalitarian systems of governance.

Even if you triple the official Chinese number that only gets you to about 54% of the US rate.

Your speculations about China sound about right to me, but as a European looking in from the outside, any time someone talks about how much freer Americans are it scares the shit out of me. The US might be the domestically freest of the global superpowers, but that doesn't mean it's any good, it just means the bar is set _really_ low.

As a fellow European, I think we'd do well to remember history - the previous global hegemon, the British Empire, was very similar in most regards. Arguably the domestically least repressive major society of its time - albeit also measured against a very low standard - and just as guilty of immense atrocities abroad. In terms of everyday security and freedom for the common citizen, smaller islands of civilization seem to do better on short timescales.