> Or that China _is_ a surveillance state

It is, as is the US. Or most other developed nations, if we're going to be honest with ourselves.

> Does the U.S. not hold the most patents?

The US patent system has a very large number of patents (maybe the largest number in the world), but how many are held by US citizens and companies? Foreign entities are allowed to register US patents (and many do) in order to be able to sue US entities.

In fact, this effect is significant enough that the Australian Government's Law Reform Commission noted in a 1990 report[1] that the existence of a patent system may actually have a net negative effect to the economy because of this effect.

[1]: https://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/2-patent-system/economi...

Ignoring the silly stuff the parent poster wrote, the facts available indicate that by millions of people's analysis the US is the best country on Earth. The US naturalizes a million immigrants every year and has done so for the last thirty years. There are more than forty million non-citizens living in the US. No other country has that number of immigrants. Plus there is no country to which more Americans emigrate than from which people immigrate to the US.