Ultimately, what we have that China doesn't have is a system in place to address these concerns. Technology companies freely and openly made it more difficult for the NSA to spy. The prison system is on the minds of every politician and newspaper, and change is happening (slowly, sure). The Iraq war was debated to death.

Every country is going to have problems. It can never make decisions that satisfy everyone. What matters is the ability to talk about it, like what we're doing here. Politics is always going to be slow, though; that's the tradeoff versus having a dictator.