That's at least something citizens can act upon. In China they'll just bury you.

Just like citizens can act up on, say, getting blackballed by Google and having their email gone forever?

It's easy for citizens to fight back against that - by not using Google as their email provider (and educating others about the risks). There are many free and paid alternatives to Gmail.

Are you comparing losing your email versus being kidnapped and held in jail without access to a lawyer or courts?

No, I'm saying this is a thing that deeply impacts people's lives which they cannot, in fact, "act upon" when they are wronged.

Take regular backups has always been good advice, that doesn't go away just because a company handles your email for you. Always take archives from cloud services just like you backup HDDs, use a custom domain to forward inbound email traffic and you'll be 100% protected.

You chose the worst example of Google being able to ruin somebody's life when if they really wanted to be evil, they'd have a monumental amount of data for blackmail, the ability to silence you online, etc..