They have more to fear from China.

China does not respect the sovereignty of other nations, nor the rule of law. They are not above intimidating, blackmailing, or otherwise exerting their influence on foreign nationals on foreign soil when their views become too politically inconvenient.

Those residing and holding citizenship abroad but that have family back in China (which are many) have proven especially vulnenable.

Stories of China arresting foreign citizens for activities abroad and never allowing consular access, funding and manipulating groups in foreign countries (especially on university campuses) and then directing them to silence others, and more are a dime a dozen.

While the US's hands are quite dirty here as well, China has shown repeatedly that given the opportunity they are more than willing to try and implement the kind of oppression and thought policing they have at home in places abroad. It is more dangerous for the entire world to have China spying on them than it is the US.

This is the same USA which performs extraordinary renditions (ie: kidnapping a citizen of a foreign nation from within that nation’s borders), political assassinations, and abandoning erstwhile allies because their new friends with oil don’t like the old friends?

How is China worse than the USA? Your claim seems to rest entirely on greater reporting of China’s aggressions by the US and their allies.

His claim rests on the reported facts by the US and allies? There are independant agencies outlining so much worse.. like the harvesting of organs on political prisioners.

Do you think the US is harvesting organs?

Probably not, but the US has started more than a few wars which has led to insane amounts of suffering and dragged it's allies into it as well. This, as a European, I fear more than China's foreign policies.

However I am truly afraid of the way Xi has enacted its horror policies in China.

Russia borders Finland, and your air force flies 60+ F/A-18s. I believe that US military power is among the most significant bulwarks of peace and prosperity in your country.

That is whataboutism.

The US routinely massacres innocents in foreign countries then retroactively declares all the victims “terrorists”. China — to my knowledge — doesn’t engage in anywhere near the level of military aggression that the USA does.

When you compare the number of organ harvest victims to the number of “terrorists” slaughtered by incorrectly targeted missiles, who comes out ahead in the ethics game?

Do you think killing people for the sake of imaginary goals is better or worse than killing people to harvest organs?

> While the US's hands are quite dirty here as well,

Acknowledged this already.

The policies the US is trying to enforce with these measures are less bad for most of the Western world than those that China is. That's it.

While the US has taken quite a slide on freedoms over the past couple decades, they're still nowhere near China's level and I find it pretty laughable to even try and put them on the same playing field in that regard.

Well, the PLA has been caught red handed, twice, hacking Western firms and financial insitutions, including installing malware and identify theft which could be used to impersonate and hack members of the public. The USA is far from clean on this issue, but I don't think we know enough to properly characterise the relative threats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398

And the NSA has been known to monitor all kinds of communications "which could be used to impersonate and hack members of the public". (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations#NSA...)

The ideal would be to use open-source hardware and e2e encryption, but if this is not possible I would suggest these scared of the US to use Chinese phones and these scares of China to use US phones.

Millions of Chinese people visit the US. This is who China would be most concerned about monitoring anyway, and who we should be most concerned about protecting.

>Even if China is more evil in its domestic affairs a western civilian has much more to fear from the US.

Can you support this assertion?

Kim Dotcom, Julian Assange, Iraq, Iran etc.?

FIFA executives. Even though I found it awesome.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/nine-fifa-officials-and...

China can't prosecute me for anything, U.S. can.

America are more likely to kidnap me over the borders compared to China.

Source?

To quote a Chinese citizen: “Give us a baby and we’ll let you go.”

https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/03/21/give-us-baby-and-well-...