The unfortunate reality is a lot of people post comments like GP but do so reflexively to deride non-US governments then play defense for posts critical of the US. Some do it for China, and so on. It would help in general if people are reasonably (emphasis on reasonably) skeptical of all states.

Let’s not pretend that China’s laws and norms are comparable to those of the US here, though. Yes, it’s reasonable to be skeptical of all states, but there’s definitely a difference of degree in state overreach.

They are comparable. China is still worse, but:

1) I fully expect to see the US government make up most of the US economy by spending in my lifetime (I'd argue they are already there, but that involves an argument I don't feel like typing).

2) COVID shows us that the US government also sees their role as deploying an invasive level of social control for The Greater Good. COVID level threats aren't going to be that rare, we'll see another one in our lifetimes.

3) The US government pioneered using phones to support a global surveillance apparatus (probably military too, I expect more than one missile has been targeted on an iPhone).

So to repeat myself, although I'd still rather take the Americans than the Chinese, these are not categorically different things. They see their roles as the same and their methods are converging. Especially on the subject of surveillance and the risks it poses to ordinary people.

China lacks rule of law, or even an attempt at it: the Chinese government has stated that the notion of rule of law is just western imperialism. This is why, China having a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and so on, is completely meaningless (no independent judiciary means the law is whatever officials claim it is) whereas an attempt of rule of law is actually made in the USA, even if it is far from perfect.

Ironically, we are debating Singapore in parent, which has extremely strong rule of law, but the laws are such that security is prioritized.

I bet the guys taken blindfolded by CIA, questioned in the middle of somewhere, and then brought back, will fully agree how much better the US system happens to be.

Naturally the ones that survived the question process.

It’s not that there’s nothing to criticize about the US and this example is one of the worst things the US does. However a key difference is that the CIA is not doing this to American citizens, we can be sure that if it were there would be considerably more outrage. In China this sort of treatment is on the table for anyone who crosses the line.

Ah that makes all the difference, and naturally CIA does follow the "law" and never does anything in-house.

Snowden and others in similar spots don't have any reason to worry about.

Ya, that occasionally happens in the USA. In China, however, that’s just a Tuesday.

Nothing to worry about then, just a statistic rounding error of a couple of poor fellows that were occasionally on the wrong spot.

Binarism (that there is only right and wrong, and not a large spectrum of gray scale in between) is one of those huge fallacies that allows one to claim that China and the USA are basically the same, when in reality, neither is white or black but one is much closer to black than the other.

True, yet acting as US is a country that should be a moral example where such things never happen also doesn't help, a country where having the wrong skin colour might be a death sentence when stoped by the police.

Not much different than being stop by the police in more dubious countries.

A scale it is.

Are we talking about China or the USA? Because having the wrong skin color is also dangerous in China as well (eg being caught African or Uighur in Guangzhou). I get it: the USA is more diverse so ethnic tension is much more common, but China has the same issues, even worse, just papered over a 90% Han majority focused into the east. Frankly, China’s ethnic tensions are a hundred years behind the states.

2) is a weird objection to level given as almost all restrictions have been lifted in the US and China remains a repressive nightmare on this issue as it has been since 2020. The US did not come anywhere near what China did with regards to lockdowns. And it’s a core responsibility of all states to protect their citizens. Overall our response was bad but we developed effective vaccines that have mostly saved us now while China refuses to use them for nationalistic reasons. Very different situations.

Simply not true. For every (actual, not just FLG disinfo) overreach of Beijing you can find one for Washington

You are more likely to be permanently incarcerated in America than China

That is right, hard to survive a firing squad

A firing squad is just another form of lethal injection.

I think the point was, we can't use the fact US (or China, or state X) is a corrupt basket case to lazily dismiss any valid criticism here. That's like dismissing the teachers criticism of an A grade student's English Literature exam question by saying "Yeah well, Ralph's answer was 'boobs'". Ralph exists. The A grade student wants to improve. These are separate concerns.