XJ is interpreted as a counter-terrorism / COIN operation in China - aka War on Terror. Go look up Uyghur terrorism attacks in China on Global Terrorism DB, there's 100+ that stopped abruptly after XJ security architecture / Strike Hard campaign. Spreading to interior provinces including TianAnMen. Western MSM will report 2009 minority riots and probably stop there, but it was ongoing for until 2017s. Generally, you won't find much mainstream sympathy because Uyghurs were already getting massive affirmative action privileges, and the ones outside of XJ has reputation (right or wrongly) of being Chinese gypsies. You'll find more sympathy from Han in XJ, because they have to deal with apartheid, but even this sympathy is declining due to increased nationalism and domestic propaganda. Overall, average Chinese will find re-education strategy much more humane and western forever wars. And really like... 1-2 million is ~0.1% of the Chinese population. Statistically it's hard to convince them it's a big deal compared to US prison industrial complex. Sure it's whataboutism, but it's also math. The average Chinese is focused on covid recovery, and before that pork prices. XJ/Tibet is just not something on the radar, and there's enough domestic propaganda to counter western propaganda.
The bigger unsaid issue is US/Pompeo/China hawks has zero moral credibility in China. For Chinese, the XJ model - integrating Uighur rapidly is seen both as a "fairer" minority policy and more effective COIN model. As long as the west jails minorities disproportionately, and dropping bombs on weddings, there's no argument or propaganda to convince Chinese they're not making the better moral choice.
E: The even bigger unsaid issue, which every expert musing about the global implication of surveillance authoritarianism but won't publicly entertain is: what if XJ works? There's a reason China has 2X support of the XJ program than US can gather against, from majority Islamic countries no less. It's not just lol-debt trap. There are many parties interested in XJ model working. 80% of the world are flawed democracies or worse, and the overall trajectory is illiberal decline and increased geopolitical instability. There are more rulers who is invested in XJ working than not. The even larger issue than that? West doesn't have a alternative model, we've been flirting with incremental improvements over decade scales whenever our own "contradictions" force our hands, i.e. BLM. That's just not good enough.