Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think you are being a critical thinker, but you are just playing into anti-Western propaganda that makes it seem like there is no difference between the two. It should be pretty clear that China has the most sophisticated propaganda system in the world, and you have been ensnared by it.
Continuing to the next step of this argument that has been had before ad nauseum: the West is arguably worse in these regards because China et al. make no bones about preferring order to freedom, while we nominally tout our "opportunity" while actually limiting it to a degree such that conversations like the one we're having take place. (Your argument's only refuge is in casting your opponents in this debate as hyste…
People in the West are measurably, significantly freer than people in China. That doesn't mean the West is perfect. That doesn't mean that there aren't bad actors in government and in the private sector who want to introduce more systems of control and propaganda.
But the difference is that we're allowed to speak out, protest, and fight against these people, and that allowance is enshrined in the lowest level of laws in most Western nations. Again: not perfect, and the worst of the bad actors will try to bend those laws to find loopholes to silence dissent. And sometimes they'll even succeed at that.
That is wildly different from an authoritarian censorship state like China where you get immediately deplatformed if you say things the government doesn't like. And that's the lucky outcome; annoy the government too much and they'll do far worse to you.