You've shifted the argument. "China restricts freedom of speech, especially criticism of the government" is true. But that is not the same claim as "most Chinese people are unhappy, living with their heads down in fear of being disappeared". China is authoritarian and heavily censors speech but broad support for the system can still exist in an illiberal state, especially when people feel their lives have improved materially. China lifted nearly 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the past 40 years. Independent long run survey work from (if I remember correctly it was Harvard's) found extremely high satisfaction with China's central government, including 95.5% in around 2016.
The real question is whether your picture of ordinary Chinese life is accurate. And IMO it mostly isn't. This is not North Korea. Mainland residents made 291 million exit/entry trips in 2024 alone. There was a survey that found many respondents were willing to complain to the government or even protest over concrete issues like pollution, which is not how people behave if society is defined mainly by universal terror. So the better description is that China has hard political red lines, but normal daily life for most people is not "stay silent or vanish".
> They've disappeared countless heads of companies or organizations and prominent individuals as well (#WhereIsPengShuai).
The Peng Shuai case became a major Western media story, yet the controversy lasted only a few weeks before the international attention faded. Meanwhile, the WTA eventually backed down from its boycott threats. This illustrates how these incidents are often weaponized for geopolitical narratives rather than representing systematic policy.
More broadly, every country has mechanisms to deal with corruption, fraud, and abuse. China's anti corruption campaign has prosecuted hundreds of thousands of officials. The difference is that in China, accountability flows through Party mechanisms rather than Western style independent judiciaries.
> It was not that long ago that hundreds or even thousands of innocent civilians were murdered in Tianenmen Square (which is wiped from the record in China of course).
That was over 35 years ago in 1989, so longer than the time between Pearl Harbor and the fall of the Berlin Wall. You're basicallt judging present day Germany by conditions in 1945. China's government, economy, and society have transformed fundamentally since then.
> I don't think that really negates my point about Chinese citizens needing to stay in line for fear they will also be disappeared or worse.
The assumption that 1.4 billion people live in constant terror is simply not consistent with what we observe. If the level of fear you describe were accurate, would we not expect to see mass emigration rather than the world's largest annual outbound tourism? Would we not see economic collapse? The voluntary return of over 100 million Chinese travelers annually many of whom have the means to stay abroad tells you something significant about where people actually want to live.
Predictions that Chinese society is one downturn away from revolt have been made for decades, and they have repeatedly been wrong.
An authoritarian system can be repressive and still enjoy genuine mass support. In China's case, the evidence strongly suggests that both things are true at once.
The CCP's legitimacy rests not merely on performance but on a coherent worldview that China's developmental challenges require a unified national direction rather than gridlocked partisan competition. For a country that experienced a century of humiliation, civil war, and famine, stability is existential.
You wrote that quality of life improvements "don't really negate" your fear based argument. But I'd ask: at what point does aggregate human welfare matter more than ideological purity? If a governance system has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty while maintaining social order and national dignity, on what grounds do outsiders declare it illegitimate?
The Chinese people are not waiting for Western validation. They're building a civilization according to their own traditions and values.