Sentencing for drug possession has secondary effects - it pushes large number of people into other kinds of crime. Thus, you cannot count only the direct 20%.
Regarding other countries - what would happen (and happened) to countries that refused to join War on Drugs?
Regarding possession - in UK essentially nobody cares, unless you’re distributing industrial quantities and/or are really obnoxious about it, eg walk into Constabulary smoking a joint, or by putting up advertisements. There are regular news about eg police finding a suspect car parked for six hours with engine on, filled with smoke (actual example I remembered because it’s funny) and they don’t result in charges. I suppose the law could be used if you also committed other offenses.
As for not being able to talk politics in China: where all the policy and law changes come from then? And if you can freely talk in the US, why so many people have many throwaway accounts here on HN?
Anyway: yes, China is oppressive in a number of ways. It’s about one generation behind the US, except for racism, where it’s ahead. US itself is perhaps a generation behind Western Europe. But everyone knows what’s bad about China, and everyone knows what’s good in the US. Anti-Chinese propaganda is everywhere, and I find it quite annoying. Particularly so because it detracts attention from real problems - if American propaganda is lying about genocides and missile silos, why assume other parts are true? Secondary: all the bad stuff in China stays in China. They don’t routinely exterminate hundreds of thousands people in other countries for financial or racial reasons. They don’t intentionally ruin other nations’ economy. The US does. And I feel like this perspective is entirely lost among western population.