One thing to remember when trying to dismiss how much most Chinese love their system is if they didn't, they would tear it down, like they did in the 20th century, and rebuild something they do want.

I know it's tempting to try deny them the autonomy of their own beliefs, and dismiss their national unity as a manufactured phenom, because these temptations are a balm to the fragile Western ego currently tortured by divided societies, crises of faith, and the whisper of an idea that "the West is no longer the best".

But I think that realizing there's far more similarities with the Chinese than differences can be a different, and far more useful, sort of balm. I hope you apply it! Here's a free sample:

We have the same "social credit" systems in the West. They're just covert not overt, and I find that covertness more likely to be distressing and confusing for most individuals, and therefore harder to deal with, and more abusive.

You will probably find this an extremely hard idea to accept, because it goes against the dominant Western propaganda narrative of "China do evil, very bad evil, our evil different", and there's a lot of sort of "entrenched confirmation bias", and "narrative immune system" in the Western discourse that will cause you to reflex-react against, and be virtually unable to calmly and critically entertain the possibility of ideas outside that system, that challenge the "unquestionable truths".

That fact alone should scare you, if you truly care about freedom to the level you purport to. Because you live in a "free" society, with "free association" and a "free press", so you should be able to exist within, and think in, a "free exchange of ideas". But the inability to consider ideas contrary to the dominant narrative programming, should indicate to you that things are not so "free" as the West needs to pretend they are.

Okay, without that little disclaimer out of the way, the social credit system in the West consists of: credit scores, KYC/AML, intelligence mass collection and monitoring, social media control and censorship, "national security" blacklisting, and other tactics that are basically similar to the Nazi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung. If you are unaware of this, and have never read of nor encountered any of it, boy, have you been a good little sailor and not done anything in the slightest bit dangerous, nor contrarian. You've lived within the proscribed limits, as you are supposed to.

The danger I see in the Western systems of control is they sell people "freedom" when in fact it's a lie, and they go about their control in a deceptive and coercive manner which I think it far more abusive to the "individuals" they pretend to lionize. The Chinese system, at least is transparent in its control mechanisms. It doesn't pretend to its citizens it is free, and if you cross a line with state security, they will let you know about it directly.

All societies need to control their citizens and narratives, and I see this, the more open and transparent methods of Chinese control, as a template for a less abusive future relationship between the state security and intelligence apparatus, and the populations they protect.

I honestly think all states are heading in this direction, it will just take some time. I hope that in the future, people will see the "covert coerce" Nazi-era tactics now adopted by "freedom loving" "Western liberal democracies", as embarrassing relics of a sad and dead bygone era, and will embrace the sort of hassle-free technological "checking" mechanisms, such as "instant fines and exposure for jay-walking from facial recognition", and "train tickets time-out", if you've done something bad, that the Chinese are trialing. Sure, these systems could end up being abused, and there are likely abuses going on due to corruption, but overall the system, I think, is solid. The Western "social credit" system and their extra-legal "covert coerce" consequences are already being abused, and are really pretty shoddy.