I'm not equating them. I choose to live in the West, after all, and I describe China as a great potential future enemy.

I agree that China is more oppressive towards its own citizenry. America's evil is often directed externally; there is a reason much of the Muslim world calls us the Great Satan.

In attempting to describe China, I am not defending it, but pointing out their different goals. They don't strive for personal freedom, but harmony and societal stability -- at an extreme cost to those who do not fit in. Individual liberty is not a strong concern in their culture, and from birth children are often taught to not stick out from the crowd too much. The raised nail gets the hammer.

Is that a bad thing? Yes, I think so, to the extent that they do it. But freedom isn't an absolute good either. Too little, and you get a coercive autocracy where citizens have no autonomy. Too much, and you get balkanization that turns into its own kind of social discord, whether it's an extreme political divide in a democracy, great wealth and power divides, ethnic conflicts, a civil war, or warlordism like Somalia/Iraq/etc. At a societal scale, too little freedom almost always means extreme suffering, but the inverse isn't always true: maximum freedom does not mean maximum happiness.

On a political compass, freedom and authoritarianism may be two sides of an axis, but they are not the only matters of concern. The level of personal freedom in a society directly influences any other axis you may choose to plot: happiness, wealth, equality, sustainability, stability, etc.

In any given society there are always people who seek power over others. The rule of law, be it the Magna Carta or a Constitution, is intended to temper the power of traditional royalty or modern autocracies, to varying degrees of success. I'd argue the most essential function of a democracy is to ensure no one person/group gets too powerful, that checks and balances aren't a side effect of a good democracy but a defining characteristic. That requires a check upon the freedoms of the powerful in order to protect those with less power from exploitation... that's been a truism carried from antiquity through the industrial era and onto the present day. Otherwise you get Hitler, Putin, Trump... all monsters created by democracies in decline, all strong-men who rose to power selling the idea of power for an in-group by exploiting some out-group.

In the modern West, I think the idea of "freedom" is often discussed as both "freedom to" (own guns, have an abortion, start a business, vote, marry who you choose, worship as you please, pay the wages you want, choose the suppliers you want) and "freedom from" (extreme poverty, labor exploitation, slavery, monopolies, a military draft, religious control, vote suppression, WASP male dominance, autocracy). With our freedoms, we've developed a roughly 50/50 split on any major political topic, and as a result our government has been quagmired for decades, our citizens hate each other, and the only things most Americans can agree on is that the government is broken and the country is going to shit. Our enemies savvily exploit these divisions to further divide and conquer us.

China after Mao simply tackled those kinds of controversies by decree, shut everyone up, and focused on transforming their infrastructure and economy with an emphasis on harmony over liberty. In the process they rose from a impoverished, war-torn peasant economy to the world's next superpower. Some of their citizens find this an acceptable tradeoff, especially considering they never really had a history of democracy. Going from divine emperors to nationalist-capitalist autocracy (under the guise of agrarian communism, but who are we kidding) drastically improved the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people, more than the entire population of the USA. There are more middle-class Chinese than there are Americans (of any class). That is no small undertaking, even if outsiders like us don't agree with their methods.

Would we choose to give up the freedoms we have now to become more like China? No. You wouldn't, and I wouldn't. But would our answers be different if we were a peasant in 1980s China, who didn't have much freedom to begin with, and were looking at imminent starvation and death? I don't know. Mao's revolution failed and destroyed the country, yet in its wake somehow their people picked up the pieces and clawed their way back to relevance, and now, strength. It wasn't pretty, and the loss of personal liberty was part of the price they paid. It's easy to judge that value system out of its historical context, from a comfortable seat in the West, but I imagine for their people on the ground back then, it was a very different situation.

Anyhow... back to the topic at large. Freedom is often a loaded word, carrying so much cultural baggage and weaponized politicism that it's difficult to use in everyday discussion anymore. I usually find it less emotionally charged to discuss freedom in adjacent terms: individualism and collectivism.

The USA is strongly individualistic, China strongly collectivist. In between, some of Europe is more individualistic (the UK), while others are more collectivist (Finland). In aggregate the wealthiest, happiest, most developed countries tend to be those that are highly free, but also rather homogenous and collectivist. The United States may be more free than others, but its freedoms typically favor the elites (white gun owners, WASP business owners, people arising from the European tradition of individualism, etc.), and as a result it suffers in other measures of human development (healthcare, education, equality, etc.).

Arguably there is a wrong place to be on the individualist vs collectivist spectrum: on either extreme. But there is not necessarily a "right" place. Much of the West leans individualist, much of the East leans the other way. We see both strong and weak countries in both, and happy and miserable citizens in both. Different societies have different ideals, and different power structures, and from their values arise different laws and propaganda. It's not as simple as saying freer countries are better. There is both a value and a cost to our freedoms.

Only by NOT equating us to China can we tease out potential changes for the future. I'd argue that America would see better societal outcomes by pivoting more towards collectivism, and China would see better societal outcomes by pivoting more towards individualism. In the middle both would have to tease out what sorts of freedoms to protect and which to sacrifice. Personally I'd hope both would ultimately land somewhere near the Scandinavians, but with the way things are going, probably both are headed towards ultra-authoritarianism instead.

Back home, in the US, I don't think our fractured democracy will survive the challenges of the next few decades... we are a country now without vision, unity, or purpose. Once the advertising bubble collapses and China and Russia catch up to our tech and services sectors, then soon after overtake our military, there won't be much left for us. Because we were so blindly chasing personal freedoms we forget anymore what it means to be a country.