I agree with you one hundred percent on picking USA over china, but as someone who has recently met a lot of Americans who lived in china to teach English it was both surprising and not surprising to hear about how little government overreach affected the day to day lives before covid. Obviously china's current system works better than what they had before with Mao and before that was the century of humiliation so their system wasn't great then either. Can't really fault the Chinese for loving the government that at least brought them to the status of second most powerful country in the world and one with some of the highest living standards outside the US and western Europe. But again ideologically I would pick freedom and Liberty over safety and security any day and it seems china has sacrificed a lot of freedoms and liberties for that safety and security. Plus racism and marginalized communities still exist in china and that safety and security part doesn't apply to them.