In almost any category conceivable (police presence on the streets, incarceration weights, bureaucratic oversight), the PRC is significantly more libertarian than the US. It is true that the CIA has invested a tremendous amount of energy and money into political issues designed to delegitimize the CCP -- Tibet, Falun Gong, and Taiwan. Liberalizing speech around these topics would likely be more efficient counterstrategy than the current approach, which is a remnant of an older model of socialist statecraft.