The USA is just much better at pretending everything it does is rightful.
I mean, "a history of suppressing minorities" in the summer of 2020 is very funny. It does feel like Gen Z kids are aware of global events enough to not fall for this, so maybe it is ending.
China on the other hand, screams everyday how it wants to own taiwan. Aggressively threatens any country who dares to touch the south china seas, which it does not own.
Look at how good russian spies were at infiltrating the gov't : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five , and tell me that china couldn't do the same or better.
You're probably right, they might have some sketchy way, but if you really wanted to see who is doing what with your data from within your data center you could really set controls to do so.