You're right, but the trend in the US is towards more repression, while the trend in China is towards less. We are destroying our middle class, they are creating and growing theirs at an incredible rate.

The attitude that I get from a lot of Chinese is that they feel the present government is a necessary evil - i.e., in exchange for many political and religious freedoms, they get progress, and an immense improvement to the quality of life of hundreds of millions... where before there was only starvation and misery. And progress they have gotten, which is more than I can say for us in the last decade or so.