Since you've formed the opinion that Chinese government policy hasn't become more repressive, and that opinion is clearly educated, surely you have plenty of links to give us to back up your position.
In comparison, in China if the state media decides to lie for its partisan reasons then there is no where you can go to hear the truth so you never can distinguish the truth and we have a thousand different examples of that happening.
And if all these media outlets say Russia/China/Iraq/Iran is evil at the same time, then it must be true, right?
* lying in official diplomatic relationships between countries is rather rare
* within countries, democratic leaders are much more likely to lie to their population than autocrats
* countries with imperial ambitions and long-distance ventures lie more often than others
* within great powers, the depiction of the rival great powers is especially lie-ridden
In other words, for a person living in the US - it's likely that whatever US news sources tell you about China (or Russia) is mostly lies or exaggerations