How does a Bay Area tech site, when Bay Area tech has sooo many individuals who originally came to the USA as students but then couldn't go home due to tiananmen, have this kind of 'enlightened thought' on China, day in and day out?
Regardless, I'm talking about competency. I don't endorse any particular state, culture, or ideology.
On one hand, you can claim that it's a well-known propaganda technique (e.g. the soviets using "...And you are lynching negroes" as a rebuttal to anything). But on the other hand, the most satisfying way to avoid that form of propaganda would probably be to fix our own flaws rather than calling whataboutism.
The average American is much more aware of our issues, not China's. Our own place isn't pretty bad just because we have past history nor ongoing problems. It's a matter of 'what are we doing to change and improve', and are we willing/free to bring up problems that need changing, and does our societies structure allow change? Or does society pound down those nails that dare stick out? Every society is a flawed human constructed stumbled into not intelligently/humanely designed. The American systems is the most dynamic/flexible of all the ones I have been exposed to. There are more liberal ones, but less dynamic and flexible (no free speech laws in the UK which might cause the lack of reflection that you lament). There are more conservative ones that are again less dynamic/flexible.
Plainly speaking, China already took our iPhone manufacturing and our electric car business. They've got the chops, the supply chain and the export network to keep doing that for everything from the JSOW to the Harpoon missile. Unless the US makes a serious effort to invest in domestic R&D, our Bay Area vanguards are going to spend more time jerking off than participating in a healthy defense business.
It may well be coming back over time; from 4 hours ago:
Apple Mobile Processors Are Now Made in America. By TSMC. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41574844
Regardless of how you feel about it, the CHIPS act is a line in the sand the US has just crossed. We are heading back to cold-war style economics, because this is an economic cold war.