What exactly did he say online that got him accused of espionage? I seem to remember the issue being that he was accused of conspiring with Manning to release classified documents, and possibly gaining unauthorized access to congressional records via an exploit in the systems access controls. I don't like the idea of the US government hounding journalists who work with leakers, but Assange was always tiptoeing up to and possibly just past laws unrelated to speech. I not a simple and straightforward case and does not prove that the US is like China in terms of censorship. You can be jailed in China for simply talking about the Tienanmen Square massacre or implying Taiwanese sovereignty, nothing comparable happens in the US.