China is far, far from a good world citizen. They commit some of the worst human rights abuses, have rampant censorship and lest we forget their system of government is hardly democratic.
But over the past 12 years, the USA looks increasingly like a brutal[2] authoritarian regime without the rule of law, an informed electorate, or basic civil rights that people in much of the developed world take for granted.
That doesn't make China look good. But it makes China look a whole lot more normal as a powerful nation.
[1]: torture, secret prisons, indefinite detention without trial, forced abortions, etc
[2]: torture, secret prisons, indefinite detention without trial, assassination, lack of basic healthcare, etc
We know the Chinese government at the national level can see at any time what is going on in Chinese variants of social networking sites (from the basis that all these servers are typically hosted in Beijing).
What we didn't know was the US are doing this at a global level, and they have been trying to keep it secret all this time. That's something we did not realistically expect.
In this particular instance, the US is no better than China in respecting and protecting the privacy of individuals, and not impinging on their freedoms.
Snowden did the US citizens and the world a favour by exposing Prism. Now we can do something about it. Now we can seriously decide how important our privacy is. We see how deep the rabbit hole is. That's a starting point to correcting this.
The US is far, far from a good world citizen. They commit some of the worst human rights abuses, have rampant censorship and lest we forget their system of government is hardly democratic.
PS: apart from the achromatic base colors, nothing in life is that black and white.
Also I sad, 'look like'.