If you look for criticism of the Chinese government from Chinese citizens, you will find it. However, the vast majority have, in general, a very favorable opinion of the government, therefore they do not have many systemic criticisms to level.

Perhaps the reason that there are no widespread protests in China against extrajudicial killings by police is because that is not a thing that happens in China, save for astronomically rare instances, in which case punishment is swift, and therefore there would also be no cause for public outcry over a lack of consequences.

Should such cruel abuses of power be prevalent throughout the country, and should such widespread discontent and anger with the government exist, it is bound to manifest itself through demonstrations, actions, and protests regardless of whether or not such activities are proscribed by the state. Since we do not see that happening, we can conclude that the causal widespread discontent does not, in the first place, exist.

I guess that for a Westerner, a government isn’t good enough until it is so viscerally hated by the populace that violent uprisings break out every year. Only then will you have true democracy. Only then will you have true freedom. For a government that is competent and well-liked is a dystopia so utterly terrifying that the extent of its horror exceeds the limits of human comprehension.

Westerners fetishize protest. They are aroused by it; for it is the ultimate performative display of freedom and democracy, that unquestionable, holy mantra.

Of course, anyone with half a brain will have noticed that a protest is only the embodiment of freedom and democracy should it occur in a designated enemy country. When it occurs on the home front, that is an unspeakable act of terrorism.

But what makes freedomism freedomism and terrorism terrorism? Of course, freedom and democracy can only exist wherever American capital reigns supreme, and despotism reigns wherever it does not. So it logically follows that it is freedomism to serve the domination of American capital and terrorism to oppose it.

Returning to the original question at hand, we can see clearly that the issue has, in actuality, vanishingly little to do with the objective presence or absence of criticism, or of the right to criticism. It has everything to do with the presence or absence of freedomism, the constituency of this category being comprised of any action taken to serve American capital. With this working definition of freedomism we can say that the true lament is not the inability to criticize (an idea demonstrated to be categorically incorrect), but rather the inability to mount a freedomist criticism - “freedomist” here being obviously present and yet textually omitted, like a coefficient of one - à la the Hong Kong riots of 2019.

With this updated framework, it should be obvious that of the criticisms - and there are many - that are directed against the government, the vast majority of them do not qualify as a freedomist criticism, therefore they might as well not be criticisms at all. Now we can finally conclude that criticism is prohibited in a country where it plainly is not.

Through this manipulation of the intricacies of language, the average Westerner has been conditioned to bark at the enemies of American capital like a trained dog.

China is denying its citizens the ultimate freedom: being slaughtered by a government utterly subservient to American capital, thereby enabling the performance of the freedomist rituals.

How can a Westerner believe seemingly the exact opposite reality? Well, maybe they don’t entirely - just remember to add the invisible coefficient of one, here being the word “freedomist” before “criticism”, so as to correct their omission.