You aren't getting only one half of the picture, you're getting an additional half.

Denouncing people who provide that other half as "suspect" is itself an attempt to ensure only one half of the picture is heard/accepted.

For someone in China to criticise the central government is for them to risk their liberty. It's not a good life to be dissident in China.

Freedom of speech affects freedom of thought. If you can't say something then nobody else will hear it. And if you can't hear a certain viewpoint then you are less likely to consider it.

So you have to imagine the missing comments from China, firstly the person who wanted to criticise the government but was too afraid to say it, and secondly the person who never had a chance to consider criticising the government because they live in a place where that criticism is taboo.

> For someone in China to criticise the central government is for them to risk their liberty.

Only with enough publicity. For now, in order to summon something which can threaten your real life, you have to at least post the criticism on Twitter, and have several people "reporting" it by making it go viral. Posting on HN is far more below than that bar, yet people imagine this is what's happening in a "reversed FUD" way.

> And if you can't hear a certain viewpoint then you are less likely to consider it.

True, but mind you HN is blocked by GFW. So if a Chinese citizen appears here, it means he can read whatever he want, sans the language barrier. Surely he can't have high profile public debate with his peers, but I've seen really healthy talks about these topics on "underground" communities, usually on blocked messenger services e.g. Telegram.

> So you have to imagine the missing comments from China

There are real reasons why people may not prioritize freedom (not saying that I agree with this) and are happy to accept an alternative narrative about China. OP talked about his own observations of whats happening on their state-owned media, and the general reception of these contents, then made his prediction on what would happen if the U.S. ban TikTok, which sounds perfectly reasonable to me and pointed out a potential weakness of the CCP narrative. It is usually a mistake to dismiss these words and fill the blanks with your imagination.