I just have this feeling like you get persecuted for speaking against the government in countries like China, whereas you need to be a strong figure to have the same fate in other countries.

I have no data and this is just a feeling.

We can learn and take away a lot from this vibes-based, "democracy" virtue-signaling analysis, but not about the topic at hand.

This is still a cool way to downplay the West's imperial staple of suppressing activism, engages in revisionism and amplifies everything that helps liberalism, all while accusing everyone outside the imperial core of doing so (or doing worse) as well, the statement along the lines of "does worse" doesn't mean anything when you recognize that it's a Western idea fully embraced and embroidered by the West that is insurpassable/incomparable to any other form of censorship.

Freedom of speech is a meaningless concept, especially so for anyone that's not white, when you can't actually criticize EU/US/KKKommonwealth countries within these countries meaningfully without fear of losing your job, your house, your visa (this is exacerbated for foreigners, often not talked about) or your life.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/tufts-university-student-detained-pro-palestine-views-transferred-louisiana

https://www.commondreams.org/news/ice-warrant-mahmoud-khalil

Your "freedom" to "speech" and "democracy" are constrained within a clearly drawn boundary, the boundary of which is drawn by the ruling class.

Any other country outside the West engaging in censorship is either a) a dog of the West or b) protecting itself from fully succumbing into being a dog of the West.

Notice how a Westerner does not risk anything by truly believing in and expressing things like "china censorship bad arabs/muslims are dirty terrorist scum and need to be wiped off the map these russian orcs need to be wiped off the planet", but a non-Westerner risks absolutely everything by even slightly hinting at a criticism towards Western imperialism/wanting better conditions at the cost of the ruling class, perhaps even in their own damn fucking country, this is where point a) comes in to play.

When it comes to China, they fall squarely in b):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAEwoYIYgJA

Once you understand the asymmetry, it becomes a lot clearer why the "both sides" argument is just a feeble attempt at minimizing Western imperialism.