It all has to do with transparency. China actively tells you what it's doing and what it collects. Thus, the Chinese citizens can prepare for it and do by using VPNs.

The US is spying. Not just on it's own citizens, but the entire world. Merkel for example couldn't have known that US was spying on her and didn't have the opportunity to protect herself by using a VPN. Mind you, this is on TOP of US companies openly and transparently collecting data as we discovered with Cambridge Analytica.

Again, remember, we're not saying China is good. We're saying USA is worse, since they do everything China does on data collection AND they have backdoors and spy.

*Edit: Interestingly this transparency in what they collect is a primary reason for why the west believes they're oppressing Uyghurs. The problem is they're conflating this transparent information with oppression. Things like do they go to prayer or shave their beards are things that are collected. The west has stated that this shows the Chinese are targeting Uyghurs, the problem with that analysis is that China does this to everyone.

Another example is a data point China collected was are you planning to have a child soon. The west took this as are you getting pregnant and stated that China is trying to force women to have children. The problem with a lot of western articles is they're mistranslating and misunderstanding.

Say what you will about if you're OK with this type of data collection, but at least China is honest about it, to the point we are misconstruing their collecting of data to place insidious ideas on them.