I think its less about communist countries, and more about the West (in my personal case, the US) believing they are somehow free, while at the same time most of its citizens are dominated by authoritarian structures of the private workplace, forced to rent out their freedom to their employers for the majority of each week, with little option to pivot due to the necessity to pay tribute to the owners of land and property (either the bank or the landlord), while the news organizations are in the interest of keeping themselves afloat, which in turn means upholding those same owners who fund them.

No major news outlet would publish something that undermines its own existence, and therefore is not completely free.

Edit: all that says nothing about state-communism, which historically does the same and worse. And still, I think the US is more free in terms of speech than many

Pointing out some negative aspects of the west and people straight up taking it to mean "so communist countries are better?" must be some kind of brainrot.

Communists are shit with super fucked up history, and so does the West. CCP doing blantantly awful things and the the West doing it while hiding behind some plausible deniability is evident with how west treats Israel/Palestine conflict.

All the freedom after looting and pillaging the rest of the world, genociding the native population to brink of extinction, or destabilizing other countries for their own benefit is not the flex you think it is.

"You can give more to your own people, so they'll have time for art and innovation, and then you can claim the people you steal it from are/were "dirty savages" fighting for scraps."

So convenient right? Who knew?

Trying to take it as a natural growth of wisdom or whatever you think you've achieved is all thanks to atrocities of your ancestors of the past, which you'll soon downplay as a commonplace and stawman into deflection.

If anything you should thank the chinese for the invention, which is the foundation of your freedumb.