[keldaris]

I think it's fairly conservative to estimate the Chinese incarceration rate at twice their official number when you factor in not just the Uyghur internment camps (which account for up to a million people by some estimates, though the true number is probably smaller than that), but also other undeclared internment facilities, political prisoners and a fair number of people who tend to just disappear in corruption purges, etc. You're probably right in saying they haven't reached the U.S. rate quite yet, but they seem to be closing the gap with alarming alacrity.

Note, however, that none of those speculations is in any way meant to excuse the incarceration rate of the U.S., which is an exceptionally outrageous state of affairs. It also goes to show that using incarceration as a tool of social engineering is by no means the sole province of totalitarian systems of governance.

[madstap]

Even if you triple the official Chinese number that only gets you to about 54% of the US rate.

Your speculations about China sound about right to me, but as a European looking in from the outside, any time someone talks about how much freer Americans are it scares the shit out of me. The US might be the domestically freest of the global superpowers, but that doesn't mean it's any good, it just means the bar is set _really_ low.

[keldaris]

As a fellow European, I think we'd do well to remember history - the previous global hegemon, the British Empire, was very similar in most regards. Arguably the domestically least repressive major society of its time - albeit also measured against a very low standard - and just as guilty of immense atrocities abroad. In terms of everyday security and freedom for the common citizen, smaller islands of civilization seem to do better on short timescales.