That isn't my experience. There are in fact quite a lot of Chinese people that jump over the firewall. Most of the time, their opinions are quite different from the mainstream western perspective. But when they voice such opinions on western platforms, they tend to be labelled as shills. Only negative, dissenting opinions about China are accepted.
I am in favor of relaxing the firewall. Yet I hold no illusions about that yielding a better outcome when it comes to inter-cultural understanding: it think all in all it's just going to lead to more flamewars.