We can talk about this all day without moving anywhere. Remember tanks in 1989 Tiananmen Square? From primary school people are brainwashed with CCP-is-holy thing. Many understand what is going on, but the attitude is "survival comes first". There are still plenty are too well brainwashed to know why life in China could be so hard.
Yes, people can dream, but communism has its tradition, brutal tradition. People become realistic, you know, pay the bill and feed their children.
The vast majority of Chinese I meet here have zero interest in democracy, the few students I do meet who advocate it generally have very little idea of what it actually is.
They have no end of complaints about the government and are quite vocal about it- but huge divisions (to put it mildly) between provinces, as well as urban and rural people mean that the idea of letting "those people" have a say in how things are run is unthinkable.