Liberal democracies are generally given more of a benefit of the doubt when it comes to their anti-liberal policies (eg Patriot Act), as it pertains to the seriousness of the threat they represent to the well-being and freedom of the population. That is, it's not anticipated or widely feared that those policies will next lead to vast gulags and the near total elimination of all human rights.
Human Rights Watch just put out a hundred page report on what's going on in Xinjiang. To paraphrase their findings, what's going on in China is the most repressive large-scale effort seen in the country since the cultural revolution days of mass murder and purge.
With China, given they're already an authoritarian dictatorship with few human rights, and they're regressing rapidly from the small gains they had made, there's a built-in legitimate fear of its surveillence programs being directly used for terrifying things. Indeed, it's happening right now.