The point here is that it is demonstrably obvious to trans people living in the US and UK that China is better to us than the US and the UK, one of which is currently performing a genocide against us and the other of which is transphobic on a near daily basis and is expected by the community here to follow in the US' footsteps if it gets the chance.
China is pretty blegh actually.
They are actively making things worse w.r.t accessing HRT online, and require even more nonsense than the UK on changing legal ID, including shit like spousal approval, familial approval, and permission from various things like work, school, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_China
Access to hrt is also comparable to the uk by the looks of it. More importantly, the illegality of gay marriage combined with the massive approval process for id change means that trans people with different-gender partners can't marry legally, and trans people with similar-gender partners are probably? in an unfortunate position here, though the page doesn't include info on this >.<
The more sex-segregated components of various aspects of China also causes significant issues >.<
I'd say it's worse in terms of being able to socially and medically transition, but there's less overt hate. It's more death-by-bureacracy and a need for even more extensive social approval to transition (I'm almost impressed that they managed a worse system than in the UK). The greater hold the Chinese Government has over their internet means accessing DIY HRT is likely much harder :/
People claiming China is much better on this than the US and the UK are wrong, they both have different issues. The UK in particular, most of the transphobia I experience is from institutions and media rather than "on the ground" (though this def. happens too), and the way the government is going with using us as a scapegoat is very concerning. But the - for now - lower amount of control over communications means I got started on DIY HRT pretty simply and pushed my way through the "official" system.
On a side note, stuff like this is one of the reasons opposing authoritarianism especially w.r.t communication is important, it makes it easier to do things the government has not approved of because the infrastructure is not in place to control communication and coordination as effectively.
The US is as always a clusterfuck because of it's more federated nature, some of their states are trying to do genocide while others are acting as refuges and have things like informed consent HRT access and active protection against the more hostile states . - but fuck me if the dems aren't spineless at opposing this stuff or (as can be seen in the op) sometimes support this.
Honestly most large states constantly try and censor the internet with stuff like this, though in the US/UK/Europe it has been a lot less successful at least. In this case it's a more brazen attack on queer people, but this sort of stuff seems to happen every couple years. It's very frustrating >.<
People definitely have some double standards though - maybe racism or the false idea that China is communist - but it doesn't mean the Chinese govt is good on things, in my observation, just that people underestimate the things European countries, the UK, and US states do.
They may be better or worse and just because people often have double standards doesn't make the Chinese government better (though it is often not worse in some respects, but the overall greater control of communication and computing infrastructure means it is harder to evade the subjugation or organise around it via tools like Tor, and the greater centralisation means that if the government decides to do something particularly awful it's both harder for public dissent to occur and harder for regions to undermine efforts like that or even actively counter them :/).
