Do you know the full story of the 40 people in jail for criticizing the government? Do you know the population in China? Do you know how many people are jailed in US because of Patriot Act, with no reason and no trial?
People like to bring this up, and I have a few things to say about it.
1) Just because the US does something, doesn't mean it's OK. We nuked fucking Japan. Doesn't make nuclear war OK.
2) The people held by the US are not citizens, they are soldiers picked up in war zones and held outside the US. Completely unacceptable? Yes. Violation of international law? Hopefully. But this is not what's going on in China. Normal citizens, with full rights under the law, are being openly convicted and suffering harsh penalties for speaking out against the government.
If the US government did what the Chinese government did, in this narrow category, the government officials would be the ones in prison. The US is far from perfect, but it is pretty good.
If you have credible evidence that Guo was a violent, extremist terrorist funded by the West, I'd love to see it.
"Normal citizens, with full rights under the law, are being openly convicted and suffering harsh penalties for speaking out against the government."
I would argue, in most cases, they are not normal citizens, even though in western media, they are portrait as freedom fighter. I can even tell you how to find information to prove this point: check out the China Study program in John Hopkins University (the top one in US), and they will tell you the conclusion in political science field is the freedom fighters from the Tiananman Square in 1989 are extremists. I don't think the reporters will go out and interview those political scientists. There are other good China Study program you can get academic opinions from, including Univ. of Iowa (another top 1), UW is good as well.
I am not arguing with you that there is no human right issue in China. There are, but the problem is presented out of the context and in many cases with false information. I am only suggesting that people do more firsthand investigation and talk to Chinese for some full stories, but looks like I am getting enough down-votes now.