There is a big difference. An open, democratic government can be peacefully corrected. A closed, totalitarian government cannot be. If the chinese and russian governments were open, then we could worry less about them.
The United Kingdom has more CCTV activity than any other European country, per capita. No-one bats an eyelid. They have also been using facial recognition to find people in the crowd with a really poor rate of success. No one seems to batter an eye lid, China does the same and everyone is going crazy.
