People in China definitely don't live scared to criticise the government Oh yeah. Ask them to say so in front of a cop. There's a difference between arguing about politics during lunch with your friends thinking that you're not being surveilled, and going on the streets protesting about stuff.

Queer rights need improving but are not horrible

That's true. There's a lot of discrimination but I wouldn't say that the government is to blame here. There's this internet meme that goes "if you dont do xxx you are gay" and gay here supposed to be a negative word. This isn't just some homophobic people's thing, it's young people's common language that's pretty widespread.

You're giving a botched description of the western media-manufactured conspiracy theory of the "social credit score"

Social credit scores don't exist, but the privacy system is invasive. Literally all social medias and games are required to have ID verification. The first thing that appears after you have logged to most (if not all) online mobile app (for games, even offline ones) available legally through ways that the government expects (like app stores) is an ID verification popup requiring real name and ID. For games they are legally required to limit children's game times during weekdays and all nights. It isn't even effective as most children just input their parents' ids. At the cost of the whole nation's onlined, socialable people's anonymities. Its really painful because WeChat is on the list of verification demanding apps, and people cannot live without wechat.