In particular, it's ludicrous to believe that all laws are personally approved by Xi Jinping himself. The sheer volume of legislation ensures that even if he spends all his waking hours reading them, Xi can be barely aware of only a tiny fraction of what is enacted by the party.

Not completely unlike in the Democratic West, actual legislation originates from some opaque process involving lobby groups, lower regional governments, individuals in various party fractions, idealistic civil servants and sometimes even concerned citizens.

I live in China, and really the US/European flavor of democracy is much better than what we have here.

My experience in the USA is that most seem to believe the in, or at least act in line with, the idea that governments with feedback from the masses serve the masses better or really at least less worse with those without feedback.

Many systems need feedback to remain stable. For governments that feedback in theory can come through different channels where more channels and more direct channels is often assumed to be better.

Voting, free speech, the right to own guns, among other laws/rights/practices are often used by those raise in the USA as the standard to judge other governments/systems, mostly because those are the channels people in the USA have and are therefor familiar with.