What makes something a gulag? Throwing people in prison for petty crimes like drugs or prostitution? Forcing them to labor?

The developed English-speaking countries have far more people imprisoned for those kinds of offenses than does China, despite having a fraction of the population. Does that make English-speaking countries repressive? (My answer would be yes, for the record, for both.)

Or is it the political imprisonment? That's even more disturbing, but the lines about hundreds of thousands of prisoners really don't apply to them: it's closer to the hundreds or the thousands. Far, far too many (too many = >0), but let's not lose perspective, here.

Allowing local bureaucrats unchecked decision making abilities when it comes to who gets locked up where. Last I checked, that's pretty hard to pull off in the West, despite all the rest of our problems. And when it does happen, it's an outrage when we find out.

You are right - let's not lose perspective here.