I use a very simple heuristic when talking to that sort of person:
"Why are people fleeing from your alleged paradise to an alleged criminal state? Why not the other way around? Get back to me when large numbers of Americans are fleeing to China to escape tyranny at home, search for new and better opportunities, etc."
Depending on how the next few elections swing these families might not be safe anywhere in the continental US. They wouldn't be any safer in China, but this kind of tyranny can and does happen here at home.
The area of gender-affirming care is and has been well studied in both adults and teenagers by accredited doctors and pediatricians, and the preponderance of the evidence is firmly in the "pro" category. What trans-women truly want, aside from leading a happy and fulfilling life, is to continue to have access to the health care they need for survival, and for people with the ears of politicians to stop threatening them with either death or forced detransition.
> and the preponderance of the evidence is firmly in the "pro" category.
That's sort of the problem though. You didn't say "according to our highly empirical and well-scrutinized methodology, the only objective conclusion possible is X".
Instead, you use the word that, as best I understand the English language, signals political support. They could have saved themselves the effort of these "studies", if you ask me. These people already knew which conclusions they wanted to reach, and it does little to convince someone like myself. Not a big fan of the social pseudosciences.
> is to continue to have access to the health care
I've yet to see how anything you refer to is "health care" in any useful meaning of the word. On a good day, I might concede that it's close enough to cosmetic surgery to not nitpick that description. But on less generous days it's closer to tattoos/piercings. "I want my body to look like this" isn't health care.
> they need for survival
How is it necessary to their survival? "I'll hold myself hostage with threatened suicide" seems like a peculiar definition of "survival".
> Instead, you use the word that, as best I understand the English language, signals political support
"Preponderance of the evidence" has a very concrete legal definition, one that is very easy to Google. The qualifier "very firmly" implies that the evidence for is overwhelming.
> I've yet to see how anything you refer to is "health care" in any useful meaning of the word.
Transgender health care ranges from options as dicey as surgery (any surgery is dicey by definition, though some such as Orchiectomy are ambulatory and can be done under local anesthesia) to medication such as puberty blockers and hormones. And access to this sort of health care is being threatened for children, adults that are older than the common standard of 18 but lower than some arbitrary number pulled out of some lawmakers posterior, and even all adults, period.
> they need for survival
It is necessary for survival in the same way that anti-depressents are a non-negotiable necessary for some folks to function - except gender-affirming care has _much_ more consistently positive outcomes.
There is of course one more obvious difference between the two. The existence of anti-depressants don't cause insecure men to be terrified that the next woman they catcall might have been born with male genitalia.
At the moment, we're seeing large numbers of older Americans settling in Europe, to flee political conditions in the US. So no, it's not unique to China.
"Why are people fleeing from your alleged paradise to an alleged criminal state? Why not the other way around? Get back to me when large numbers of Americans are fleeing to China to escape tyranny at home, search for new and better opportunities, etc."