We restrict a lot of freedoms for the under-18 crowd though.

Purely in terms of freedom -- without arguing for any other pros and cons -- is this worse than mandatory school attendance, or not being able to vote, or take medical decisions for themselves, or whatever else kids cannot do these days.

The big difference is that those decisions are pushed to the parents and not the state. Minors are not fully mentally equipped to make some of the decisions that adults have the right/ability to make.

Parents don't get to decide whether their kids get to vote (or whether they go to school, in most of the west, without having to at least fill out some complicated forms or having to go to court.)

There are economic reasons for this (most minors aren't mentally fully developed enough to make some life changing decisions such as in voting/medical decisions/etc.)

Do you have evidence that most adults are mentally developed enough for this?

Parents in many Western countries do not have the choice of what their child spends most of their day doing, as well as some medical procedures.

Here are a few things commonly limited to Western minors by the state or a reasonable proxy; alcohol, tobacco, movies, video games, being outside(curfew laws), pornography, music, fireworks, driving.

And much like with this new Chinese law, many minors violate all of those restrictions often with parental approval.

Just because you have one reason doesn't mean you shouldn't have others. There's nothing to discuss about whether it restricts freedom or not; not even the people who instituted the restriction would deny that it was a restriction.

Not saying this is a good thing (in fact I think it's a silly rule), but: kids in the western world have their 'freedoms' restricted all of the time. There are plenty of things that kids can't participate in or see. Those are mandated by various levels of the state, for the safety/benefit of the child (ostensibly).

And parents are constantly adjusting the things their kids can or can't do, often requiring kids to ask permission to do most things. Its a way of protecting them from their immature decision making ability (with functional parents anyway).

So I think the aversion is more based on the surprise that it seems to go 'further' than we'd expect in the west, and politics/culture turns that into something to criticize the CPC (or whatever governing body responsible) for because COMMUNISTS!!!

The main problem here is shoehorning of government between people's lives. Every parent has their own way of doing things. Some parents may allow kids to play longer, some may not but government should not be involved in this matter.

I don't think this is a case of "because..... communists". This move is rightly criticized in my opinion.

> government should not be involved in this matter.

But this is just a declaration, not an argument (there's nothing wrong with that.) Should parents be able to let their children smoke or do porn?

I'm fairly sure that US parents do have the ability to give their children tobacco and porn. They just can't purchase it themselves

Depends on the state but at least in TX parents would be liable for a fine if caught giving their children tobacco (https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/tobacco/regulatory.php). Of course that's not enforceable but it is a limit the state is attempting to create. Wrt porn the parent comment was referring to "creating" porn, which is certainly illegal for a parent to facilitate in the entire US

Individual freedom might still be the most important organizing principle in the US, but in Western Europe?

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, there's something to this comment. Western Europe is where Judeo-Christian values married up with Greek and Roman societal models and produced (yes, there are obvious exceptions like religion) democracy, free speech, and capitalism. I also understand that this particular statement is a blanket statement open to nuance and is partially incorrect, but it's mostly correct. However in very recent times (hate speech mandates) this seems to be changing.