First of all, when intelligence services are concerned, it doesn't seem like it matters much whether it's a democracy or not, since everything is done in secret

First of all, when intelligence services are concerned, it doesn't seem like it matters much whether it's a democracy or not, since everything is done in secret. So voters (even in a two-party system) couldn't really make informed voting decisions on anything related, unless of course whistleblowers inform us about the secretive stuff. But even then, not much seems to differ between a republican and a democract president / government. So, effectively, it seems like US voters have the same amount of influence on their intelligence services' spying, both domestic and international, than citizens of China do. Long story short, "spying becomes tolerable when the country doing it is a democracy" is definitely not something I agree with, at least not in the democractic setups we see in the west (and that includes Europe, to be clear).