I think the difference is that in the XT case it wasn't clear that this had been done to the casual outside observer. The signed statement on the XT site is mostly companies not in the mining space and only a single mining company. By contrast the classic site publicly lists several miners as supporters of the project and at least two of the developers on board are involved in mining operations.

On your point about the current dominance of China in mining. Two years ago people were flipping out that Ghash.io might have the ability to perform a 51% attack and now they barely register a whole number percentage share of the hashrate. Things change.

[0] https://blockchain.info/pools