The priorities are like this: Food+water -> Stability+security -> Economic opportunities -> Opportunities for self-actualization.
"Free speech" doesn't rank that highly, although if you notice... one of our Chinese members isn't a big fan of Hu Jintao (putting it lightly) and that is perfectly fine.
Since when does stability, security, and economic opportunity rank on a scale with freedom of speech? Unless China's government is only giving a false sense of security there shouldn't need to be a 'ranking between them because free speech isn't a concept that will jeapordize those priorities.
The ranking should more be like this
Food & water ->[Self-actualization,Stability+Security]->Economic opportunity
Food & water is indeed the most important, as what freedom can there be without the freedom to live?
But stability and security is not something that needs to be achieved while ignoring Opportunities for self-actualization as you put it. Both can happen at the same time. Economic opportunity should spring from both.

...After the defeat of Nazi Germany, two new Germanys came to be. One sided with the US and allies. The other sided with the Soviet Union and allies. Both received aid and other assorted assistance in other areas to rebuild from their respective sponsors. So why was there such a gross disparity in living standards between the two? The word 'developed' is loaded because even though the original Germany was utterly defeated in war, its citizens were not ignorant savages but quite educated. Their factories may have been destroyed but the knowledge on how to rebuild those structures were never lost, if anything, given the intellectual might and assistance of the US and the USSR, that knowledge actually improved. But the result for decades since partition was that East Germany was poorer than West Germany in many ways and no better than an example of that disparity was Berlin. I have been in East Berlin when it existed so that ought to give you an idea how old am I. Between the two Berlins, I will take West Berlin any day and so will anyone here.