[marme]

in china nothing is private, not even your medical info. Your employer can see your medical records if they want and often force employees to get yearly medical checks that are forwarded to HR and it is often used to figure out which female employees are pregnant and they will try to get rid of them rather than pay maternity leave. There are laws against all this but not enforced

[snowpanda]

Why is this? Is it a cultural thing?

[guiltygatorade]

I think it's cultural and lack of technological awareness

1) People aren't raised with a mind to combat discrimination. Despite recognizing and celebrate some 50+ ethnic groups, the majority of Chinese are Han and look like each other. There are some laws in place to protect against discrimination against certain classes (e.g. Gender/Ethnicity) but they're not strongly enforced. The legal system simply isn't there for individual plaintiffs to succeed against corporations or government.

2) Chinese have culturally accepted authoritarian rulers as "heaven's mandate". As long as people can be fed, clothed, have a roof over their heads and even prosper, then the ruler continues to carry "heaven's mandate", regardless of what Machiavellian means by which the ruler achieves prosperity for the majority. If the government has to read my letters in order to find evil schemers to keep me safe then so be it. But if the government did all these things and the safety/prosperity of significant communities are still constantly at risk, then the ruler has lost the heaven's mandate, and it's time for a revolution to install a new ruler.

3) Chinese people are raised on family, piety, and harmony, not individualism. Many place a sense of family/community acceptance above individual will. I think most are protective of the very private -- maybe on the class of secrets -- what I say to my friends or my own journals as private, but there are very few that even think that the metadata about how they carry out their lives should be considered private. Ultimately I think most people's mindset is that if I went to a restaurant and ordered food and they kept a record that I went there and ordered XYZ off the menu then it's no longer a secret. People haven't really come around to the power of what can be done when enough information has been gathered by simply going about your everyday business.

[icelancer]

What would you say if a Chinese national asked you the opposite question: Why is data privacy the de facto standard all humans should enjoy?

Just because we're American and we sort of have that here? No privacy allows for greater systems efficiency and easier time in law enforcement investigations.

Doesn't make it right either; I'm a US citizen after all and abhor state-based intrusions of privacy more than even the average HN reader, but projection of societal norms is kinda silly.

[lurr]

Huh, it is kind of hard to make an argument for the self evidence of our inalienable rights.

Especially int he context of talking to someone who lives with tyranny and doesn't really care.

> but projection of societal norms is kinda silly.

It's not when you are talking about basic human rights. China is wrong about this.