[foodislove]

Most "Chinese" online seem to be paid trolls who deliberately feed misleading and false information. Either that or they have a switch in the brain where any critisism of China leads to a nationalistic brain freeze where they regurgitate silly propoganda.

The Hukou system is broken and inconsistent. Getting mine revoked was the biggest pain the ass. I'm sure there are anecdotal evidence to support your view, but the reality is the law is very differently applied depending on where you are in China. I know from first had experience the the original poster is correct.

[candiodari]

Most Chinese abroad (that I meet, might be biased of course) seem to be students on a sort of foreign scholarship from the Chinese state. And they are terrified of the consequences of discussing this. Probably for exactly that reason.

[pensiveforns]

Or could it be because they have benefited from the system, they think it's a good thing?

For example, I rarely see expats in Asia complain about why there are so many Hollywood movies in Asia.

[jjcc]

I'm not saying the original poster the "Chinese expat" make up a story. But he gives misleading information. Claim it's fake maybe not accurate.

1.The national ID is revoked only under some special case that the citizen is believed to be leave the country and give up the citizenship.Not for short term stay like visit/travel. For those whose Chinese national ID being revoked, they are not the equivalent of expat in Western country although technically you can insist it's expat. Again as you said the policies in China varied from place to place and even from time to time. Many emigrant such as aged family reunion emigrant can even keep their national IDs

2.China becomes a business orientated society. There's no reason to exclude passport owners to buying a train ticket online if there's a way to do it. The difficulty here is the cost of passport reader which is monopolized by only few US and European manufactures that only border control agencies can afford, while resident ID readers can be purchased from multiple domestic providers competing for quality and price. It's pure technical and economical reason, not because a regime want to do sth against its own people.

Your thoughts about somebody being paid (maybe with wu mao) is interesting and also a quite common belief

[sunebeck]

It is not difficult to make a passport reader, and the Chinese are definitely capable of that.

You can read the contents of the RFID chip using $100 off-the-shelf hardware, and the decryption key is the OCR string on the “main” page of the passport.

The piece of glass where you lay the passport, the OCR, and the case itself I’m sure any Chinese contractor could easily do as well.

[seanmcdirmid]

This isn’t true or fair. Your comment doesn’t even follow through with the shillness claim.

Hukou is broke for sure, but airports are under control of the federal government and have no problem in letting hukou-free individuals travel on passports. My colleague was able to go mostly where I went, except Taiwan as stated above, and our work travelled to a lot of weird airports in the middle of nowheres.

[foodislove]

That is simply not true. Maybe your friend lived in a different Hukou area. Either way, just because your friend can, does not mean every can.

This is the problem with China. Just because the system works for Jack Ma, and Xi Jinping's family, doesn't mean it works for everyone

[seanmcdirmid]

Again, the airport doesn’t care where you got your hukou when they look at your passport.

[pensiveforns]

I would say this also applies to many "non-Chinese" online. They either fall for racist stereotypes, or they have a similar switch in their brain where any mention of China means they are doing something nefarious and evil.