[chillacy]

I asked an American friend over Signal about it, he confirmed that the lockdown was less severe in Beijing months ago while US cities were in peak shelter in place. But he also said that every single day somebody would call to check in. That level of surveillance wouldn't fly here (our contact tracers are far less effective than say South Korea's).

China isn't North Korea. You can use VPN to access the broader internet. And if you have an American SIM card, all your traffic gets routed through the US so you can access the full internet (it's just painfully slow).