[seanmcdirmid]

It depends on your environment. Say if you are at a university or something with students it will be very different than if you are working for a tech company with your Chinese co-workers. Also, southerners tend to be less nationalistic than northerners, so if you are in Beijing it is very different than if you are in Shanghai or Shenzhen (though if you are working at a tech company, your co-workers will be from all over China).

I've had co-workers who were really harmonious river crab, and some that were very non-harmonious grass mud horse...all in the same team. Outside of work, I didn't really talk about politics at all, it just never seemed to be that important beyond a lunch topic.

China was going in the right direction under Hu, if only because Hu was a weak leader. The authoritarian uptick really came back with Xi, and now that Xi has basically become president for life, it is really reinforced. It is a bit disheartening to see China move to being more liberal to more authoritarian all in a few short years. The trend probably won't change for a generation or two.

[cenophor]

> It depends on your environment. Say if you are at a university or something with students it will be very different than if you are working for a tech company with your Chinese co-workers.

That's what I thought before I went there but it turned out to not be the case. What I am about to say is anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt.

I actually worked in Beijing. The work I did involved both tech companies and students, and I took the time outside of work to mingle with the locals at restaurants and shops. The amount of people who don't agree with the government was generally "surprisingly" high across all groups.

I should also point out that I never took the initiative to talk about politics, so in all cases it was either people being curious about the culture outside of China or, presumably, I was an outlet for them because I was clearly not affiliated with the government in any way.

I'm just going to leave it at that because anything I say past this point are even more subjective opinions.

[seanmcdirmid]

I was at Microsoft China from 2007 to 2016 in Zhongguancun, so I probably had similar experiences to you (we had lots of interns as well from local and nation-wide universities).

Politics eventually comes into play, but it was more likely we would talk about the Great Firewall, or some kid getting arrested by the party police during a rave, things like that. Politics came into play when there was some heated event, like the South China Sea dispute, that someone (usually more nationalistic) was really passionate about in the moment.

[eunos]

>the right direction under Hu, if only because Hu was a weak leader

Seems you imply that the right direction for China is having weak leader, which historically it was disaster. That aside, lots of the ugly things on China you heard like airpocalypse, corruption, inequality and weak governance expanded steply under Hu, so there's that.