[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.