[chrischen]

I’m ethnically Chinese. While I speak a little I am still mistaken for a foreigner since I often hire a translator and I traveled extensively through China throughout the last 2 decades to many places both remote and urban on a US passport. Never had a problem with hotels (though mostly booked online) nor staying at relatives/friends houses, nor anything blatantly authoritarian besides my internet bring blocked (which I got around using a SOCKS proxy).

I was also part of an Obama administration sponsored group of Americans sent to China for an entrepreneurship exchange trip and I think more Americans should be sent to China to learn about it rather than reading biased second hand accounts over the internet. While it was a guided and escorted tour, we were also allowed to freely wander the cities in some of the evenings. It would go a long way to ease tensions and reduce enmity between the two nations if there was more genuine cultural interaction instead of spooky observations from afar. People tend to exaggerate and boogeyman what they don’t know and understand.

[legofr]

The reason it took more than a year for me to realize this phenomenon is because when I first visited the country then I relied on travel agencies, international hotel booking apps, and had accommodation provided for me. It's certainly possible to live in China for even a decade without realizing the reality of the situation if you exclusively stay at 4-5 star hotels, or only book hotels through international hotel booking apps, or rely on agencies to help you find apartment and other type of accommodation since they have a list of the ones that accept foreigners.

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/starrated-hotel-operation/... claim there are 10 million hotels in China - what percentage do you reckon are included in the international hotel booking apps? My guess would be less than 0.5%. That's why you need to walk into the random hotels/apartments you see on the street if you want to verify the reality of the situation. For you specifically then it might be difficult since you're ethnically Chinese, so while you might encounter some discrimination and exclusion from society (if you don't have a national id card) then it certainly won't be comparable to what white and especially black people experience while living in China. In my experience then the 9/10 number is not an exaggeration at all but if you asked other westerners who visited China then they will likely give different numbers based on their price range, location, booking method, etc.

I also think you greatly exaggerate how much you actually learn about another country by going there for a short trip. Even the most brutal regimes can look like a wonderful paradise, e.g. see the national day celebration in 1959 which took place at a time where tens of millions of people were dying of starvation (https://youtu.be/M-XQSffVpfY?t=43).

[unityByFreedom]

Yup, only certain hotels are allowed to book foreigners. I tried to buy my way in once, along with some local friends' help, and we couldn't do it. I got the impression the government would shut them down if they accepted foreigners. The staff seemed friendly and understanding, and there was this "nothing I can do" attitude about it. After walking to multiple hotels in the area we gave up and slept on a friend's floor. I forget exactly where we were. It wasn't a well know city, yet it wasn't small either. I was quite surprised at the time that even with my passport in hand I wasn't allowed to stay anywhere there.

[chrischen]

I traveled frequently, for short and longer trips (months at a time), as well as having lived there (albeit not on a foreign passport when I lived there).

Most 4-5 star hotels are still dirt cheap in China. We’ve stayed in budget hotels (by Chinese standards) in non first-tier cities with no problem.

I’d say if you got turned away it’d be some combination of obviously looking like a foreigner (in which you could get them reported for some infractions) and not being licensed to accept foreigners.

[itsagavin]

The reality is every step you took was observed and I would assume even where you slept both video and audio were recorded.

[chrischen]

You can assume anything. Doesn't mean it's true. The reality is that your perception of China is highly fantasized and part of a crafted narrative. It's dangerous if you continue to contribute to this propaganda without care as to whether you've verified anything you've heard yourself. Maybe it's true, maybe not, but I doubt you'd know. I mean, it's certainly possible our rooms were bugged, but to what end? To fulfill the dreams of conspiracy theorists? I guess it's equally likely the US embedded a CIA agent in our group as well so maybe bugging us would be justified.

[bamboozled]

Business people go missing, women who speak our are silenced, climate change is of no concern, concentration camps are real.

We’ve seen enough already.

[GauntletWizard]

Your naivete is unsurprising; it was one of the traits you were selected for in trip planning.

Countries spy on foreign visitors. Friendship trips are carefully planned to show none of the underside of a society. China is one of the most oppressive regimes out there - see the detention of Jack Ma, who was five years ago one of their most celebrated businessmen.

[chrischen]

Well, must be Obama’s conspiracy because the US side selected the participants. You speak as if you have indisputable proof of some conspiracy.

The naïveté is not understanding that China’s problems is not so much they are evil masterminds rather than just incompetent bureaucrats. The takeaway from the trip is that 90% of what they expose to the outside world is a facade to save face for their own politicians, not that they are competent super spies.

They may have spied on us, but we’d have not much value being spied upon. If spying is somehow the benchmark of authoritarian regimes then the US and Israel probably lead the pack of these types of regimes.

Secondly, just because you disagree with government policies doesn’t make it some evil regime. You cited Jack Ma but he is still out and about.

[design-material]

The fact that there's an actual genocide taking place in the country is all we need to know - all the other so-called "assumptions" pale in comparison to that reality

[bigmanwalter]

I backpacked through China and stayed in youth hostels. Highly doubt they were bugged. They didn’t even have heating (we used electric blankets)

[chrischen]

I think part of that is that a lot of infrastructure is missing, but also culturally less wasteful than American lifestyles. For example I stayed in my Japanese friend's house in Tokyo and he doesn't heat the entire place even though it's a pretty small apartment. My room just had a heated blanket as well.

But I agree, for any random foreigner the government is not competent enough to surveil him/her and much less motivated to do so. The fact is any given foreigner is not actually that important...

[seanmcdirmid]

The problem is that China doesn’t allow for central heating south of the Yangtze. So my coldest winter ever was spent in a small town in south Hunan, where it was above freezing but the lack of indoor heating really beats you down, kotatsus not withstanding. A friend of mine has parents who migrate to “northern” China in the winter so they don’t freeze to death.

Japan had a similar problem being previously not very rich (they invented kotatsu for that reason).

[hker]

Let me add some nuances to this claim.

Even if “every step is observed” is exaggerated, the surveillance system in China is pretty extensive: it can target journalists and international students among other “suspicious people”, and can compile individual files on such persons using 3,000 facial recognition cameras (in a single province) that connect to various national and regional databases. [1]

And this surveillance system is part of the bigger tracking program, which the Chinese authority has used to harass and intimidate journalists [2] (see this comment for more [3]).

And according to the memoir “A Promised Land”, even Obama and his staff were worried about Chinese surveillance during their stay at the Beijing hotel (see this review [4] or this summary [5]):

    “To make calls involving national security matters from the hotel, I had to go to a suite down the hall fitted with a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) — a big blue tent plopped down in the middle of the room that hummed with an eerie, psychedelic buzz designed to block any nearby listening devices. Some members of our team dressed and even showered in the dark to avoid the hidden cameras we could assume had been strategically placed in every room. (Marvin, on the other hand, said he made a point of walking around his room naked and with the lights on — whether out of pride or in protest wasn’t entirely clear.)” [4]

And I agree with other commenters [6] that the situation worsened significantly after 2018 as Xi was consolidating power, so experiences before 2016 or so may not be representative of the current trend (when Xi may get more terms).

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-chinese-provinc... "EXCLUSIVE Chinese province targets journalists, foreign students with planned new surveillance system"

[2]: https://www.newsweek.com/china-harassing-intimidating-journa... "China Harassing, Intimidating Journalists With Surveillance Built to Curb COVID-19"

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29685703

[4]: https://georgetoparis.medium.com/obamas-a-promised-land-on-c... "Obama’s “A Promised Land”, on China"

[5]: https://www.bannedbook.org/en/bnews/baitai/20201121/1434392.... "Obama recalls his first visit to China and was under surveillance"

[6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29684626