I keep contact with a girl in China and from her reports using VPNs is kinda common for young people with college education. She would do it sometimes to access YouTube, and would laugh it off when I would say she should be careful doing such things.
I suppose for the government, as long as it isn’t the majority of people doing something that would cause trouble, it isn’t worth tracking down all things, as expected.
She was a spy--look at how intense their reaction was.
Unfortunately, they tend to grab innocents to exchange for captured spies. However, they're going to go for big fish, not little ones. As an average joe I'm not concerned about being held for a spy swap, but if I were a highly placed executive there's no way I would set foot in China.
Meng was PRC royalty - the daughter of Huawei's president, imagine a literal billionaire being a spy. She was taken hostage under Pence's China Initative for Iranian sanctions shenanigans that historically was dealt via fines. The initiative explicitly called for targetting PRC nationals.
Hence intense reaction. The 2 Canadian Michaels on the other hand, were text book spys with NGO covers. Western propaganda likes insinuate PRC would capture innocent westerners when state security have massive state survillance capability that completely dismantled CIA networks a few years prior. Like literally friend of Michael hinted he was in "intelligence" and CSIS (Canadian CIA) publically celebrated on twitter upon their return. The Michaels weren't executives. The TLDR, while in PRC, don't traffic drugs, don't be a spy/do anti state activities, don't get involved in expensive legal proceedings - the latter is what actually get (white) westerners in trouble via exit bans.
It's time for the West to stop playing around and allowing this sort of hostage taking. If China and Russia want to play dirty, play dirty back. They take a hostage, start taking their nationals hostage and plant large quantities of fentanyl on them.
Do you have any proof she was a spy? She absolutely was not. An extremely high ranking executive of one of the largest technology companies on earth would be literally the worst possible choice for a spy.
I suppose for the government, as long as it isn’t the majority of people doing something that would cause trouble, it isn’t worth tracking down all things, as expected.