Another reason to not go to China
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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At some point I'm going to have to because the woman I love is from there. Probably I will need to get a burner phone for the occasion. It does seem like a beautiful country full of interesting culture. Shame about the government though.
Stick close to her and trusted family and friends. Though cash must be accepted legally , its hardly used. Getting a simcard requires registering with your passport now. If you're okay with that, a cheap burner phone with wechat for payments and comms and standard phone number yo get hold of your family back home. Needless to say you wont be anonymous so my attitude when visiting there was kind of just accept that, and don't do/say anything stupid. i.e assimilate temporarily with that way of life. All of these concerns are only a small part of life and of course a billion or so people are living with it. You are totally right that the place is full of interesting and amazing history, culture, food and really friendly and hospitable people despite the bs they have to put up with.
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It really is a beautiful country with a bunch of really beautiful landscapes, but unfortunately due to their government I wouldn't dare go to it.
Kinda like Florida, beautiful state with a bunch of beautiful beaches and fantastic weather but due to political reasons I wouldn't dare visit.
Edit: Spleling
Make sure you're out before Canada gets into another dispute with China and they resort to hostage diplomacy again.
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Kinda the same reason it has always been.
Bringing your real phone instead of a burner phone into the PRC is just asking for your shit to get stolen. I have never brought my real phone into the PRC.
I wonder why, knowing this, one would go to China in the first place.
I wanted to see the great wall while I was studying in Asia.
Fair enough, I mean the history is fascinating, some years ago I might have gone, but nowadays....
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Even as far back as 2010 the corpo I worked for had an official travel protocol that dictated backing up Blackberries, factory resetting them, crossing the border, then restoring them from the cloud. That was for crossing any border.
I'm not saying that that's an unreasonable policy for companies to have, but I will bet that only a very small portion of individuals normally do that for personal smartphones.
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I've personally never done the trip to China for a lot of reasons (you know you are living your best life when a postdoc explains that you should never under any circumstances go to China because of what you have said) but do a lot of foreign travel for work:
No company should let any employee bring corporate electronics on international travel. Have burner phones and laptops that are set up to do incredibly minimal work locally (basically just have the slides... maybe) and to remote in. And work with your IT department to "randomly lock" them if a wrong password is detected in an airport or government facility.
It doesn't matter if it is the UK asking if we want the left or right hand this time or the CCP: It is just an unnecessary risk that is easily avoided.
And then inform the traveler of whether they want to bring their personal devices or not.
and to remote in.
This is the approach I use with laptops domestically, and I think that there's something to be said for it. Like, the laptop itself doesn't store important information. A remote server does. The laptop is just a thin client. If the laptop gets lost or stolen -- which I've had happen -- I revoke the credentials. No important information is lost, and no important information is exposed.
Whole-disk laptop encryption has improved things too from an exposure standpoint (albeit not a loss standpoint), though I don't use it myself (don't want to spend any battery life on it). I assume that smartphones have some form of reasonably-secure storage hardware, but I don't know if it involves encryption.
What I found irritating -- and this is years back now -- was an employer who didn't care if I took a laptop in or out or what information I stored on it (as long as it was a work system), but who refused to provide remote access to the network, so I couldn't just keep the important information on the work network. I mean, I get if they want to have some sort of isolated DMZ and require an externally-accessible server to live there, not provide VPN access in to the general network, but not having the ability to have remote network access to work systems at all is just incredibly obnoxious.
I think that some of it is that Windows is not phenomenal to use remotely. Yeah, there are solutions, but they aren't great if you're on a high-latency, low-reliability, or low-bandwidth link. I try to use console Linux for as much of my stuff as possible. That whole ecosystem was designed around thin-client, remote use.
Oh yeah. I DEFINITELY have some horror stories over needing to access GUI apps remotely (my favorite involved a secure tunnel to one facility to then tunnel back to a machine that was literally three doors down from my office...)
But stuff like the web interfaces to ms/google office make the vast majority of this trivial. Since SSH always worked in Windows via (god awful) putty. And increasingly other applications are understanding they need to support server/client setups so you are just connecting over a tunnel rather than using a remote desktop protocol.
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For the CCP arbitrary enforcement is less a risk and more a guarantee.
Authoritarian China acting like authoritarian China. What a surprise
GrapheneOS and duress PIN.
So you are okay with not getting your phone back from authorities...
It's a given if you go to any kind of dictatorship like this one.
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The CCP is growing more paranoid.
counterespionage law already pushed a lot business and investment away from China.
Not to mention a lot of stabbing targeting foreigners by nationalist https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-25/japanese-mother-child-attacked-with-knife-in-city-near-shanghai
I don't understand who be interested going to China anymore
I take the same precautions crossing a Chinese border as I do crossing a US one.
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So like the TSA?
I don't understand people who downvote you. TSA does indeed the same
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Fun fact. If you come to Australia the border force can basically do the same thing. Take a burner with you when you travel, it’s not worth the hassle at the airport. Bonus points, if you lose your phone or get it stolen it won’t hurt as much as if it happened to your main device.
Yeah, but Australia isn't going to detain you for posting a picture of Winnie the Poo on your social media.
Nah, but if you’re planning a climate protest or are about to whistleblow some warcrimes/corruption you’re absolutely fucked.
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Seems fair to me, tbh. I wouldn't go there without diplomatic immunity or a burner anyways.
The people's surveillance state
There's not going to be anything 'arbitrary' about those inspections... In a bad way.
First, obviously this is not good. Secondly, if anyone is complaining about this from the USA, you don't get to. CBP has the right to inspect your electronics with no questions asked by you. They have a right to make a copy of all data. They have a right to seize your electronics and decrypt them if you fail to provide the encryption pin. They have the right to compel you to unlock and decrypt your devices if it uses fingerprint or facial unlock. They have the right to revoke your residency status if you aren't a citizen.
CBP has authority to do this at any sea, land, or air crossing. It also has the authority to do this within 100 miles of any border. That means about 70% of all Americans live their day to day lives within the scope of the exact same legislation. And yes it is used, all the time. If you think it isn't, you're just ignorant.
if anyone is complaining about this from the USA
Not one single comment on this post has said anything about how America does not have this issue, or America at all for that matter. In fact, the only comments that are about a country other than china (you know... the country the fucking article is about) mentions how Australia's border/customs do the same thing.
Do you realize we are allowed to discuss and criticize things around the world whether or not America is guilty of something similar right? Is it really necessary to immediately without any prompting regurgitate an 'AMERICA DOES IT TOO!!!' comment on any article with negative sentiment regarding a non-American power?
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