Comment by mytailorisrich
6 hours ago
Police in HK will not ask you to unlock your business phone, or personal phone.
They are pro-business and want to remain an attractive international business hub so they are nice to foreign visitors. Likewise China (mainland) is nice to Western visitors and will not create trouble to you. If you visit the mainland these days (visa free if coming from Europe!) they also make efforts so that you are not impacted by the Great Firewall.
The way it works on the mainland and HK is that you must have shown by your actions that you are a "troublemaker" and got onto their radar. Then you are in trouble.
China is keen to attract Western visitors for tourism, business, and to stay if you're top talent (visa-free travel, new work visa for STEM talent) so they will try ot project a positive image.
That just boils down to “you have no real rights, but if you keep your head down and dont get unlucky, you probably won’t be targeted”.
I’m a white US citizen who worked on oil rigs in GCC countries (Arabian Gulf). I was put on a global watch list for 6 years due to my work in the middle east.
I still don’t know why - maybe due to colleagues in my contacts? There was a “mega church” near me that some of my coworkers attended which was the “minority religion” of Saudi Arabia, so perhaps I was a few degrees of Kevin Bacon from some people that Saudi had flagged. Or maybe just travel patterns - I often didn’t know exactly when my rotation would end and I frequently bought last minute flights to head back home / to vacation destinations.
I certainly was not put on a list for any of my speech (public or private), which had been extremely measured at the time (and still is), due to understanding that my host countries had different laws and constitutions from our own. I very carefully observed all the laws and social expectations. But nonetheless, I found myself on a list anyways and for that 6-7 year duration, all of my boarding passes globally got “SSSS” written on it and all my luggage + carryons got unpacked by hand and hand-searched prior to every flight, including connecting flights.
Every flight I flew those searches were a very personal 20-30 minute long reminder to carefully manicure who I’m in contact with, what I say, how/where/when I travel, and any other records/data that I might generate. I often had to give a heads up to anyone I was traveling with (colleagues or personal friends) that we had to leave a little extra early to accommodate those searches.
> That just boils down to “you have no real rights, but if you keep your head down and dont get unlucky, you probably won’t be targeted”.
It's not about luck in this case. They want to be 'nice' so you need to actively do something, that's not the same as as "keeping your head down". Also note that as a Western visitor to China, if they have flagged you they are more likely to deny your visa or to deny you entry than to look for further trouble. In general the least waves the better.
This so profoundly naive.