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What a silly article: "download the controls to the private sector" indeed. The government already owns the telcos, half the banks, the only domestic interbank transfer system and the only domestic travel reservation system so they have your IMEI, real time location and history, network traffic, bank balance and payment and employment history and travel plans anyway. And that of your friends/relatives. They certainly don't need help from an app. That said, after 16 years in and out of China, I still feel safer here than the US.

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What a silly comment, complete with the mandatory "it's worse in the US" passage that mysteriously appears in half of the comments to China-related articles on HN.

Yes, the governments owns telcos etc. Yes, they probably have files on people they consider a threat, such as human rights activists. But to think that all that data is accessible in some kind of coherent manner is ridiculous. This is China, where banks cannot even access information between physical branches of the same bank because of its bizarrely inefficient IT infrastructure. The telcos have been trying to enforce the "real-name" policy for SIM cards for months, yet you can still easily buy and use a SIM card on the street.

They definitely need help from an app, because private Chinese tech companies are somewhat competent compared to the government IT sector.

Do you really feel safer in a country where you can get jailed without trial, where you can jailed, deported and banned from re-entry based on a urine test at the whim of some provincial government official that you crossed paths with? In China, the biggest threat is the government.

> Do you really feel safer in a country where you can get jailed without trial, where you can jailed, deported and banned from re-entry based on a urine test at the whim of some provincial government official that you crossed paths with? In China, the biggest threat is the government.

Being foreign to both countries, the difference is not obvious. Formally, this could happen to me in both countries. Even culturally, the "They only do it on strangers, so that's fine" argument before and during the Snowden files makes me doubt of the support I would get as a foreigner (and I'm on the good side of being a foreigner, not being a visible foreigner).

I've never been to China, but I legitimately can't tell which country you are talking about based on that sentence.

Safer? I guess that Great Firewall does work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1...

It is indeed safer (in term of murder rate at least). I'm not saying that the safety is achieved by the right method though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

Oh come on. 16 years is modern China not Maoist China.

1989 is also modern China ruled by Deng Xiaoping and in no way Maoist China.

If we judge them by their history and by their results, the image changes quite a bit. They were on the verge of a major economic breakthrough and they needed political stability. Also, historically political instability in China lead to millions of people dieing.

I don't approve of their actions, they reacted way too late and were too violent. A faster intervention, something like mass arrests (+ releases after everyone cooled down) would have probably been the best compromise.

It's easy to judge them from outside.

> It's easy to judge them from outside.

To be fair, isn't that the only way to judge this? China forbids discussion of the Tiananmen Square protests and censors informations, younger generations aren't even aware of it.

Nah... I live in China, and have just graduated from high school. There isn't a single person who doesn't know about the 64 protest. (but I am from one of those "elite high schools" so this may not tell much about the whole population). Few really care about it though, like (I imagine) few teens in US really care about the gulf war or the Vietnam war.

>That said, after 16 years in and out of China, I still feel safer here than the US.

Can you elaborate on why is it?

Physically: Fights are rare, guns are extremely rare, even if a disagreement turns loud and verbal it usually works out without police involvement. Cars: lots of 'em, but they don't move fast so the roads tend to be friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists. Medical care doesn't have overheads so high as to result in triple-mortgages and suicide watch.

Socially: Urban environments tend to offer more of a sense of community than I've personally experienced in many other countries. People have your back by default against pretty much anything.

Legally: Because the courts are highly backed up and trust in fair outcomes within legal system is still murky, litigation is rare.

Lies.

Fights are very common, especially in the north-east. Foreigners are often assaulted for being foreigners. Last year, a foreigner-Chinese couple was attacked by a sword-wielding man for being a foreigner-Chinese couple in one of the busiest areas of Beijing, rife with police. The woman died [1].

Roads are very friendly to pedestrians indeed, where the driver will most likely try to run you over again to kill you so they won't have to pay medical fees [2].

Medical care is entirely commercial, and you won't even be attended to by a nurse until you wait in line and pay your bill. Some reference regarding medical care is here [3]. Additionally, health workers are often incompetent, don't follow hygiene requirements, etc. There is anecdotal evidence that the entry barrier to becoming a nurse is purchasing a nursing certificate online. And let's not forget how a government-supported healthcare program gave AIDS to hundreds of thousands of people less than 20 years ago [4].

Urban environments are polluted, grey and soulless, and cities are almost undistinguishable from one another besides the pollution level varying from "high" to "hazardous". I'm not going even to start about the legal system, since it is doesn't exist. Whoever knows the judge wins the case (it's never the foreigner).

[1] https://thenanfang.com/woman-stabbed-sanlitun-man-sword-grap...

[2] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...

[3] http://fortune.com/2016/07/10/china-healthcare-costs-debt/

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/11/china.internat...

No.

Citing one anecdote does not change the facts: China and HK have about the same homicide rate as Germany (namely less than 1 per 100,000 per year), that's about a quarter of the US rate.

As for healthcare, if I were to get seriously ill, I would frankly not want to be in mainland China or the US. Similarly for litigation, in fact.

Lamentably, while Chinese used to be rather friendly and curious towards foreigners, now one observes more incidents of parochial, jingoistic hostility.

All in all, though, I agree with GP's assessment: As long as you keep out of politics, you feel both safer and freer in China than in the US as a foreigner (which is not saying a lot).

China and HK are completely different entities and cannot be compared. I was also talking about fights, not homicides.

> Fights are very common, especially in the north-east.

I would say per-capita stats are ideal for objective comparisons rather than picking individual instances. Would you have those by any chance?

Unfortunately, the problem with stats from China is that they are most certainly fake. Even if I had those, they would arguably be worse than anecdotal evidence. I provide fake economic stats as an example, since it's something the rest of the world cares and writes about [1] [2].

So take this as a personal account from someone who lived in China for over a decade.

[1] http://fortune.com/2015/12/14/china-fake-economic-data/

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/0361c1a4-bcfe-11e6-8b45-b8b81dd5d...

While comparing statistics between countries is very problematic indeed, homicide statistics are considered among the best (a dead body is easier to define than unemployment or income or so).

I agree, I'd like to see more concrete stats when statements like this are made.

Of course, I would request similar stats for the contention the other commenter made saying that fights are rare.

Thank you, this is very useful. Healthcare is a big one. In the U.S. Almost everyone is one step removed from a medical-expenses-related bankruptcy.

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