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The same as mentioned in the article: Irkeshtam (kashgar -> Kyrgyzstan). Yes mainly tourism, but also to see from my own eyes what's happening in Xinjiang, and the situation at the time wasn't great at all and very close to what you can read now and then (and it probably still is).

The apps runs for about a couple of minutes. The only way it can be sending data is over WiFi (I've seen it running on a friend's phone who didn't create a second user). The phone had gigs of data. So it might be collecting sensitive data but surely not dumping the whole content of the phone.

Disclaimer: using a throwaway for the matter.

I've crossed this border before, and I did get my phone checked. A few additional facts:

- 1-2 years ago, they were only taking the phone away while crossing the border TO China. If exiting China, they were using a portable machine in front of you

- they attempt to connect your phone to a local WiFi network, download and install an app. The apps runs quick and is unlikely to send much data

- at that time, they weren't checking iPhones, Android only

- having another user on your Android phone, with restricted privileges (especially for chrome) seemed to be enough to prevent them from installing anything. The guard ended up searching the phone manually (i.e pictures) - but still on the restricted user

Oh and: all police checkpoints have "charging" stations along the way.

Edit: formatting

16% VAT isn't that high to my knowledge.

As seen in other comments, middle classes are the one who will likely pay the most. Lots of "legit" companies/workers are paying income taxes; they represent the 2%.

1- and this is precisely my point. If they start enforcing it, it would kill the smaller businesses in the current situation - and probably put thousands (millions?) of people in the street.

I have a few guesses here. Firstly because the CCP is quite old Mao-style structure, old and bureaucratic. Lots of "regulations", little actions.

Other guesses like it's being setup, they're trying to avoid mass reactions from people, etc.

Just as a note, I'm quite sure Uyghurs have their bank account heavily tracked and wouldn't go away with transactions the same way Han Chinese would.

Disclosure: using a throwaway giving the sensitive nature of the topic

I've always found very curious to not hear more about taxes in China.

It is a mystery to probably no one who have spent a certain amount of time in China that a very few amount of people are actually paying taxes. There is a few regular patterns on how they achieve evasion, but in short it is a mix of large amount of cash/cash payments, and close to 0 actions on whatever personal bank transactions. The later has always amazed me. While some countries will start tracking each transfer > $1,000, Chinese banks will probably not even bother contacting you for a transaction of $10,000 (in RMB, foreign currencies being quite regulated) or even probably more. And yes, you can buy a car or a house with this money, in Cash. No question asked. There are also some easy ways to use some complex/criminal networks of money laundering in order to get the RMBs out of China through shell companies often in tax heavens.

We all know that China's CCP is gathering a very consequent amount of data about virtually everyone entering the territory (or more). But they seem to struggle at implementing actions.

This would explain the government's efforts to reduce the amount of cash circulating in the country, and encouraging (via strong investments) mobile payments (wechat/alipay). This would also explain the very short upcoming of the "social credit score" and I've found astonishing that no one every mentioned taxes on that matter.

Now, open list of [somewhat naive and genuine] questions: - Where does the government's money comes from? [it appears to me to be mostly inflation, on an underlying crazy monster bubble] - Can a government subsist with a population not paying taxes? [apparently not, i.e social credit score] - How will the people react when they will realize they have to give away XX% of their pay when they never gave any $$? - [last but not least] Is that somewhat comparable to, say, the US [or other western countries] few generations earlier? If yes, are we paying the bill for these generations? If yes, should we start worrying? [Are taxes going to keep raising indefinitely along with debt?]

I'm sorry for a not so organized answer but I wanted to express a few comments about things I've seen myself. The [] answers of the questions are personal guesses/notes and I would love to hear more accurate answers from people with better knowledge on the topic.