USA or China a safer tourist destination?

[nOlives]

Yesterday the news suggested Starmer and Xi Jinping were discussing visaless entry to China for Brits.
I know China is not perfect and I have occasionally mentioned or agreed with comments about Uyghurs. I am not Uyghur or Taiwanese.
I have also posted and agreed with quite a lot of comments about Trump, and also USA gun tragedies and airport experiences. I am white British.

AIBU to think China is a safer (and far more interesting) tourist destination than USA just now, not only for me but for most people?

Same, I bought an eSIM for £15 and I downloaded WeChat so I could chat to my guides.
I agree with the poster who said China take good care of their tourists, my family were treated like VIP’s, everyone was so kind and went out of their way to be helpful.

I am surprised at the posts about VPN being ubiquitious.
Don't you get into trouble if you're caught using it?

I don’t know of anyone who had a problem. I imagine it depends on your internet activity..
my dcs school had permission for students to access sites that were not freely accessible. This meant then when using the school wifi we could access Facebook etc. All parents received a message from the school director that some negative posts about China had been posted using school wifi and if this continued the local education department would remove this access.

This. As a tourist it’s likely fine but the level of control is still there.

Quote : " I don’t know of anyone who had a problem. I imagine it depends on your internet activity.."

Can you give examples of what it depends on ? Obviously, some subjects are illegal on the web worldwide. What stuff would be illegal in China, that would not be in the UK? What are you not allowed to post on this forum for example, that people in Britan can ?

And quote : "All parents received a message from the school director that some negative posts about China had been posted using school wifi and if this continued the local education department would remove this access."

Is this a state school or private, city or rural ? My understanding is that thigs can vary. Tibet and XJ for example have strict no VPN rules. Wealthy parts of major cities are more lax on rules. Although I recall seeing footage of police checking for VPNs on phones in Shanghai when the anti zero covid protests were happening.

Sorry for so many questions :-)

Remember to security cleanse your devices (phone, laptop) before and after you take them to China.

https://dig.watch/updates/china-deploys-new-malware-tool-for-border-phone-searches

Whilst the US has its issues I would much rather be there than China.
China is a dictatorship, censorship is widespread, corruption is real problem, and there is a lack of transparency. When my DD was there on a school trip she was detained for 5 hours at the airport on the way back for absolutely no reason. As she went through security she was pulled - literally - to one side, no word of explanation was given, they took her phone, wouldn’t let her contact the teachers, nothing. She almost missed the flight - the airline was about to unload her bag. The accompanying teacher managed to persuade security to release her. I dread to think what could have happened if he hadn’t.

I’d feel fairly safe in both to be frank. The US isn’t overtly dangerous for tourists. They’re attacking people they think are undocumented immigrants or protesters who are actively protesting against those attacks, and they’re only doing it in certain states.

You’d still be safe in most states. I don’t think anything would happen in New York, for example. And yeah, they can own guns but it doesn’t mean they just get them out and randomly fire them at people. To me, it’s the same hysteria people have about London and knives. I’ve never felt unsafe in London because I know some people carry knives.

In short, I’d visit both. I felt safest in Poland as a solo female traveller and least safe in Paris where I was almost mugged by children no less. I’m half French, have spent a lot of time in France but Paris isn’t for me.

This is true. They have also been known to hack into people’s phones. I’ve heard the signal suddenly goes down when you arrive and it’s linked to them hacking your phone but unsure how true it is. Also heard they do it when you hook up to wifi.

My family didn’t encounter anything like this, we all bought eSIMs like we do every time we go abroad. The whole internet thing wasn’t a thing.
We travelled to five places on various planes, bullet trains and boats and only experienced kindness and a little bit of fascination with my 20 something sons as in some of the places we went it was unusual to see Westerners.
I have always found America and really friendly and safe too.

International school in a second tier city in the east of China.
yes, xinjiang province and Tibet are very different and control is much tighter: document checks on roads in Xinjiang, checking that you have hotel accommodation and the PLA on the roofs of buildings in Lhasa. I was in Tibet in 2011 and xinjiang in 2012 and 2015 so my experience is not recent,
I am only guessing re vpn and internet activity: anti china comments, anti government comments. I didn’t experience any problems, but as a guest in China I didn’t comment on the political system. My dh was a general manager in joint venture and it would have been an enormous loss of face for him if the gm’s wife was openly criticising China.

We went to both recently, felt perfectly safe at all times.
We are white though, and that might be a factor in the US. In China people were staring at us as not many white people there but they were smiling at us, would exchange a few words (helped by the fact that we had children with us I think), we had old ladies ask if they could take selfies with us, students etc. It was fun to be honest, no hostility at all.
We only saw one black person during our stay, so even a more extreme experience I imagine.

Thanks for info.

So anything you write here on this forum would have to be pro Party?

You could not complain about a hospital for example, or discuss the South China Sea, unless in agreement with Government policy ?

I reckon that would massively skew any threads like this that are outside China. Is China safe , for example. If posting from inside China, you can't answer in the negative at all ?

I think Google stuff is difficult to access but I didn’t need to try. All sites I wanted to visit like BBC, Reddit, WhatsApp etc which are banned or restricted worked with the vpn.

i doubt the Chinese govt cared what I wrote on mumsnet when I lived in China.
I would not have made any anti govt comments on WeChat as it is not end to end encrypted and I would not have said anything that would embarrass my dh’s colleagues.
The comments I have made on this thread are exactly what I would have said when I lived in China. Of course I complained about things in China just as the Chinese moan about things.

I think wechat is not about encryption, but it is actually monitored ? And you need ID to use it?

You do seem to be confirming what some western media say though. That self censorship/ moderation is needed.

Did you try the web without a VPN ? To get the "real China" experience, sort of thing ?

This is why I find this subject interesting. People say China is great, China is super safe, but it's all foreigners with VPNs saying this, Of course, MN is UK, but I mean in general, across world social media. Most of the world, apart from the PRC, that is excluded.

Yes, you need id and it is monitored and everything is linked backed to your passport eg when my credit card expired I would need my passport to collect my new card from the bank and as my previous card was linked to my expired passport I needed to take my new passport and the expired passport.
Of course some degree of self censorship and moderation of behaviour is needed - I can’t imagine that’s a surprise to anyone and am sure there is guidance on the uk government travel website regarding basic dos and donts in China.
I would have no qualms complaining about hospital care, shops, food, service etc but I certainly would not have complained about extra checks in Xinjiang province.

Most of the time I used the web in China without a vpn. The real China web experience is that ‘bing’ is harder to navigate than google!

No, because my eSIM was unlimited data so I used that everywhere.

I agree with both perspectives, FWIW, it did feel very safe to travel in as a solo female traveller, and I had a great trip there, but the surveillance culture is scary and oppressive.