Here is my experience in the center of Shanghai, very subjective of course:

- I can't pay with my credit/debit cards there so I need to get their alipay pay app. There is KYC required to upload my government ID.

- We stayed in a short rent apartment, so we had to temporarily register with government. Of course that requires uploading photos of me, my kids, and all our IDs

- with a lot of apps banned there, you are essentially told which one you have to use

- you need VPN

- you go outside, there is always a police or some security in booth watching you. Of course cameras are also everywhere.

- fences everywhere - don't walk on the nice lawn there, don't sit here, don't stand there. And the moment your kids do - the security / police will come

- lack of public spaces (we couldn't find a playground, the one we eventually found was behind the fence) make the environment hostile and it almost feels like they don't want you outside

Re: KYC

US is out of control on KYC as well. If you're a nomad, as in you don't have a permanent physical address, you cannot have a bank account. You cannot have credit cards. And now you cannot even have a mail handling service, because the new USPS requirements include ID showing a permanent residential address.

Sure this doesn't affect most people, but it affects at least two groups: the very poor, and the perpetual travelers (which includes retired folks who bought RVs and live/drive around the country full time).

Before anyone comments with, "I'm a nomad and I have X bank/credit card", I'll just say that within one year you won't. Every one of those services is legally required to collect your permanent address info. They haven't all done it yet, but they are increasingly becoming compliant. The various services which previously enabled nomad life are becoming blocked by the financial verification services.

The usual (bad) suggestion is, "just use a family member's address". This is a bad idea for many reasons, not the least of which is how the sloppy credit and data aggregation agencies will comingle yours and your family's data, resulting in all kinds of problems later.

Re: Apartment

You can't rent an apartment in Texas without proving your ID, passing a credit check, and potentially overcoming other obstacles. And you can't stay in a hotel for more then 30 days at a time (without separate bookings). You can't check into a hotel without proving your ID and the IDs of everyone staying with you.

Re: Public Spaces

Few and far between in many US cities.

Re: Police, security, fences

I'm not sure where in the US you are, but lots of developed areas of Texas are like what you describe. Worse, you've got the occasional Proud American property owner who is just itching to be a manly man and brandish his gun.

> you need VPN

Roaming works to bypass GFW. Apparently many local employees of international businesses have a Hong Kong SIM card with generous data allowances, just so they can communicate with the outside world.

> you go outside, there is always a police or some security in booth watching you. Of course cameras are also everywhere.

My take on this is that because of high youth unemployment in China, there's a nationwide drive to hire young people as security. When I was there, I noticed how young many of the security people are.

But yeah, a lot of this security theatre probably has to do with having to manage their large population and keeping them gainfully employed.

> - I can't pay with my credit/debit cards there so I need to get their alipay pay app. There is KYC required to upload my government ID.

It's not so odd that the Chinese choose to use their domestic payment system over a US one. You probably needed a government ID to get your credit/debit card too (at least when you opened your bank account).

I'm not saying the Chinese surveillance system isn't horrible, but the western ones are catching up quickly with the adoption of Flock cameras everywhere and Palantir analyzing every bit of digital footprint you leave. Is there anyone who think there isn't a non-negliable risk that people will walk around with a "jew star" marking in the US in the coming 5-10 years?

Interesting...although most of these are present in any country, at least the ones I have been to. You can use Google in India but not Tiktok (to give one example). Earlier Singapore used to have proxy server for websites but for a long time, that is gone but I guess that's cos they have found other ways to check if they need to. Crackdowns on private condos becoming hotels with guests dragging their luggage and strangers in lift 24x7 have created a lot of trouble in many cities.

Credit card seems too much...have not seen that anywhere.

As for playgrounds etc, I guess this is to do with China being still lower income + much more densely populated.

Wouldn't they have most of that just from customs/your passport? Not saying it isn't all rather dystopian, but, like, they have your ID as soon as you hit an airport.