From my own experience :

1. China, like Singapore and London, have mass surveillance. You do have a lot of cameras. China takes it a bit further in a sense that when you go to some places like "signing up for a gym" they will ask for your number and communicate the information to the government.

But, because there is always another side. The government is not just a giant greedy machine for no reasons. China is safe, insanely safe.

I spent one year in Beijing (studying at Tsinghua University), I tried to find a lock for my bike. I gave up after a couple days, nobody was selling any lock. One of the seller told me : "But why are you looking for a lock, if it's YOUR bike?"

I almost felt stupid asking for it. Never locked my bike for 1 year, in a city with a population of 20,000,000 people. Never got stolen. I could park anywhere, campus, city center, in front of bar, clubs, whatever.

It was refreshing.

2. My personal belief is that the social credit score is a hoax made up by the West. China has a score system similar to FICO, if you have debts, they will restrict your movements (trains, flight) if you are a vocal political activits you will likely have problems.

But is there a system similar to the one described in Black Mirror that track everything you do? That makes you lose points if you are associating yourself with people having bad scores?

I haven't seen it. Never heard anyone mention it. Never noticed it.

Normal Chinese citizens live a perfectly normal life.

3. You have people strongly in favor of the CCP (note they got 40 incredible years, so it's expected) and people opposed to it.

Can you openly criticize the government like we do in Europe or USA? No.

You can't just create meme like you would do with Trump/Biden/Macron whatever.

Of course people still do it, like in any countries, you have sub cultures. Same thing in Thailand (where I am currently living) with the Royal family. It's forbidden, but people do it, of course.

More people are in favor of the CCP. People are not full at ease if they are strongly criticizing it. But in private context they do. Overrall the Chinese feels genuinely happy about the government's work.

4. Yes, the government censor information. It's not always easy to set up a VPN (and I am a computer science guy)

But can you name a government that does not? The US has been tracking down Snowden and Assange for a while.

European governments are censoring and limiting freedom of speech too.

There are more red lines in China for sure. But I could be fined in France for my belief as well (if I was living there)

5. People can talk about it, but Chinese are not massively into politics. It's hard to believe for someone coming from the West (I am French so I know what it means to talk about politics, we ALWAYS do it).

They don't. And after living in Asia for many years, I am starting to think it's not always a bad thing.

Being able to talk about anything in politics comes with a huge cost as well. Extremely divided societies where the leftists think the other ones are Nazis. And the right wing believe the others want to sexualize children and start communism.

But yes, many people know about Tiananmen square.

6. Yes and no.

I have met several Uyghurs in Beijing, I have mixed feeling about it. I did more research about it and discovered that Uyghurs (coming from Turkmenistan committed numerous terrorist attacks : Kunming, Urumqi, Tiananmen comes to mind.

And the Chinese government responded to it rather violently.

Is it justified? I don't know.

But it's not coming from nowhere, either.

And I am just wary of condemning China for it, I know what the US has done. I know what French has done to Vendée, what Russia did, what Africans did, what the Arabs did.

Some of these happen not too long ago. I don't like that we are trying to frame ourselves as "defending the oppressed" and that "China = bad".

But yes, overall they are being oppressed.