A Phenomenology of the PRC

Despite Chinese claims of trying to “open up to foreign tourism”, the de–facto monopoly of wechat for “registrations” to popular tourist attractions³ (something that appears to be relic of the COVID-19 pandemic) is one of the biggest issues as a foreign tourist.

Obtaining a wechat account can be surprisingly difficult for a foreigner since it requires another preëxisting wechat user vouching for you. Using a foreign phone number may also brick certain applications that automatically fill in your phone number, since it then includes a leading “+” that Chinese phone numbers usually omit. I am not a fan of the wechat application generally either, since buttons would commonly not register any input, and the app failed to load any language other than Chinese for its UI. In comparison alipay generally worked without any issues and even has a built-in “translation” feature that translates its “Mini-apps” (webpages) into the target language.

China’s “Great Firewall” is not a secret, but what is less talked about is its dual nature. Just like a physical wall, it is not just capable of holding things out, but also of holding things in. More puzzling is not just the obvious requirement to have a VPN to connect to western services, but also the fact that mainland websites are often not accessible with a VPN.

I do not know why this is the case but from what little I’ve heard of the technical descriptions of the firewall it doesn’t rely on a wholly separate DNS system, so I don’t know what causes this (Does China perhaps block all Mullvad VPN connections from abroad?). It is however quite interesting as a sort of “pull” measure to keep Chinese netizens travelling or living abroad in the Chinese internet, as opposed to the “push” method of blocking foreign sites.

The biggest surprise to me of all was what I half-heartedly named the overcontrol of the Chinese. The Chinese generally showed a lack respect for normative rules, such as standing in line and waiting for people to disembark the subway before entering. My hypothesis is that there is such an overabundance of restrictions and formal rules that people stop thinking in normative ways and subconsciously see everything not explicitly forbidden as being allowed. This then leads to a collective action problem, where small actors are forced into enacting strict rules so as to manage the otherwise lawless public. The most egregious example of this is the incredible number of battery-powered megaphones with pre-recorded messages, the overuse of which has often made it completely impossible to relax in many places. Public authorities and private enterprise both use this extensively to hammer in certain specific rules⁴.

Security guards at any of the numerous security checks do not feel any urge to maintain strict vigilance but instead merely wave hand-held metal detectors around one’s midsection, not caring if it goes off or not. Security guards would often let me pass merely at the sight of an international passport, incapable of interpreting how to use it in a rigid machine of identity checks. The level of vigilance decreases further when one travels further away from the capital, where even in the provincial capital of Nanjing a security checkpoint let us through with what we later realised was not a valid registration.

Entry into Tiananmen Square has perhaps the strictest security checks — with bags both X-rayed and manually checked — but even then it would be trivially easy to bring in a camera and some controversial flags, or as I did myself: a glass bottle that could have been smashed and used as a weapon. I guess this is a problem with all security checks, they are usually easy to circumvent for those actually wanting to do harm while adding costs and wasting time for everyone else.

A pleasant surprise I had was the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). Not only am I happy for general environmental reasons, but also for selfish reasons. The share of EVs, especially electric scooters, means a much lower level of background noise.

For this reason walking down the streets of Beijing was very pleasant. The EVs combined with the large umber of trees — that reminded me of Berlin — and high buildings meant that the little sound that was created by traffic was compartmentalised and then muffled.

The scooters are also a stark reminder that most people don’t need to own a car, especially not those who live in large cities. Cars should ideally only be used for transporting goods or large items, are people should take public transport or smaller vehicles that can criss-cross around the city.