[bigmanwalter]

I backpacked through China and stayed in youth hostels. Highly doubt they were bugged. They didn’t even have heating (we used electric blankets)

[chrischen]

I think part of that is that a lot of infrastructure is missing, but also culturally less wasteful than American lifestyles. For example I stayed in my Japanese friend's house in Tokyo and he doesn't heat the entire place even though it's a pretty small apartment. My room just had a heated blanket as well.

But I agree, for any random foreigner the government is not competent enough to surveil him/her and much less motivated to do so. The fact is any given foreigner is not actually that important...

[seanmcdirmid]

The problem is that China doesn’t allow for central heating south of the Yangtze. So my coldest winter ever was spent in a small town in south Hunan, where it was above freezing but the lack of indoor heating really beats you down, kotatsus not withstanding. A friend of mine has parents who migrate to “northern” China in the winter so they don’t freeze to death.

Japan had a similar problem being previously not very rich (they invented kotatsu for that reason).