It usually isn’t bad unless you live there. As a tourist, you’ll hardly feel like you are in a police state (quite the opposite, it can be quite chaotic and free wheeling as long as you don’t go near politics). Ya, the internet will suck while you are there, but the food is great and there is a lot to see. IMHO, you would feel more repressed in a place like Singapore than the PRC.
If you are going to Xinjiang or Tibet, things start to get weird. Both are really nice places to go, but the logistics are complicated and you’ll feel much more repressed. I went to northern XJ in 2006 before the 2008 riots, it was absolutely stunning and a great place to tour. I also visited the Tibetan part of Sichuan and Yunnan, equally awesome, you are really missing out if you never see it! The Tibetan areas outside of Tibet are easier to get into for foreigners, well at least they were back in 2004. China is getting more closed than it used to be before the olympics, that’s for sure.
> As a tourist, you’ll hardly feel like you are in a police state
Especially if you can't read the propaganda posters.
> Ya, the internet will suck while you are there
Protip: bring a phone with a foreign international data plan. The packets will be routed over the phone network to your home country and bypass the Great Firewall.
Even if you can read the propaganda banners (posters are rare, banners with slogans are more common), it comes off as weird and novel rather than personally oppressive.
I thought that only applies to HK phones, but I have never tried!
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, but that’s exactly what I’d say too. In terms of day to day life, it feels more free in many ways. Alcohol is sold freely, small merchants set up on the sidewalk, traffic laws might as well not exist, and nobody will hassle you for spitting on the ground. Of course, you have to spend hours screwing around with VPN software just to read the New York Times, and some of this freedom for other people ends up curtailing your own, like when people burn a shitload of dirty coal with no filters and make it hard to breathe outside. But you certainly don’t feel oppressed as a visitor when you’re not online.
