China is a perfect example. A Chinese citizen only needs a VPN and USB drive to exit the highly-controlled digital yuan and put his savings in Bitcoin. When he needs to get to a local currency or USD, a P2P exchange like Bisq would do it.

The other person at Bisq would simply wash his bitcoins through monero - and that would be that.

Not only its good for Chinese citizens, it is very good for western democracies to funnel money to opposition figures in hostile countries (or plain old spies). In a world where the digital Yuan reigns supreme (where everything is monitored), would the US want to pay a Chinese spy in paper USD, washed bitcoins, or digital yuan?

I've appreciated your arguments so far, but how does "only needing a VPN" qualify as easy?

I live outside China and I am baffled about how you get a VPN that you trust. A VPN is a third-party who shields you and that you trust.

Everyone on HN recommends Mullvad because of their track record. Do you know that Mullvad is not compromised?

If you lived in China, how would you find a VPN that you trust?

I didn’t live in China, but lived in a Middle Eastern county where the vanilla internet is monitored.

The locals know what to use. Also, you don’t need a non-monitored VPN. Just one that’s not monitored by your own government.

How does exiting the highly-controlled digital yuan work?

I have x amount of savings of Yuan. I keep 6 month expenses in Yuan and the rest in Bitcoin.

When I need to make an unapproved transaction (donating to a Muslim charity if you are a Yighur for example). I go through the hassle of using Bitcoin, either directly or after changing to USD by P2P exchange.

Can you be more concrete? Here's what I'm imagining you're saying: first you take a month's paycheck out of the bank in yuan, in cash; then you walk down the street to a jeweler's shop that will exchange your yuan in cash for US$100 bills; then you send a WeChat message to a guy who sells Bitcoin, and the next day you take a taxi with your US$100 bills to a cafe, where he transfers you the Bitcoin and you give him the US$100 bills. Is that what you mean?

I'm wondering if somebody who spends all of their highly-controlled digital yuan in cash every month, and not on anything detectable, will draw suspicion.

This doesn't explain anything.

Who's buying yuan from you in exchange for Bitcoin?

Who's selling you yuan in exchange for Bitcoin?

Given that yuan is tightly controlled... How is Bitcoin hiding anything in this process?

Crypto is de facto banned in China and yet I see an incredible amount of chinese even those working for state owned corporations trading crypto. Even openly with their profile pics on Twitter. China is sometimes too ridiculous for me to understand.

largely due to the coverage of the press many people think China has superpowers when it comes to law enforcement, but that's obviously not the case. 1.4 billion people are hard to manage

It's the same way everywhere really. Technically Elon Musk is supposed to have his twitter activity supervised as per agreement with regulators. I don't think that's happening but somehow nobody cares

China doesn't need to 100% enforce the law to effectively make something illegal. Even if they catch and prosecute 1%, their justice system is dangerous enough that most people won't take the risk.

For crypto as currency, this is effectively a death sentence. If most people are afraid to hold or trade it, you can't use it locally.

It would only be useful to people hoping to exfiltrate value and then leave the country, which is not a majority of people.

Well tell that to the state employees openly trading crypto as mentioned earlier.

just because a few people, in positions of privilege or high risk takers, do it, doesn't mean the majority is capable or willing.

Maybe not majority but a very high % of people in China would do anything to make money. And it's not just a few people in positions of privilege. It's your regular people working in state corps.