I probably did not explain enough in my original post. It's not about having an audience even. It's the right to spin up some storage for encrypted data, run an encrypted matrix node for family, use a VPN, have a small blog for people to follow your travels and thousands of other options afforded non-Chinese nationals.

You can't anonymously access information as almost everything is tied to you ID number. You can't buy things, chat, watch TV (smart tvs), or do most anything with any sense of privacy.

Living in China as a Chinese means living with a drastically different mindset when it comes to these sorts of things. It's hard to understand how it changes you unless you've lived there.