Yes. I can say anything I like about Xi Jinping when I'm on HN. HN is blocked in China btw.

So you use a VPN/Tor and trust this connection?

Are you sure, the thought of "getting caught" does not influence your opinions?

Because I think, it would influence my opinions I would dare to share.

But I am ignorant about actual way of life in china, is it common and maybe even somewhat normal for tech people to have this freedom to just connect outside of the great firewall?

Chinese are able to express negative opinions without any retribution (beyond their posts being deleted/moderated). What China doesn't accept is challenges to its power structures. Meaning protests, boycotts, unions, organising, public lobbying. Every large business or voluntary organisation has Party members appointed to ensure they don't interfere with the Party's power or strategy.* Sharing a VPN or negative opinion to one friend is fine, sharing to everybody you know on a stage is not.

* https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/07/15/will-there-be-a-ci...

I'm Chinese and this comment aligns exactly with my experience. Please don't take every word from people in Chinese mainland to be dictated by the Party. The big brother would get too busy arresting everyone being outspoken.

> Because I think, it would influence my opinions I would dare to share.

I would be amazed if the MSS decides to respond to these random pseudonymous comments I posted on HN/Reddit/Twitter, in English. I expect that talking to them about my shitposts in English (and then coreced into signing an "agreement" that I won't do it again), would be an exciting and entertaining experience :p ofc I might be outliers

> But I am ignorant about actual way of life in china, is it common and maybe even somewhat normal for tech people to have this freedom to just connect outside of the great firewall?

Well, Google is blocked. Baidu or Bing isn't nearly good for random tech queries. More importantly, even though not blocked, GitHub / DockerHub etc is painfully slow in China due to some misfortune about how China is connected to the global Internet. Without a tunnel I just can't work efficiently.

Every corps I worked for in China so far provided free Internet access for employees (at least engineers).

To a first approximation, China does not care about people posting outside the GFW in languages that are not Chinese.

I use a VPN. I do not really trust it but I do not really believe they would care what I write about there policies on HN.

That must be great for productivity!

it's always kinda funny how misinformed people are about china. if you actually think china has the tech to force 1.4 billion people to share the same thoughts then a. china has already won tech war, or b. you are just brainwashed.