China is always used as the primary example of a surveillance state, people constantly talk about how dystopian it is and how everything you do in public or online is tracked. I have always been skeptical about these claims and know how hypocritical they are because of the amount of surveillance that happens in the west but I want to know if China is really that bad in regards to privacy.
Most major cities and megacities in the world have CCTV networks. China has a lot of CCTV simply on account of China being a huge country on its own with lots of huge cities. Also China doesn't really have many motivators for crime either.