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>Asian collectivist cultures are incredibly hard for westerners to conduct espionage on because cultural norms like public face make it difficult to know what people's true feelings about their regime/country are.
Anecodotal, but I met a Chinese student visiting the U.S. before the pandemic (and before things had tightened up as they have since then) and his group let them off the leash towards the end to wander around my college town on their own. They were staying at the university for a month during the summer. I had coffee with him, and he was fascinated by America, but I asked him some questions about Xi, and he opened up a bit. On the one hand, he liked the anti-corruption campaign, and he thought that was getting results and that corruption has been a real problem. But on the other hand, Xi had also recently removed term limits, and he did not like that. He wanted to have term limits. Also he thought the propaganda about Xi visiting people and giving them banal advice was corny. Also he thought there was too much censorship. But other than that, he seemed to have a nuanced "fair and balanced" view.

I wanted him to show him something he'd never get to do otherwise, so I offered to take him shooting at a gun range the next day. He was thrilled. But he had to bring a chaperone with him, another guy from his group, and as I was saying goodbye to him, he got really serious, looked at me dead in the eye and said please DO NOT talk about politics around him, do not talk about anything we talked about. He looked like a petrified animal and it was scary as shit, and he wouldn't let me go until I promised him that I would not do that. Well I took both of them shooting the next day, and the other guy was a cold but polite "student" who struck me as a minder of sorts. My friend hugged me afterwards when I dropped them off, and the minder was polite but just stood there as I bid him farewell as well. (He actually had fun shooting too BTW.) But I think that "vaccinated" me against totalitarianism. That was just a little too alien and freaky for me.