By Jane Sonnenschein · July 29, 2026

“Saying privacy does not matter because you have nothing to hide is like saying free speech does not matter because you have nothing to say.”
— Edward Snowden

Just before I left home today, I happened to see a video posted by a Chinese blogger living in Germany. His father was visiting Germany for the first time. While they were walking down the street, a car drove straight through a red light.

His father was startled.

“That is so dangerous,” he said. “Aren’t there any cameras here? How can someone be bold enough to do that?”

The blogger explained that there are relatively few surveillance cameras on German streets, mainly because of data protection rules. Half jokingly, he asked his father whether protecting data was really worth it if people no longer felt safe walking down the street.

It was only a short video with a slightly sarcastic tone. In recent years, it has become increasingly common on the Chinese internet to mock Europe for being “backward”: mobile payments are less convenient, facial recognition is not widely used, shops close too early, public services move too slowly, and many homes do not even have air conditioning.

When people talk about Germany, data protection is often used as a universal explanation. Because of data protection, cameras cannot be installed. Because of data protection, schools cannot freely share information. Because of data protection, many problems that technology could solve quickly become stuck in layers of bureaucracy.

These complaints are not entirely unreasonable.

In the after-school care area at my daughter’s school, there is a room where the children leave their schoolbags and personal belongings. There are no individual lockers and no adult watches the room all the time. Things go missing fairly often. Sometimes it is money. Sometimes it is a small object a child likes, or a slightly more expensive school item.

Parents have suggested installing a camera or adding lockers. But cameras raise data protection concerns, while lockers cost money. After the subject has been discussed a few times, nothing usually happens.

Because my daughter had experienced problems with her belongings, a teacher eventually suggested that she leave her bag beside the after-school staff’s desk, where the adults could keep an eye on it.

That may solve the problem for one child, but it cannot become a lasting solution for everyone. If every child who had lost something left a bag beside the teachers, their workspace would soon turn into a luggage storage area.

From a Chinese point of view, the most direct solution seems obvious: install a camera. If something is taken, the footage will show who did it. The camera may also discourage theft in the first place.

That is why many Chinese people react with disbelief when they hear that a camera cannot be installed because of data protection. They may even see it as proof that German society is inefficient, rigid, and unwilling to use common sense.

But as I continued walking, I suddenly realised that the discussion should not end with a simple statement such as “Germans care more about privacy, while Chinese people care more about safety.”

The real question is not which society is more advanced, or which choice is absolutely correct. The more interesting question is why people in these two societies see such different things when they look at the same camera.

Chinese people often think first of public safety, order, and efficiency. Germans are more likely to think of power, records, and the possibility that personal data may be misused.

Neither reaction appeared overnight. Both have been shaped slowly by history and everyday life.

Germany’s sensitivity to data protection has a very specific historical background.

During the Nazi period, the state used records of identity, ethnicity, family background, and personal information to classify, track, and persecute people. In East Germany, the secret police built an enormous surveillance system. A person’s colleagues, friends, or even family members might pass information about them to the state.

Once someone’s movements, words, and private relationships had been recorded, those records could affect their work, daily life, and future.

In Germany’s collective memory, personal data is therefore not merely harmless information. A piece of information collected today for what appears to be a practical reason may become a tool of exclusion, control, or persecution once it falls into different hands.

Germany’s strong caution toward far-right political forces is also connected to this history. The AfD has gained considerable electoral support in recent years, yet Germany’s mainstream parties have generally remained unwilling to form governing coalitions with it.

Some people may feel that this caution has gone too far. But the fear behind it is not difficult to understand. Germans know that certain political forces do not always look dangerous when they first appear. Once they gain power and become embedded in public institutions, it may be much harder to contain them.

Chris once told me that, for many Germans, learning about their country’s modern history is not a source of national pride. It means repeatedly facing a heavy sense of responsibility and shame.

This kind of historical education may sometimes push society toward the other extreme. It may make people overly suspicious of right-wing politics, state power, and data collection. But it also shows that Germans do not insist on data protection simply because they do not understand efficiency.

Their deeper questions are these: Who will control the cameras installed today in the name of safety? How long will the recordings be kept? Could the data later be used for something other than its original purpose? If the people in control change, will ordinary citizens still be able to take back the power they have already given away?

Germany therefore accepts a certain amount of inefficiency rather than easily opening the door to the systematic recording of individuals.

This choice has a cost. Sometimes it genuinely interferes with the normal functioning of society. But it did not come from nowhere. It grew out of historical trauma.

The Chinese experience is very different.

Chinese people are not naturally without a need for privacy, and it would be far too simple to say that they “do not care about privacy.” A more accurate way to put it is that many Chinese people grew up in environments where there was very little room for personal privacy.

As a result, we may have a greater tolerance for being seen. We are also more likely to regard it as an unavoidable part of life.

For a long time, China was an agricultural society built around close communities. A person was rooted in the land, the family, and the village. Their life did not belong only to them. It unfolded under the eyes of relatives, neighbours, and the wider community.

Whose child was doing well? Whose daughter-in-law was not filial enough? Which couple had been arguing? Whose daughter had married well? Whose son was earning good money?

All of these things could become subjects for the entire village or extended family to discuss.

There were no surveillance cameras then, but there were eyes everywhere. There were no databases, but news moved constantly between relatives, neighbours, and local communities. What happened inside one household rarely remained entirely private.

Within this kind of social structure, a person was not first understood as an independent “I.” They were someone’s child, someone’s wife or husband, someone’s parent, and a member of a particular family.

Their success did not belong only to them. It could also be understood as guangzong yaozu¹, bringing honour to the family and its ancestors. Their failure was not merely a personal disappointment. It might cause their parents to lose face or give relatives something to gossip about.

This is one reason comparison has always played such a strong role in Chinese life.

Children’s grades are compared. Salaries are compared. Houses, cars, marriages, children, and jobs are all placed on an invisible ranking list.

A person should only have to live their own life, but they are often expected to carry their parents’ hopes, the family’s reputation, and the dream that the whole family might move upward in society.

This culture of comparison was not suddenly imposed through one particular policy or an obvious act of force. It entered people’s bodies slowly, through thousands of years of daily life.

It is less visible than a fine, a punishment, or the threat of losing a job. Yet precisely because it is everywhere, it is more easily accepted as natural.

Parents may not believe that asking about their adult child’s salary or love life violates any boundary. They see it as their responsibility to care.

Relatives may not think that pressuring someone to marry or have children is interference. They believe that building a family is a social duty everyone is expected to fulfil.

A person who refuses to compete or rejects conventional ideas of success may easily be described as lazy, unambitious, or unwilling to take responsibility for the family.

Collective living further weakened the idea of private space.

When my generation was at school, it was not unusual for seven or eight students to share one dormitory room. We slept in a cramped space, often used shared bathrooms, and were constantly exposed to one another’s habits, hygiene, family circumstances, emotions, and physical presence.

Brushing your teeth, snoring, passing gas, crying, arguing, or receiving a parcel from home were all things that were difficult to keep private.

In Germany, a WG usually means that several people share a kitchen and bathroom while each person still has a bedroom of their own. Even when people live under the same roof, the bedroom door remains a clear boundary.

It is very rare here for strangers to share the same bedroom for a long period of time.

I have lived in my current apartment building for about ten years. Apart from occasional contact with the family downstairs because our daughters play together, I have almost never visited the other neighbours.

For some of them, if their names were not written beside their doors, I would not even know what they were called. They do not casually ask how much money I earn each month. Nor do they offer opinions about whether I am married or whether I should have another child.

Chinese people sometimes interpret the German habit of talking about the weather as coldness or a lack of human warmth. But it can also be understood as respect for boundaries: until our relationship becomes close enough, I do not assume that I have the right to enter your private life.

Someone who grows up with a bedroom of their own, a private drawer, and parts of life they do not have to explain will naturally understand privacy as a basic right.

Someone who grows up in shared dormitories, surrounded by relatives’ comparisons and neighbours’ gossip, may also long for private space. But they are more likely to see being watched, questioned, and judged as unavoidable.

So when cameras appear in public spaces, many Chinese people do not immediately wonder whether their rights are being violated. They are more likely to ask whether the cameras can catch a thief, find a criminal, or reduce traffic accidents.

From our own experience, we have always lived under other people’s eyes. Cameras simply turn the eyes of the old close-knit community into the technological eyes of modern society.

But Chinese society is also changing in very visible ways.

China’s large-scale industrialisation, urbanisation, and market reforms have taken place within only a few decades. A process that unfolded over centuries in many European and North American societies has been compressed into the lives of two or three Chinese generations.

Our parents’ generation experienced material scarcity, collective living, and strong family obligations. By the time my generation grew up, cities, high-rise buildings, the internet, and market competition had arrived very quickly. For those born in the 1990s and 2000s, ideas such as individual choice, psychological boundaries, and independent living have become part of everyday language.

These generations grew up in almost entirely different worlds, yet they still live together inside the same families.

Many parents continue to believe that a child does not live only for themselves. The child should marry, have children, buy a home, succeed, make the parents proud, and carry the family line and its hopes into the future.

This burden has been especially heavy for the one-child generation. One child may carry the parents’ unrealised dreams, the entire family’s hope of moving into a higher social class, and worries about who will care for the parents when they grow old.

This also helps explain why Chinese parents are willing to invest so many resources in their children. Families may spend almost everything they have on homes in good school districts, tutoring, overseas education, the deposit for an apartment, or the cost of a wedding.

That support often contains a very deep kind of love. But it may also come with heavy expectations. Once an entire family has sacrificed so much for you, it becomes difficult for your life to be treated as entirely your own.

Today, more and more young people do not want to return home for Chinese New Year. They do not want to be questioned by qida gu bada yi² about their salary, relationships, marriage plans, or fertility. Nor do they want to take part in repeated family performances simply to help their parents save face.

To the older generation, these young people may seem selfish, emotionally distant, or unwilling to accept responsibility. From the young person’s point of view, however, they may simply be saying seriously for the first time: This is my life. I do not want everyone else to judge it.

Urban life is also changing the distance between people.

In the past, people sat outside in shared courtyards on summer evenings. Arguments and family problems were hard to hide from neighbours. Today, people live in high-rise apartment buildings and close their security doors behind them. They may live beside someone for years without having a real conversation.

People continue to leave villages and small towns for larger cities. They move away from family networks and familiar communities, then build households consisting of one person or two.

As living spaces change, the way people understand themselves also changes.

More Chinese people are beginning to feel that they do not have to be someone’s child, wife, husband, or parent before they are allowed to become themselves. They can first be a person in their own right, and only then enter their different relationships and social roles.

Yet the privacy awareness of younger Chinese generations still carries the contradictions created by this compressed modernisation.

They may strongly dislike relatives asking about their salary, while feeling little discomfort about security checks at underground stations and railway stations. They may reject parental interference in their marriage, while being used to cameras recording them in public spaces. They want to escape the gaze of the family, yet they do not necessarily see data collection by platforms, companies, and public systems as the same kind of intrusion.

This does not mean they are hypocritical or logically inconsistent. It means that two different periods of history are living inside them at the same time.

They are trying to leave behind the scrutiny of the old close-knit community, but they have also grown up in a highly digitalised environment built around real-name registration, security cameras, and constant data collection.

There is a similar pattern in the development of China’s mobile internet.

European and North American societies went through a relatively long period of home computers and web-based internet use. People first became used to personal computers, email, and websites, and only later moved gradually into the age of smartphones.

China’s digital development began later. Before many people had fully become accustomed to computers, smartphones had already spread across the country. As a result, many Chinese households may not own a computer, while almost everyone has a phone.

China then developed a distinctive mobile ecosystem built around mobile payments, super-apps, mini-programs, QR codes, and services handled almost entirely by phone.

This system is highly efficient and convenient. It also makes people more willing to exchange data and permissions for useful services. For many Chinese users, technology is understood first as something that solves problems, rather than something that creates new risks related to power.

Germans are more likely to stop and ask: What exactly am I giving away in exchange for this convenience?

Neither response should simply be praised or mocked.

Germany’s approach to data protection guards personal boundaries, but when taken too far, it can also make public systems rigid and inefficient. Problems that could be solved may remain unresolved for a long time.

China’s use of cameras, real-name systems, and data-based management has created greater efficiency and a stronger sense of public safety. But it may also make people less sensitive to the boundaries of power. It becomes easy to answer every concern about privacy with the sentence, “I have done nothing wrong, so why should I care?”

Safety and privacy have never been a simple black-and-white choice.

A society without enough public oversight may give people who break the law more opportunities. But a society that records everyone everywhere must also keep asking whether those who control the data are being properly restrained.

Germans fear that power may once again cross its limits, so they are willing to sacrifice some efficiency. Chinese people are more afraid that life may return to disorder, so they are more willing to exchange some personal boundaries for safety and convenience.

Both fears come from real historical experiences.

I have always been drawn to the Chinese idea of zhongyong³. It does not mean mechanically taking half from one extreme and half from the other. Nor does it mean avoiding a position so that nobody is offended.

It means recognising that yin contains yang, and yang contains yin, then continuing to search for a balance that can adjust as circumstances change.

Data protection matters, but it should not become an excuse that prevents every practical problem from being solved. Technology can help protect public safety, but its convenience should not stop us from asking where the limits of power and data use should lie.

Individuals need freedom, and societies need order. People should be allowed to live without being watched unnecessarily, while also having a public system capable of protecting vulnerable people and holding wrongdoers responsible.

When we talk about surveillance cameras, we are never talking only about cameras. We are talking about the kind of gaze a person has lived under since childhood, and the kind of history that taught them what to fear.

Some people are afraid that no one will see what a wrongdoer has done. Others are afraid that the people controlling the cameras will be able to see everyone’s life.

Only when we understand where these fears come from can we move beyond simple arguments such as “China is advanced and Germany is backward,” or “China has no privacy and Germany respects human rights.” Only then can we begin to understand why these two societies have arrived where they are today.

What younger Chinese people are now experiencing may be the beginning of a long transition.

We no longer want to live only as someone’s child, partner, or parent. We no longer want to turn our entire lives into a report card for the family. We are also beginning to accept that every person may need a private space they do not have to explain to anyone.

This change will not be completed within a single generation. Rules written into law can be changed quickly. Habits written into the body take much longer to loosen.

—

Notes

1. Guāngzōng yàozǔ (光宗耀祖): Literally, “to bring honour to one’s ancestors and add glory to the family line.” In traditional Chinese culture, an individual’s achievements are often understood not only as personal success, but also as a source of pride and social standing for the entire family, including earlier generations.

2. Qī dà gū bā dà yí (七大姑八大姨): A colloquial Chinese expression for a large circle of aunts and extended relatives. It does not refer to an exact number of people. The phrase is often used humorously or with frustration when talking about relatives who ask personal questions, compare family members, or offer unsolicited opinions about marriage, income, children, and other private decisions.

3. Zhōngyōng (中庸): Often translated as “the Doctrine of the Mean,” but its meaning is broader than simply choosing the middle position or making a compromise. In Chinese philosophy, it refers to maintaining an appropriate and living balance, recognising that apparently opposing forces may contain and transform into one another, and adjusting one’s response according to the situation.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 为什么中国人看见摄像头想到安全，德国人却先想到隐私

German version: Warum Chinesen bei Überwachungskameras an Sicherheit denken – und Deutsche zuerst an Privatsphäre