As someone that has lived in a communist country (and not just as a visitor), I have to say that that thinking about "just use Tor" does not really make sense.

As someone that has lived in a communist country (and not just as a visitor), I have to say that that thinking about "just use Tor" does not really make sense. Yes you can use proxies, but the government can find out you are using proxies. It is easy to encrypt the information, so the government may not know what you are accessing, but they do know that you are encrypting your communications. The thing is that if you are using proxies then you can get into a lot of trouble. Then you cannot claim innocence, you cannot say that you were led astray, or you were just curious, etc., because you took active and complex steps to avoid a government security measure. And if you were stupid enough to use very strong encryption, then you are in even more trouble because the police will not know what you did, so they will assume the worst. So no, "just use Tor" is not an answer. Regarding about how you think China is run, well I have not been to China, but in my experience with the other communist country that is not the case. That is probably the ideal a communist country strives for, and they often believe they are ran that way, but what usually happens is that there is some kind of test used as a gatekeeper, and after that the people that are just good at politics win out. It is the same as any large organisation, such as most corporations. The corporation likes to think they only promote the smartest and most able people, but really the people that are best at office politics usually climb to the top (although there usually is a minimum intelligence they must possess).