Its a purpose one could use Tor for. You can use Tor to circumvent firewalls or NAT (e.g. SSH tunneling, or avoiding proxies and censorship). You can use Tor

Its a purpose one could use Tor for. You can use Tor to circumvent firewalls or NAT (e.g. SSH tunneling, or avoiding proxies and censorship). You can use Tor to ensure Facebook or Wikipedia does not have your IP address (you might not trust the admins). You can use Tor to provide others the above mentioned benefits. And in an authoritarian country such as China, trying to hide from the authorities (as you put it "national secret police") makes sense quite quickly as so much is forbidden. That being said, Tor was not designed to make you hide from the "national secret police"; at least not specifically (and which nation anyway?). IIRC it started out as a project by the US military.