Chinese Workers Abandon Silicon Valley for Riches Back Home

Last paragraph is terrifying, does China not have privacy laws at all?

More interesting than prospects for some may be the sheer volume of intimate data available and leeway to experiment in China. Tencent’s now-ubiquitous WeChat, built by a small team in months, has become a poster-child for in-house creative license. Modern computing is driven by crunching enormous amounts of data, and generations of state surveillance has conditioned the public to be less concerned about sharing information than Westerners. Local startup SenseTime for instance has teamed with dozens of police departments to track everything from visages to races, helping the country develop one of the world’s most sophisticated and extensive surveillance machines.

in china nothing is private, not even your medical info. Your employer can see your medical records if they want and often force employees to get yearly medical checks that are forwarded to HR and it is often used to figure out which female employees are pregnant and they will try to get rid of them rather than pay maternity leave. There are laws against all this but not enforced

Why is this? Is it a cultural thing?

What would you say if a Chinese national asked you the opposite question: Why is data privacy the de facto standard all humans should enjoy?

Just because we're American and we sort of have that here? No privacy allows for greater systems efficiency and easier time in law enforcement investigations.

Doesn't make it right either; I'm a US citizen after all and abhor state-based intrusions of privacy more than even the average HN reader, but projection of societal norms is kinda silly.