If there's a seemingly "free region" that everyone knows about and deflects to, you can be 100% sure that the state knows about it, knows everyone who "deflected" there, and keeps tabs on everyone.
A smart authoritarian government will have these "free" zones as a pressure release valve:
- Most active dissidents jailed
- Active dissidents allowed to flee the country
- Somewhat active ones allowed to "flee the regime to the free-thinking zones far from government control"
It's not a "free" region, just a remote, poor province where the central government is less relevant. As the Chinese say, 山高皇帝远: the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.
If there was a genuine insurgency, as in Xinjiang and Tibet, the central government does get involved and stomps down hard.
天 (and probably meaning heaven where the gods live).
A grounding would be to visit Mount Tai and see the clouds beneath you when the weather conditions are just right. You have the same picture looking out the window of a Boeing 737max8. Anyway the ruler and ruling elites used to perform ceremonies on Mount Tai, poeticly gods living in heaven.
天 looks a bit like the picture postcards of Mount Fuji from various angles.
I think people overestimate how authoritarian China is. Not in the good sense, but in the central government has limitations in what it can pay attention to (large country, lots of local governments, not a lot of police, etc...). Truth is, China can be a very free place at the same time it is restrictive (easy to break laws and not get caught, hard to hand out fliers in public criticizing the government...at least in Beijing).
Let's say you're a teacher with known dissident tendencies. Boom. Suddenly the only place you can get work is one of these remote regions with lax control. Yes there is less government there, and you can even start a book club or something to read and discuss banned literature, and no one will bother you.
But try and get out because you're tired of rural life... and no place in the "mainland" will acept you. Or will only offer you menial jobs and unskilled labor.
This was a very widely and well-used tactic in the USSR. Can't see why China (or any other authoritatian state) wouldn't do the same. Especially China with their current state of surveillance tech.
Your hukou is going to limit where you can get work. So you just can’t move to a remote region and become a teacher there, since it is a government job. But exiling is really rare, it’s much more possible that you are stuck in the backwards rural place where you were born or your parents held hukou.
A smart authoritarian government will have these "free" zones as a pressure release valve:
- Most active dissidents jailed
- Active dissidents allowed to flee the country
- Somewhat active ones allowed to "flee the regime to the free-thinking zones far from government control"