Also Kunming: no 2nd ring road up in the sky, or much of any of the rest of that mess. Very few ebikes.

Off the top of my head: here were few foreign-run bars or restaurants, few western foreigners, and we mostly all knew each other, ran into each other in The Box, Salvador's, Speakeasy, Wei's Pizzeria, the Camel. Eating out usually meant Chinese, likely up & down Wenlinjie or Wenhua xiang, cheap. The Hump was then an interesting place for parties and to hang out, and there was activity at Nordica. Wicker Basket had (and has) good bread. A lot of the westerners here were here simply because they found they liked it, and got jobs, or not, as they could. A larger percentage of them, perhaps, spoke reasonably good Chinese. I can't remember any Americans who would have voted Republican - well, maybe one guy - among Brits, there was one Tory; the Italians were all passively or actively culturally radical, and politically too, more or less; I doubt if any of the few Aussies were conservative. There were very few private cars in Kunming, so transportation was more convenient - bicycles, buses, no traffic jams or rush hour, few stoplights as they pretty much were not needed. The air was cleaner, and there wasn't so much construction going on all the time, and fewer modern high-rises, etc. Rents were, of course, cheaper, and most westerners lived in 7-floors-maximum xiaoqus. There was a lot less complaining about local customs, food, etc. Nobody had much money but everybody got by. A lot fewer marriages between western foreigners and Chinese -

a lot of the westerners were in their twenties. Beers were about 7 kuai in a bar - all Chinese beers, the first foreign beer I remember, with alcohol content all of 5%, was Beer Lao, which arrived maybe 2005. Nobody bought bottled water that I can remember. I don't remember anybody whose bottom line was to make money. Some people arrived from foreign countries after months on bicycles, and some of these people are still here. There was no Walmart, Metro or Carrefour until, maybe, 2005, and nobody missed them. People did not fly around in airplanes or go 'home' so often, and if they went south of the border anywhere they probably went by bus. There were a few foreign/western musicians, now there are more better ones, but the ones then were friends and were often hilariously insane.
There's been a lot of Progress since then, and some of the Progress has indeed been improvement - e.g., local economy is now better - but I remember it as having been more fun.

Responsibility to whom? To the state?

Question is, who gets to define 'bad guys'?

Looks ominous.