Some countries can really end up screwing over their citizens more than others, while frequently claiming that they are protecting the citizens within such process of screwing them over.

Each of us has to figure out our own best interests within such context, including in the context in which the reglatory environment of our location might have varying levels of friendliness (or unfriendliness).  Many folks who were active in bitcoin in 2016 and 2017 may well have had realized that a lot of Chinese citizen's were screwed out of the 2017 price run up, including that many Chinese located exchanges had to shut down their operations and even lock client funds during a process in which Chinese legislators were trying to figure out how the funds of such citizens were going to be treated.  Sure some of them may have been able to resolve their situation, and maybe some of the richer ones may have also engaged in some kind of "offer to pay higher fees" in order to have their bitcoin released to them instead of going through what was described formally as some kind of a KYC process (sometimes referred to as shotgun KYC - which largely is a surprise KYC that is imposed in order to unlock funds)..