A friend was in China on business recently and the local corporate It department told him they were installing government required monitoring software so that he could vpn back to the US office. This might have been a misunderstanding as that guy isn't very technical, have you heard of this?
I'm not sure and I don't want to misspeak. I know that my company does not do such a thing, and my phone when roaming (Project Fi) bypasses the GFW. However, I do know there are specific different IT infra requirements when connecting from China but none that are gov-monitoring related. It may be a misunderstanding, or it may be a procedure that your friends' IT was following that we aren't.
That being said, foreigners accessing the normal WWW is really not a major concern if you think about it.
