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Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

reuters.com

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Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#101
post #49
post #6

Maybe, once Wikipedia and Gmail are available full scale.

Honestly, the blocking doesn't make any kind of sense. You can literally create a vpn from within china itself on any cloud provider and surf on anything you want, in less than 10 minutes using softwares like algovpn. It's now a moment of truth for internet in china : either they start blocking vpns for real (although good luck doing that without collateral damage to the economy, because that would mean shutting down…

The goal isn't to block things 100%, it's to make it enough of a hassle to use them that the Chinese population turns to domestic alternatives.

Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on the context. For example "baiting employees with free food" seems completely innocuous to me. Everyone knows what is up, nothing nefarious is going on. Journalism involves using colorful words to make the article colorful enough to read. Even the Chinese media does this, it isn't just an American thing. Articles that aren't read are worthless.

Hmm. Its interesting to hear a different view but I can't agree. Language has tremendous power and using it to signal to the reader whether they should approve of something in what might claim to be objective factual reporting is quite insidious to me. I strongly dislike the "journalism using colorful words" and China comparison as a defence of deception and manipulation. Our standards should be higher. Plenty of roo…

The original post said this was an example "western media bias", my comparison to Chinese media was to diffuse that point.

Journalists who write in the manner you prescribe don't last long if they exist at all. No one wants to read such sanitized drivel.

Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#103
post #50

Anybody want a mini-AMA? Worked with Chinese for bigger part of my career and did two long term on-site consulting contracts. I lived in both Shanghai and Shenzhen.

How hard would it be to find a position in China if I don't speak Chinese? Are there certain places I should look for information on this? Job websites?

This will limit you to 1 in 3 jobs open to foreigners. Which is still very good. See, the main value of a foreign specialist is that he is foreign and supposedly have rare expertise. Second to that, you will most likely to be hired with an idea in mind that you can liaise with overseas customers/specialists/authorities and etc even if your job does not implicitly require that.

Best option is to actively solicit contacts and network a lot. Foreign professionals are a closely knit club here. Industry events are the best if you know nobody here.

Look for job offers in English, job boards of companies with a record hiring foreigners, foreign companies that are new in China, super senior level positions, jobs with PhD. level expertise level, jobs requiring people skills in English "product managers/ field application engineers/ sales or solution engineers"

Websites: 51job, zhaopin, ChinaHR. Look for English language keywords. A post in English almost certainly assumes the company keeps hiring a foreigner an option.

Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#104
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you've never been to LA on a hot, windless summer day.

You can't even fairly compare LA in the 80s (where I lived) to Beijing (or Hebei) today, much less the "smogless" wonderland that is the valley of today. The winter smog (ignoring outliers like CNY or political events) is worse than you can imagine. Typical PM2.5 is in the hundreds... a bad day in the week might be 500, and once a year they break the instruments with 900+ measurements.

I can't infer whether 80s LA was worse or better than Beijing today from your comment.

Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#105
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a 10 year wait time for greencards and restricting the H4 spouses of those skilled visa workers to work legally is not a carrot, then yes US is doing a great job attracting and retaining talents. I went behind the carrot for 3 years and then immigrated to Canada. My spouse has dignity now and she is a full time employee just like me earning a very good salary. In US, she lost all her confidence,dignity and was dep…

One million people get green cards each year in the US. Immigrants and their children are now 27% of the US population. Show me the numbers on China. And if you want to talk about Canada and dignity. Why is Canada only 1% hispanic? Because they restrict immigration overwhelmingly by skill. If you can't meet their skill-based requirements, you're very unlikely to get in. How's that for treating people with dignity? Th…

> One million people get green cards each year in the US.

Is a blanket statement. The topic is about skilled immigration. Majority of US green cards are family based.

Source here: https://www.us-immigration.com/how-many-immigration-applicat...

> Immigrants and their children are now 27% of the US population.

Immigrants from 1800s maybe ?

> Show me the numbers on China.

China has just started. I dont think there is any data yet. Even if there is, wont be easy to find.

> Why is Canada only 1% hispanic? Because they restrict immigration overwhelmingly by skill.

No they don't. They encourage both. Express Entry is for the skilled ones, family based quotas parents and siblings in addition to asylum and refugees. Isn't that how immigration is supposed to work ?

> How's that for treating people with dignity?

Canada have temporary worker visas similar to H1B. They issue the spouses of those temporary skilled workers with open work permit. Dignity & freedom from the day one they land in Canada. There are no carrots in Canada for temporary skilled workers. If you satisfy Express Entry points which you almost will, you can apply for permanent residence. Your permanent residence is not under the control of your employer master. Canadian employers cant threaten your Express Entry application. You wont have to wait 10 years or get kicked out of the queue if you change jobs or gets fired while being on H1B.

Those who come to Canada as students get a post graduate work permit. No lotteries, no quotas and can apply to express entry and become residents unlike those unfortunate master degree holders who are at the mercy of their employer masters and waiting 10 years for their GreenCards.

The fact that open work permits are issued for spouses of temporary skilled workers in Canada proves that temporary workers are treated with dignity in Canada than H1B workers in the US.

Are the points above dignifying enough ?

Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather China, now on its way to being led by a dictator no different than a Mugabe-like figure in Africa, gain this talent to be used to bolster state run entitities — you know they’ll use any foreign tech developed on Chinese soil for government purposes — or let a relatively less corrupt, much freer government like the USA bring this talent over to build industry in the states where people are much more f…

While I agree with your overall point... this: > If China wanted to be the new US it would start where the US started and being [bring?] in the poor, tired, cold etc., China just had a billion of those people, 15-20 years ago. They still have a quarter of a billion people living on less than $3 per day. Maybe they'll get to what you're referring to eventually, assuming their economic expansion survives the shift back…

that comment you quoted was more a blanket attack at the cold way in which immigration is done. Send us your doctors, your lawyers, your engineers, but keep your poor and the like. That's the motto currently used but it's not what is on the statue of liberty. All should be welcome, and we can educate them, and we'll have those that have an entrepreneurial spirit create industry here in the US vs. elsewhere.

Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard would it be to find a position in China if I don't speak Chinese? Are there certain places I should look for information on this? Job websites?

This will limit you to 1 in 3 jobs open to foreigners. Which is still very good. See, the main value of a foreign specialist is that he is foreign and supposedly have rare expertise. Second to that, you will most likely to be hired with an idea in mind that you can liaise with overseas customers/specialists/authorities and etc even if your job does not implicitly require that. Best option is to actively solicit conta…

Thank you for the helpful reply!

Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#108
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't even fairly compare LA in the 80s (where I lived) to Beijing (or Hebei) today, much less the "smogless" wonderland that is the valley of today. The winter smog (ignoring outliers like CNY or political events) is worse than you can imagine. Typical PM2.5 is in the hundreds... a bad day in the week might be 500, and once a year they break the instruments with 900+ measurements.

I can't infer whether 80s LA was worse or better than Beijing today from your comment.

Sorry for the confusion, on the worst single day of smog I observed in Pasadena during the early 80s, the visibility was about as bad some 5-10 days I have observed in Beijing and multiple other cities in the last 2-3 years. It's not getting better, and it is so much worse than it was 15 years ago!

I thought it was getting better in China this year... I really did, but then winter came and you could barely see across the street at midday. Southern California meanwhile went from months of missing mountains to a day or two here and there during the summer over the course of 10 years as catalytic converters became standard.

Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#109
post #73
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely because they are still in college, and China would rather want the leaders in their fields to work for them instead, and also teach the newly graduated to take it from there?

Also, literally every student I've met in China wants to go to the US. Undergraduates want to do their Master's there, Master's students want to do their PhD, I guess PhD students want to become professors at a US university.

Yea that's also true, in Asia, the western education is perceived as far superior to theirs.

Re: Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia started being blocked when I lived in Beijing in 2005. I'd be surprised if it isn't still blocked.

It wasn’t blocked in 2007 when I moved to Beijing nor in 2016 when I left. There were times when it was blocked, but not for very long. Wikimedia was blocked a bit more, it still sporadic.

Interesting. I assume you were viewing Wikipedia on something other than a laowai corporate network. I'm pretty sure I've had wikipedia blocked the other times I've been back to China, but I don't remember any more. I suppose the conventional wisdom is that the government doesn't want to spend as much effort to suppress information for the cosmopolitan, educated class.
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