171–180 of 686 posts
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>Chinese diaspora I had no idea how wide it is until a family member married someone from Asia and he explained ot me that his family thinks of themselves as ethnically Chinese, although they're totally disconnected from China.
Wait why is that a problem? Nationality and ethnicity are two different things.
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> Meanwhile, Taiwan’s value to the Chinese diaspora can’t be understated—it’s a bastion of a mandarin-speaking democracy. A bastion of democracy which has been a right wing dictatorship from its inception until the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)
> A bastion of democracy which has been a right wing dictatorship from its inception until the 90s. The 1990s being, well, not now , the correct conjugation is either “was” or “had been”, not “has been”. Which relates directly to why its irrelevant.
Hell, it took decades even for post-WWII Germany to shake the ex-Nazi-high-ranking influence in its politics, media, finances, and so on, and the Nazi rule was just 12 years, and they had far more horribleness and more shame as a motive to stomp out those elements after 1945...
The same has been true in post-Franco Spain, and any other place with such history.
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>Chinese diaspora I had no idea how wide it is until a family member married someone from Asia and he explained ot me that his family thinks of themselves as ethnically Chinese, although they're totally disconnected from China.
Wait why is that a problem? Nationality and ethnicity are two different things.
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I appreciate your question because I have spent a lot of time in the past thinking about this :) > I’m genuinely curious because every person defines personal freedom differently. And great society is very subjective. I couldn't agree more! I believe that all of us have to give up some personal freedom if we want to live in a functional society. I may want to blast music from my rooftop at 3AM but I must curb that ur…
I appreciate your perspective, because it's one that I've so often found confounding. > I think I lie towards giving up more if it gives me a comfortable society in return It seems like you are very practical minded, which I appreciate. I think the fundamental skepticism that those of us who tend to be more "libertarian" minded is whether you're actually getting value in return for giving up liberties. > I am willing…
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I see comment chains touching on this topic in nearly every post even tangentially related to China, and it's rarely ever that the main issue is mentioned. So I'll write this for the benefit of any passing reader with similar thoughts. In a country of 1.x billions, it shouldn't be surprising that there would be at least a few tens of millions of hardcore, actual socialists, who genuinely believe in some distant futur…
Is this based on political experience there? My view from the outside was that it's really similar to climbing the ladder in a corporation, mouth all the platitudes but only suckers believe them.
Humans are not perfect deceivers, even the average Joe can usually tell if someone's fishy within a 10 minute face-to-face conversation.
There do exist really expert and cunning deceivers, but the folks higher up in the hierarchy will also commensurately be better equipped to see through it.
So for a large enough hierarchy, the practical impossibility of duping so many means that only genuine believers end up near the top.
You don't even need to go Beijing to see this dynamic play out, there's a company in Cupertino where many folks allege this is the case (though to be fair some allege the non-believers are also moving up the ladder).
Can we at HN at-least refer to the author as immigrant as opposed to expats? what's an expat anyways ? why does the western world to get to make these tiers where they are expats but arabs, asians, africans etc are all immigrants ?
A white immigrant.
It's so interesting to read this perspective since it drives home "the grass is always greener.." for me. I've lived a pretty charmed life in the US for the past few years (like the majority of HN, I imagine) but I find myself longing to move to a country with dense cities, affordable housing in the city center, great public infrastructure and a modicum of agreement among the citizens and China fits the bill pretty g…
There's a wonderful skit from Portlandia about a couple who visit Spain and come back and everything is now a reflection of what they saw there. They can't help but talk about it... constantly. I think it's hard to really "know" a place, and frankly your experience anywhere will vary. Granted sometimes people just need a change.
Travellers become unhappy both at home and abroad ...
I used to travel to China all the time for work during my first job in 2008. Those times were super optimistic. Hong Kong was filled with Chinese pride, and it seemed inevitable that China would absorb Taiwan. China had just hosted the Olympics. I visited Hong Kong late 2018 after many years of not having been there. It was a very different place from the Hong Kong I had visited in 2009-2011. The energy was a bit dar…
Although off topic from the original post, would you entertain this question? What's Taiwan's position on integration with China? What does Taiwan want for itself? I'd like to hear more about that minus American and Chinese input.
I don't think this will end well.
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An immigrant hopes to settle down in the host country, have / grow a family there, own property and even become a citizen. Of course, if the host nation does not have a citizenship program for foreigners, then everyone who isn't a citizen is an expat. An expat hopes, even plans to move back to where they came from. They're in their host nation for work reasons only because, at least according to the expat, where they…
The author has lived there for 20 years, married there, has kids who go to local schools, yet calls himself an expat, and everyone here seems to accept that as an obvious truth. Meanwhile a million+ people coming to the USA on temporary work visas fully intending to go back to their home country (or illegally with no path to citizenship) are obviously immigrants. At some point people have to come to terms that this i…
What you call yourself, "immigrant" or "expat" is up to you. For example, plenty of Indians call themselves expats in the US. Other Indians call themselves immigrants.
Personally, I'm a fan of the word "alien". God Bless America! :D