301–310 of 686 posts
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…
Warning: this thread is very likely to be heavily astroturfed by Chinese influence operations. This is exactly the type of question and discussion that provides a perfect opportunity to change or chip at your opinion on China. Hence: - “Taiwan is acqshually a dictatorship” - “The integration of HK was managed extremely well” - “China may have X, but whatabout Y in the US/decadent West/Europe” - “That’s it, I’m moving…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might consider Vietnam. There's going to be a lot of growth and opportunities there for a while.
While there’s going to be a lot of growth a lot of the same things can be said about Vietnam. Foreigners will never win an argument against locals, some locals will die on a hill defending the 150-200 AQI for 5 months out of the year. I don’t mean this as advice to avoid Vietnam, but just that 1/2 the bad things said about China apply to most Asian countries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This hits home for me a lot. I've lived in Spain, Argentina and Finland, all in hoping to fill whatever gap I thought it would, whether that would be life quality, weather, culture or whatever. But after the honeymoon period, the cracks started to show at every place. I'm now back in my home country, Estonia, which I (now) think is the best for me - but that creeping feeling of something better being somewhere out th…
There is no place, and no time, where people are better than what you see before you right now. Sometimes, the political system is better. People? There is nothing new under the sun.
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Let's entertain the possibility that China wasn't responsible for a lab leak, and that the zoonotic theory is true. Whatever the source, we know that the Wuhan wet market was a super-spreader event, which Chinese authorities concede. Following this, China grounded all domestic flights in January 2020, yet still allowed outbound international flights well into March 2020. Countries were left to ban flights from China…
I have heard this version of events many times, but that's not how I remember it. I remember the only international flights allowed as being the repatriation flights. (e.g. when an overseas government organised for some non-Chinese who were in Wuhan to be able to come home). And presumably the return flights for planes that would otherwise have been stranded in Wuhan. FactCheck matches my memory... https://www.factch…
From a NYT article[1]:
> “I was surprised at how lax the whole process was,” said Andrew Wu, 31, who landed at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Beijing on March 10.
> Sabrina Fitch, 23, flew from China to Kennedy International Airport in New York on March 23.
> About 60 percent of travelers on direct flights from China in February were not American citizens, according to the most recently available government data.
So these were not only repatriation, but commercial flights.
The flight data also shows plenty of activity in February and March[2]. Whether those were only domestic flights or not is difficult to say, but clearly the shutdown wasn't total even domestically.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...
[2]: https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/the-chinese-roller-coaste...
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…
How would you wrap Singapore into your comment? I was recently there and took note of what looked like significant Chinese cultural influence almost everywhere.
Also, Singaporean of Chinese descent are generally not huge fans of China. While some older folks have drunk the CCP Kool-Aid, among the young there is a lot of straight up racism/prejudice against "PRCs" (mainlanders), especially around ten years ago when there was a huge wave of immigrants, many of whom didn't even try to assimilate (learning English etc). Taiwan, by contrast, is viewed very favorably.
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> people have shown that they will not believe in the validity of the election regardless of the evidence presented. there's that, but an electronic voting machine is more complex. Election fraud for paper ballots is "easily" detected, but not really so for electronic voting machines.
Google Professor Philip Stark and read some of the papers he publishes about the dangers of electronic voting machines.
This is probably the main paper you are referencing?
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>It almost felt like another Chinese city ... >If I were to live in Asia, it might have once included Hong Kong because of its unique British history OTOH this attitude is why PRC finally calibrating HK for PRC nationals/one-way permits instead of privileged foreign expats was long overdue. Mainlanders I know in HK find the new mix PRC/HK mix more preferable than UK/HK, less visible discrimination etc. Local nativism…
If you swap out the entire population of HK with those from PRC then all you have left is a name and a bunch of buildings. Because it is the people and their unique customs that defines a culture. You seem to be way too flippant about cultural genocide.
Que similar REEEs from a bunch of young, privileged HK nativist about dirty mainlander shitting on their streets, taking their jobs and leeching their benefits (all somewhat true). But in America/west they're not called freedom fighters, they're called alt right protecting white culture, and (not accusing you) tends to adopt the flippant narrative accusing immigrants mixing their own culture as "cultural genocide". In HK’s case, mainlanders get lumped together, as if there's no regional diversity from a huge country of 1.4B people. It's the familiar culture war pattern of privileged locals mad at poor mainland (Mexicans) doing menial labour while being unsightly eyesores, while skilled mainland labour is taking their jobs and rich mainland pig farmers are buying their penthouses whilst flaunting wealth and reminding locals that HK was great when PRC was poor, so lets make HK great again.
Broad point being, in-demand urban centres in PRC (and around the world) have experienced dramatic shifts in demographics due to rapid urbanization and migration patterns (both domestic and international) causing city folk to collide with country bumpkins or dominant supremacists with ethnicities they find "inferior". But most places largely integrate while life and culture moves on. Until the alt right, or those nativists/localists parallels in HK politicize en masse and rally against filthy foreigners (alien mainland "locusts") and lose their shit and burn down the city over the fact that culture is changing to accommodate/reflect these inferior outgroups.
I'm not even unsympathetic to groups including in the west who think identity / culture has changed too much too fast. But I'm also not going to shed tears after they get stomped when they operationalize their nativism. All these arguments defending that only HKers should determine HK culture forgets that PRC "immigrants" to HK are NEW HKers and get a voice too, even if the flows inevitably shifts them towards becoming "just another Chinese city" - as if Chinese cities are all homogeneous. From a mainland perspective, the alternative vision of a British HK, lashing out to forever be untouched from 99% of "one" country, is absurd.
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…
This hits home for me a lot. I've lived in Spain, Argentina and Finland, all in hoping to fill whatever gap I thought it would, whether that would be life quality, weather, culture or whatever. But after the honeymoon period, the cracks started to show at every place. I'm now back in my home country, Estonia, which I (now) think is the best for me - but that creeping feeling of something better being somewhere out th…