Leaving China

a-d) are all wrong. Without defending Putin who deserves to burn in hell for what he's done:

a) wasn't a good idea: pretty much everyone thought Russia would win and could not fathom the incompetence of the Russian armed forces. It's possible that even with it's incompetence, if they had successfully taken Kyiv in the early days they would have won.

b) if Russia holds on to arguably outdated concept of geopolitical strategy, it's easy to see why it's in their best interest. Demographically, Russia is in decline and so they had at most 5-10 years to expand out to defensible geographies -- close up to the bessarabian gap and border to the Carpathian mountains.

c) it's not entirely clear even now that the Russian economy is going to collapse. Remember, Russia is a producer nation. It will (relatively) suck as modern shit starts breaking but Russia is barely starting to deficit now. While economic sanctions do have an effect, if the government falls I think deaths of young Russian men (esp if they are forced to meat grind muscovites and st. Petersburgians instead of just ethnic minorities from the hinterlands) is more likely to play into that sentiment than prices going up at tasty period (McDonald's).

d) a large part of the Russian polity wants this, not just Putin.

Here's my opinion on how China scores against your criteria:

- Dense cities: Yes. I grew up in the suburbs and love the density here and how walkable everything is.

- Affordable housing: A good place in a popular location in Beijing or Shanghai is about $2k USD a month. You can get that down to $1k if you have roommates.

- Great public infrastructure: public transit, yes, but I rarely need to take that anymore. Public parks aren't great. You can't drink the tap water.

- Modicum of agreement: political discussion is so thoroughly suppressed that we all engage in self-censorship. I guess that could be called "agreement", but when I think of agreement I think of a place like New Zealand.

Here are the great things you're maybe not seeing:

- There's a bit of friction in everything in daily life, and that somehow makes life more enjoyable for some kinds of people (including myself). I think a big reason for that is that most people here don't speak English.

- It's incredibly easy to make friends.

- Most people you meet are interesting: either they're an expat and they moved here because they didn't want to coast through life, or they're a local and they're curious about people from other cultures.

- Some jobs pay incredibly well. For example if you're a teacher (not a "teacher"), China is a big step up.

Here are the not-so-good things you're maybe not thinking about:

- Air pollution is still a thing. In some cities, half the days you'd like to go outside for a run, you shouldn't because the air is too bad.

- Things like national parks are more crowded, less natural, and less tastefully done here than in any other developed country.

- As a foreigner you can only stay at maybe half the hotels and guest houses around the country. The others will simply not allow you to stay.

- As an American you'll deal with special attention from the government.

- Going to a hospital where nobody speaks your native language is one of the most stressful experiences you will have.

> I didn't say it was anything to do with being "Morally weak".

My apologies, I did not mean to imply that you did. Merely that this is the usual response I hear from those supporting the PRC position.

> Lockdowns ended when vaccines began, China never got that option, because its population didn't take up any of the vaccines to a high enough percentage. Also, there was never enough mRNA vaccines available to supply the whole world + china, until recently (maybe still not even now).

So, why did the PRC population not vaccinate? Could the government not mandate vaccines? If so, why not? Could it not better educate the population? Was the path via Sinovac the only option? Fosun International in Shanghai [1] had a license to produce Comirnaty as early as 2020 [2] for example. These are just a few decisions that could have been made differently and yet were not.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosun_International

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVID%...

I am not claiming to have answers here as for there being a better path through this chaos. However, I do want a healthy debate about the decisions and outcomes; I simply am not buying how you (and Beijing) are largely portraying the decisions as inevitable.

> It 100% was as binary as I present it. Italy, UK, Canada, US, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Korea... the list goes on: They all did lockdowns to some degree to slow spread, and help their hospitals. It had nothing to do with culture or politics... except in the US.

I strongly disagree. While I am not a scientist in this area, I am very familiar with the great differences between say the UK, Japanese, and Swedish responses for the people on the ground. Debating excess deaths, efficiency, economic impact etc. is something that I will leave for better scientists to iron out over the years to come, but it is inarguable that the responses (and outcomes) were far more nuanced than you describe them. This – to me – is enough to solidify my position that the whole “There was no other option”, which is commonplace for governments worldwide, is a load of hogwash in this case as much as it has always been.

This article got me wondering: what is the difference between an immigrant and an expat? It seems like immigrant is the term used for someone migrating westward, and expat is the term used for someone migrating from a Western country eastward. For the sake of this definition we're considering North America the western limit of the world and Asia the Eastern limit.

Opinions?

TL;DR: every dictatorship inevitably follows the same path of self-destruction. How many generations should pass for people worldwide to realise there is no viable path to long-term prosperity than a democratic social order?