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Leaving China

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Re: Leaving China

#441

Post by dumpster_fire »

cushychicken wrote: post #265
dumpster_fire wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone married an Asian whose family happened to be ethnic Chinese, which made you think "huh these people are everywhere". (With regards to the diaspora comment) Then the comment, paraphrasing, "they think they're Chinese when they're not Chinese nationals at all". If their ancestors were from China, they don't "think" they're ethnic Chinese, they are ethnic Chinese. Unless you get into the nitty gritty clans and g…

I think OP meant he was surprised that the family felt a strong enough link to China to identify themselves as Chinese, even across time and distance.

Calling it a strong enough link is giving it too much credit. It's more of an acknowledgement of lineage. Not difficult when names, festivals, languages are retained. In fact, if you're within 3 generations of emigration, you would even know the province and town your great grandparents came from.

Just as an example of something with a flimsier premise. Say a German American who doesn't speak the language, don't have known family there, have no loyalty to Germany, celebrate none of the German festivals, and the only indication left is a last name Schmidt. We don't say, "huh the German diaspora is everywhere" when these people say their ancestors are from Germany.

Re: Leaving China

#442

Post by onethought »

opinionsonly01 wrote: post #416
onethought wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Taiwan, HK, Singapore, and Melbourne all did the same thing, extended lockdowns. This wasn't autocracy, this was logical health policy: Do you overwhelm hospitals, potentially causing them to fail, or do you limit personal freedom? That's the question that they had to answer. China had the added complication of not having a vaccinated population. Partly due to them having too many people, partly due to their popu…

Taiwan and Singapore did not do extended lockdowns. They had lockdowns, but we could still order food delivered, still go out to buy food or go to the doctor, and we had constant updates on the number of infections, as the rate went down, restrictions were relaxed.

That is still a lockdown. So the argument isn’t against Chinese doing lockdowns, it’s “how” they did them?

Re: Leaving China

#443

Post by opinionsonly01 »

onethought wrote: post #442
opinionsonly01 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan and Singapore did not do extended lockdowns. They had lockdowns, but we could still order food delivered, still go out to buy food or go to the doctor, and we had constant updates on the number of infections, as the rate went down, restrictions were relaxed.

That is still a lockdown. So the argument isn’t against Chinese doing lockdowns, it’s “how” they did them?

You claimed they had extended lockdowns. That is not true.

I said they had lockdowns, they did not have extended lockdowns.

Please stop spreading misinformation.

Edit: I also reframed for your last comment

> China had the added complication of not having a vaccinated population. Partly due to them having too many people, partly due to their population being skeptical of "Western Medicine".

But since you're defending it. People in China prefer paid western vaccines over free local ones. The CCP refused to allow western vaccines to be used in China for COVID.

Re: Leaving China

#444

Post by sfmike »

thowieruoi3243 wrote: post #392
jasonjei wrote: post #63

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…

> it’s a bastion of a mandarin-speaking democracy, or in software terms a hard fork of an alternate reality of what China could have been. I don't want to reduce what you've said, but the fact is that Taiwan grew rich because of US support that helped integrate it into the global economy, and that wouldn't have come without its opposition to the mainland. Similarly, China wouldn't have grown rich had it not been a pa…

hard no. usa helped but taiwan themselves made TSMC's due to their work and family culture and studying and working hard their entire lives. To say Nvidia and AMD and Gigabyte and the numerous brands from Taiwan are due to USA is farfetched. It's actually more reasonable to say it's due to China or Malaysia/Thailand etc where the manufacturing is then USA.

Re: Leaving China

#445

Post by firen777 »

throw48294858 wrote: post #283
jasonjei wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely interesting question because I’ve heard various viewpoints. The vast majority want to keep the “technical debt” (legacy code being “Republic of China”) of this uneasy bridge to China—that is trade and movement of people between the strait, and maintaining the status quo of the “Republic of China” government (controlling Taiwan) and PRC (controlling China or “mainland”). Many Taiwanese don’t want…

Interestingly the protest in Hong Kong was triggered by a Hongkonger who murdered his girlfriend while they were vacationing in Taiwan. Taiwan was in negotiations with Hong Kong to extradite him and the protestors were afraid of the implications. In the end, a much stronger National Security Law was passed after the riots and the murderer still walks free.

A HKer murdered a HKer. said murderer moved back to HK. HK government said "nope can't deal with that sorry"

Taiwan: fine, we can negotiate the extradition if you insist on us taking the case.

HK gov: actually we are gonna make an all encompassing law that deals with extradition. It also makes extraditing criminals/political refugees/booksellers/whoever the ccp request quick and easy but please ignore it.

Re: Leaving China

#446

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ekabod wrote: post #389
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I was on koh phi phi someone greeted my Chinese wife in Chinese, which was a new development (english is fairly common, mandarin is also becoming more common). It seems like a lot of the tourists are now mainland Chinese, and the Thai tourist economy at least likes their money. Bangkok is ethnically a mostly Chinese city, and is also Thailand’s richest region by far.

>Bangkok is ethnically a mostly Chinese city Do you have a source for that because that has not been my experience?

https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/b/Bangko...

> As of the 2000 census, there were 6,355,144 registered residents in the city. However, this figure does not take account of the many unregistered residents and daytime visitors from the surrounding metropolitan area. More than 50% of Bangkokians have some Chinese ancestry.

They are still Thai, they often don’t even speak Chinese, just ethnically Chinese (and then I guess it depends on how you count mixed ancestry).

Re: Leaving China

#447

Post by galangalalgol »

hayst4ck wrote: post #404
fortuna86 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

every single election in the US is subject to a complete audit after the fact. counting quickly and verifying accurately after the fact are not mutually exclusive.

I think you are oriented for defending the American election. I think a better way to orient is to compare how Taiwanese elections are run to how American elections are run. My assertion is that Taiwanese elections are much more simple and therefore much more understandable and much more trustable. American elections might be cheaper per capita. If we are choosing a method of elections that is more complex and result…

In many places in the US you cannot bring your children with you to vote. So many people rely on public schools as day care so that they can vote. In places that cancelled school on election day recently (people vote at schools often, and there were security concerns after recent shootings), the voter turnout was lower in segments of the population that statistically are less likely to have family/partner available to watch children, or the means to pay for childcare.

Re: Leaving China

#448

Post by seanmcdirmid »

petesergeant wrote: post #390
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I was on koh phi phi someone greeted my Chinese wife in Chinese, which was a new development (english is fairly common, mandarin is also becoming more common). It seems like a lot of the tourists are now mainland Chinese, and the Thai tourist economy at least likes their money. Bangkok is ethnically a mostly Chinese city, and is also Thailand’s richest region by far.

Just before Covid, DMK had a dedicated immigration line for Chinese passports; Chinese visitor numbers were huge already and growing until Covid, when they dropped off a cliff, and they haven't yet recovered in the same way that most other tourism has > and the Thai tourist economy at least likes their money Yeeees, but the government (regardless of which) has been talking about trying to move to richer tourists sinc…

Average Chinese tourists often spend a lot more than Norwegian backpackers. And it is a relatively recent phenomena for Thailand to fill up with Chinese tourists over CNY. Why limit your tourist peaks to just thanksgiving and Christmas?

Re: Leaving China

#449

Post by Tarq0n »

panza wrote: post #153
maskedinvader wrote: post #129

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 ?

An expat is not an immigrant. It would be incorrect to call the author - who is an expat - an immigrant.

You're just stating a tautology, not providing an argument.

Re: Leaving China

#450

Post by alwayslikethis »

another_story wrote: post #109
tiny_ta wrote: post #13

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…

Ahh yes, China, with its brutal Darwinian rush hour on the metro. The experience of needing to shove aside a 70 year old women with her grocery trolley who doesn't understand you need to wait until people get off before you get on. That affordable downtown housing which is on par with costs in Manhattan, where you'll hear someone renovating until 9pm every night and smell the sewage gas wafting from bathroom drains b…

They sell fake pregnancy pillows in China to put in your belly to get people to give you a seat on the metro. Of course that doesn't really work as soon as people knew about it.
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