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Leaving China

persuasion.community

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Re: Leaving China

#461

Post by charlieyu1 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #122
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…

> and it seemed inevitable that China would absorb Taiwan. No, it's unrealistic to think the the ROC would ever effectively surrender to the PRC however HK's reintegration was managed.

There is always someone who is willing to take some money.

Re: Leaving China

#462

Post by iforgotpassword »

sfmike wrote: post #444
thowieruoi3243 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They got all the know how from the US as a jump start. Plus loads of financial aid especially during the 90s.

Sure, during the 2000s they moved ahead as they weren't stupid and didn't blow that chance, they're smart and hard working, but their rise is ultimately due to the US great interest in that island for military/strategic reasons.

Re: Leaving China

#463

Post by charlieyu1 »

angled wrote: post #300
shell0x wrote: post #139

Lots of people used to go to China for work and could do pretty much anything they want, but since Jinping took over it went downhill fast. Most people in the expat community I know went to Hong Kong and Singapore instead for the following reasons: 1) Easy to do business 2) Easy to get your money in and out . 3) Low taxes 4) Central travel hubs in Asia 5) Less backwards mindset as these cities feel more cosmopolitan…

HK, it seems, doesn’t have the death penalty or corporal punishment. Let’s see how long that lasts, but for the time being that’s a huge positive over Singapore. Expat life is still pretty nice. Soho is bustling. Restaurants are reopening, clubs open to 6am. Stuff like SVB, CS, and flow on effect to legal is probably just a big an impact.

On the other hand, HK now has years of imprisonment if you speak the wrong thing. Expats probably less directly affected, but freedom of speech is essential to financial success and the local economy will never recover.

Re: Leaving China

#464

Post by nomay »

physicles wrote: post #408

I've got some years in China. I speak Chinese, I'm eating a jianbing[1] as I write this. Didn't leave during the three years of zero covid. Reopening has changed everything about daily life in the best way. But I'm also looking for a way out. For the reasons outlined in the article, yes, and others. General sentiment toward foreigners has rebounded a bit since the early days of the pandemic, but it's pretty clear tha…

I think it’s not just foreigers with unfavorable origins, in their speaking of ideology/regime/path confidence, anyone not subscribing and contributing to the greater good, foreigners or not, are not welcomed and supposed to stay and share the pie.

Re: Leaving China

#465

Post by roca »

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…

> that country, like Africa, is too deeply colonized (likewise, with a despicable morally corrupt elite) to do anything of value to its own people IMO.

https://databankfiles.worldbank.org/public/ddpext_download/p...

> Since the 2000s, India has made remarkable progress in reducing absolute poverty. Between FY2011/12 and 2015, poverty declined from 21.6 to an estimated 13.4 percent at the international poverty line (2011 PPP $1.90 per person per day), continuing the historical trend of robust reduction in poverty. Aided by robust economic growth, more than 90 million people escaped extreme poverty and improved their living standards during this period.

And, as another reply noted, China grew rich after the USSR collapsed. So your facts are wrong.

But even apart from the facts, your thesis doesn't make much sense to me. "Western powers helped Taiwan and China grow rich because politics, and this is bad because ..."?

Re: Leaving China

#466

Post by wolverine876 »

duxup wrote: post #108
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…

>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.

That's interesting. I learned that historically, China has been many 'nations', with related but different languages - more like Europe than like the US. And I learned that every Chinese government has struggled to hold together these regional peoples under one central government.

The current map of China is one variation of many, many historical maps, which vary considerably. (Ask the Tibetans, in particular.) It might look like a cohesive government today, but so did the USSR - the Communists suppressed the ethnic differences, but the USSR exploded into many different countries when the Communists lost power - including Ukraine, Belarus, Modova (afaik), the Baltic states, Central Asian countries, and more.

I wonder what the truth is of China now; it's a question nobody asks.

Re: Leaving China

#467

Post by onethought »

opinionsonly01 wrote: post #443
onethought wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are now entering a pretty minor argument of semantics. Extended lockdowns vs non-extended?

Melbourne did lockdowns for effectively 4 months, longer than any single Chinese lockdown. So even on that point you are incorrect. This isn’t misinformation.

It didn’t refuse vaccines, you can get them in HK, and Chinese are free to travel to HK (for a variety of reasons). There is not enough of them, that’s the problem.

Re: Leaving China

#468

Post by nomay »

majormajor wrote: post #67
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…

In 2014 I worked with a company in Beijing for a few weeks. The local engineers all had pretty long and packed subway commutes from various outer developments, so my first guess would be that "affordable housing in the city center" is long gone for most major cities. The surface-level infrastructure was interesting, it felt like Los Angeles - much more than it did Manhattan or SF aboveground - just blown up 3-to-5x.…

The reality is someone have pay for those beautiful infrastructure, not going to be the incumbents due to political arrangment, then it’s the vulnerable newcomers shouldering all of it. Just think about those terrifying condo prices.

Re: Leaving China

#469

Post by roca »

einhverfr wrote: post #327
photochemsyn wrote: post #214

I suspect China's draconian, desperate attempt to eliminate Covid entirely was largely due to official guilt. They knew that their poorly managed reckless science program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak, and they wanted to somehow prove they could wipe the virus out entirely (which they couldn't). Eventually they had to give up. I wonder what happens to people in China who point this…

I think a more likely scenario is that all countries did what they could and China succeeded better than any other major land country. But then, as victims of their success, the costs of doing less increased with each new wave and when Omicron hit Hong Kong, the death rate soared in a way it didn't in the West. Hong Kong was not the only place to have high death rates from Omicron. New Zealand did as well. But none o…

NZ didn't have anything like the COVID death spike that Hong Kong did. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealan... https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china-hong... Adjusting for population HK has had about 50% more COVID deaths than NZ. This is probably because our vaccination rate for the elderly was much higher when the dam broke.

And, adjusting for population, the USA has had > 4x the number of COVID deaths that NZ has had. I don't think makes NZ a "victim of its own success".

Re: Leaving China

#470

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

Imagine if the ccp had dissolved itself, by becoming just the political framework, the shanghai clique, the traditionalists, becoming parties within the party and the legal system having a say in party inner affairs.

Imagine all those who are trampled today by that caste system in china having a chance to shine. All those brilliance we will never see, cause it gets censored to dust by old bureaucrats could shine. 1 generation from now, china could have been culture wise something similar to japan or south korea.

Instead we got this. The old errors, of walling oneself off from a percieved "hostile" outside world, of thinking one could be stand alone and the lack of seeing the need to change, to get away from the "conquer nature" mindset to a more symbiotic view of things.

Its so sad. We had a glimpse, of what could be, but then it was back to the old imperial gameboard and the people turned back into figurines.

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