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Leaving China

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Re: Leaving China

#371

Post by dirtyid »

re-thc wrote: post #340
dirtyid wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one's swapping out the entire population. But populations change, when people move, demographics recompose, and local customs accordingly. HK nativism/localism rose after ~150/day “one way permits” from PRC to HK (for the wealthy and family reunification) led to 1/7 (15%) of the city's growth coming from mainlanders in 20 years. That's relatively fast, as is visible within a generation, but also about as subtle as…

> 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. Maybe think about the "why" instead of just complain? Try to understand things instead of just saying they suck? - Can you use Facebook, Twitte…

Nativist attitude predated NSL, when HK had their obscene privileges and responded to rapid shift in culture due to mainland immigration by shitting on the outgroup like many groups in the west in the last decade. The original post touches on why - HK supremacy where taxi drivers can afford to have multiple mainland mistresses like the 90s ended as PRC caught up. Incidentally PRC tier 1/2 is where $$$ money is made now, and plenty of cities have better lifestyles. Even TW topped at 10% of workforce working in mainland when HK peaking at 8% - plenty of well compensated opportunities in PRC for the skilled english fluent HKers, but issue is again, human capita broadly sucks unskilled and mass thinks they're entitled to a lifestyle that's no longer possible when they have to compete with ~1billion others, so they understandably try not to, and hold on in a city with worse gini coefficient / inequality than mainland. At least the welfare system, paid for by being middle men to PRC wealth, affords them higher income than they deserve. Meanwhile, as their relative status declines, they shit on poor mainlanders who have the opportunity to live in HK like most of their forefathers, many simply under family reunification permits, while lash out at nouveau riche mainlanders whose black money they’re happy to launder but god forbid when said cleaned money is flaunted in polite british inspired society.

Sure it's not the same anymore, but HK status quo was not sustainable, especially on national security grounds from where they basically had carte blanche to commit treason and be spy capital of Asia/PRC by slagging on NSL implementation for 20 years. Bringing "rule-of-law" to pirate cove sucks for the pirates. Yes they had a very good setup where they can flaunt increasingly unearned superiority to the mainland, but no reason why the mainland should maintain that arrangement in perpetuity, especially when it's received so ungraciously. As for your list, post NSL HK, you can still access foreign social media, death penalty still abolished in HK, you can still talk shit about gov (granted you don't conspire with foreign powers / undermine one country security), like a handful of folks renditioned by PRC post handover is pretty mild for the shenanigans HK was up to pre revolution, and HK still hotbed of capital flight. Yes a lot of perks are justifiably constrained, because they never took the one country part of 1C2S seriously.

Again, I get why locals went nativist and think post NSL HK is reduced - and it is - but they're still dripping in special administration privileges. Meanwhile it's great for PRC nationals now, which is frankly how it ought to be. The optimism that mainland would move closer to the HK system instead of vice versa was always hubris to anyone who looked at the numbers. State side, alt right Americans got away with as much as HKer nativists, until they stormed capitol/legco. That's when the hammer drops anywhere.

Re: Leaving China

#372

Post by deke »

threeseed wrote: post #239
dirtyid wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The irony is if Hong Kong was just another Chinese city, OP wouldn't even be in Hong Kong. It is the Hong Kong people and its culture that made Hong Kong into a world class city, not mainlanders. Take that away and Hong Kong will become a second tier city. Mainlanders cannot keep Hong Kong first tier. If they could, they would have done it in China already.

Re: Leaving China

#373

Post by cycomanic »

mettamage wrote: post #350
light_hue_1 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course it was all nonsense, Clinton and Bush were just listening to Wall Street interests I'm not a fan of either Clinton or Bush, but this is unfair. There was far more going on. At the time, there was a strong sense that democracy had won, and that it was inevitable. That empowering people economically would eventually, without fail, lead to democratic reform. Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" i…

> They created an incredibly unequal world that has eroded democracy to the point where we can seriously discuss a US that isn't a democracy anymore in our lifetimes. Could you elaborate? I find this too much of a stretch to think about and am not knowledgeable enough on the topic

> Could you elaborate? I find this too much of a stretch to think about and am not knowledgeable enough on the topic

Many politicans of one of the two major parties are denying the result of an election. Prominent members are calling for "Democrats" to be forbidden to vote when moving state (without protest from others). An let's not even talk about the whole constitutional convention movement. There are many politicians in the US who only pay lipservice to democracy.

Re: Leaving China

#374

Post by oboes »

nonethewiser wrote: post #119
majormajor wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the folks I was working with it wasn't "messed up" in any way, it just was hardly any more relatively affordable give local wages than most big cities in the US. Some fun/awkward differences though. For instance, I had imagined it would be easy to find a laundromat - I didn't want to pay the hotel prices for cleaning. Ended up almost accidentally offending the people I was asking - "why would we need to go somew…

I used to think that way about WeChat but I don’t anymore. The reason stores use credit payment networks in the West is because it’s better. We have cash transferring apps but we don’t use them for a reason. Meanwhile, China does not have the same type of payment networks.

> The reason stores use credit payment networks in the West is because it’s better. We have cash transferring apps but we don’t use them for a reason.

In many (most?) European countries, debit cards and cash transfering apps are more common than credit-based payments. I have a credit card but I don't use it often (mostly for some online transactions, such as buying plane tickets), and many people only have a debit card.

Re: Leaving China

#375

Post by crunchyfrog »

taw567890 wrote: post #325
atleastoptimal wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there are claims that covid was detected in the US months before covid spread in Wuhan. I've heard claims it spread in China months before it's official detection in Wuhan, but not regarding the US. Source?

It was detected in European samples (Spain, Italy) collected as early as March 2019 and is likely to have been spreading around the US by that point already. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...

Those claims were never published in peer reviewed journals and were very likely just false positives:

https://en.ara.cat/society/inaccurate-data-led-to-belief-tha...

Re: Leaving China

#376

Post by midoridensha »

paxys wrote: post #160
givemeethekeys wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

If they refer to themselves as an expat, why are you questioning this? Do you demand proof when someone refers to themselves as male or female too?

I know people living in the US who have been there for 20 years and call themselves expats too. They have no intention of retiring in the US: they plan to move back to their home country at that point in their lives.

>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.

Is that what they call themselves? I would normally call them expats, unless they say otherwise.

>At some point people have to come to terms that this isn't about some technical definition of "immigrant" vs "expat" but a deeper prejudice.

At some point, people like you need to stop trying to make everything about racism.

Re: Leaving China

#377

Post by adastra22 »

JCharante wrote: post #291
adastra22 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's an expat anyways A white immigrant.

Funny you say that because I know many expats of color. If you actually pay attention you’ll see people from all over the world.

I was being snide. But there’s a kernel of truth here: the term expat and immigrant describe the same people. But there is a racist and/or culturally chauvinistic implication in how they are used. Mexican person coming to the US? Immigrant. American moving to Vietnam? Expat.

Re: Leaving China

#378

Post by simonh »

FpUser wrote: post #104
simonh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do change, in mainland China they have devolved considerably under Xi. I have Family over there, and a lot of the optimism of a decade ago was already being squeezed out of the country before the pandemic.

Yes things devolved, and they might get better over the time. Or not. Nobody knows.

I’m not sure what point you are making. Things change is such a trivially obvious point, that could be made about anything in any context, that it seems basically irrelevant to any reasoned discourse. We all know that things change, so stating that fact communicates no useful information.

It’s why and how things change that is interesting. In China things have changed because Xi and the Chinese communist party have chosen to change them in particular ways. It’s these choices and the consequences of them that we are discussing.

Re: Leaving China

#379

Post by [deleted] »

wdkrnls wrote: post #293
chii wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Leaving China

#380

Post by re-thc »

dirtyid wrote: post #371
re-thc wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Maybe think about the "why" instead of just complain? Try to understand things instead of just saying they suck? - Can you use Facebook, Twitte…

Nativist attitude predated NSL, when HK had their obscene privileges and responded to rapid shift in culture due to mainland immigration by shitting on the outgroup like many groups in the west in the last decade. The original post touches on why - HK supremacy where taxi drivers can afford to have multiple mainland mistresses like the 90s ended as PRC caught up. Incidentally PRC tier 1/2 is where $$$ money is made n…

> Yes a lot of perks are justifiably constrained, because they never took the one country part of 1C2S seriously.

Is that just your vision of the country? As per the other comments before Xi started the country went in a different direction. Just because you're supporting another faction does not make HK a wrong?

> Meanwhile it's great for PRC nationals now, which is frankly how it ought to be.

Your bias is clear as day... so let's leave it there as it's pointless. Like those hands are very clean.

> by PRC post handover is pretty mild for the shenanigans HK was up to pre revolution

Because you're turning a blind eye to it all? Like when they hold up your family, your business, etc hostage just to ensure you cast a vote on a PRC supported candidate and claim the election is clean?

> especially on national security grounds from where they basically had carte blanche to commit treason

The nation isn't CCP. Clearly I give up. To take the analogy you're saying that America = Trump and anything else is treason.

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