I spent 3 years in China before Covid. Happened to be out of the country during initial lockdown and that was that. My experiences are pre Covid so things may be different now, I don’t know.
Pros:
- very vibrant, never bored even though when I went I didn’t know anyone really
- I was paid a Silicon Valley salary so high income compared to the typical local. Can afford a very nice lifestyle
- due to demographics and being an “actual” expat, as opposed to English teacher, was respected
Cons:
- general quality of life. Traffic, pollution, food and water safety etc
- can be hard to make deep connection except with other expats. Just different cultures and values.
- lack of freedom and censorship. Vpn needed for everything, and even then doesn’t always work. Certain topics are avoided
- there is a surface level fakeness that I personally really dislike.
It’s a fun place to be for a while when you have the income and status. But for me at least not a place to be long term.
Not a Chinese employer, although you'd be surprised at the comp levels for some companies in the larger city in China. I was working for a US employer with an office in China.
EDIT: to provide more details. Total comp of 200k USD and up at some of the larger (e.g. BAT companies) isn't uncommon for the more senior folks.
It's not surprising for the reasons you stated. People from Western countries find living in China undesirable, hence they need to be paid a lot to go there and work.
That’s certainly true for people that are relocated to China from overseas. That was my case. But local Chinese citizens working at one of the BAT companies can also be very highly paid at the more senior levels (say L7 and up). My 200k USD reference was for local comp, not imported expat comp.
I am not an expat, but I was considering spending several months in China.
After Hong Kong, there was a strong message of "Americans caused this," likewise after covid there was a strong message of "this didn't start in China, this actually started in America."
It wasn't just a message of "America is our enemy," but looking at how the People in Hong Kong were robbed of due process from an impartial justice system it was clear that if there was a problem we would also not get due process.
The Canadians arrested without due process in response to Huawei leaders being arrested was another story that says "China might do bad things to you in response to things you don't have control over."
As an American I felt it was made clear that we were the enemy and we would not get due process.
I was planning to spend several months in China, but chose not to because of Hong Kong. My choice was re-inforced because of the covid response.
I am open to the idea that international media was being unfair to China, but I had experiences which made me realize this was not the case.
- I met a person who just got out of china. She was an early 20s English teacher who didn't know why she was put in prison, but spent a couple weeks in Chinese prison until the US state department said 'give her back, now.' She figured she failed some kind of political question she was asked or made a statement about Taiwan she shouldn't have. She said she probably would still be there if her boyfriend hadn't called the US state department saying he hasn't heard from her and didn't know what happened.
- Another woman I met on a plane said that the people who ran the school she taught at threatened to revoke her visa trapping her in China. She said she was leaving for "vacation" but was not going to go back. She was also visibly shaken.
- A Hong Kong person I met broke down the way China was destroying Hong Kong culture and acting like an imperial ruler.
- Hong Kong went from feeling like a lively place to feeling like a dominated place. The energy left the city.
- Seeing the video of Triads in the train station made it clear that the Chinese government was in bed with organized crime. Seeing triads be the foot soldiers of the CPC was something I had never seen before. It made it clear that if China wanted to achieve a goal, it would use any method regardless of how right or wrong it is. It was just one more element of "our legal system is pretext, we will do what we want."
- I spent some time in China with a Chinese woman and she was constantly "correcting" me about any implication that Hong Kong or Taiwan was a country. It made me realize that I can't just hide my beliefs, they will manifest in my language, and that will put me at risk.
There's a conspiracy theory propagated in China that Covid was a biological weapon spread in Wuhan by Americans visiting during an international sporting event in late 2019.
Probably the same way conservative media portrays US joblessness as starting from other countries and their immigrants, and it’s clear that people who consume that media really buy into that way of thinking. People in echo chambers are particularly vulnerable to this sort of propaganda I expect.
I get what you’re saying. I haven’t seen that example from conservative media though. Most of the narratives I see center around illegal immigration, drugs, drain on social services, etc.
Take a step back and look at how the US blames China for all its woes. Looks the same to me as a non-American non-Chinese. Ideas planted to distract from underlying issues.
> Another woman I met on a plane said that the people who ran the school she taught at threatened to revoke her visa trapping her in China. She said she was leaving for "vacation" but was not going to go back. She was also visibly shaken.
I know someone working as an architect in China and apparently his company holds onto his college degree. Hes concerned he won’t get it back if he doesn’t remain on good terms. I was told this is a common arrangement.
This reads like it was written by someone cosplaying as an adult. A college degree is not an irreplaceable piece of paper to be guarded with your life - otherwise it would live in a vault somewhere. You can trivially have the certificate reprinted.
Less true than it used to be. Here's Stanford's duplicate diploma ordering portal.[1] It's a big deal, there's a lot of verification, and it costs at least US$100.
There's an easier way.[2] "But now it's easier than ever to purchase a fake copy of your diploma. At Same Day Diplomas, we provide high-quality copies of your college diploma. Our products are crafted to match the design, seals, and color of your university's diploma."
Which is why it's become much harder to get a duplicate real one.
There's online third party diploma verification, and it probably works about as badly as most other online credential services.
…so? I never even received my degree certificate. It is a meaningless piece of paper. If an employer wants to verify my credentials, they don’t ask for it. They call/email the school.
In America a degree is a piece of paper. I could go to my college and ask for a replacement and they'll give me one for $50-100.
A company could call my college and verify I earned a degree without ever seeing a piece of paper.
I know I've read something similar to what you are saying, so I don't think your comment was bad faith, but I forget the specific mechanics of the type of coercion you are talking about.
I suspect it might be China invalidating a Chinese citizens degree if they do the wrong thing or China invalidating the verification of a degree that's respected in China, leaving a person in China without credentials that are respected in China. Alternatively it might be about controlling people who earned a degree in China.
I couldn't find the type of coercion you were talking easily with google. A simple article explaining the mechanics of what you're talking about would likely clear everything up.
> This reads like it was written by someone cosplaying as an adult.
Not necessarily. From my understanding, in Asia the actual diploma is often used as a credential for obtaining employment. (The context is reading about a con man who set up a fake job listing to attract Western job candidates, obtained copies of applicants' diplomas, then used them to construct a fake diploma that he used to get a job for himself.)
I lived in China since 2008 (Beijing, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai), left Sep '22. The way the pandemic was handled in Shanghai was absolutely dehumanizing, and it became the last drop after which we just decided to GTFO and never come back.
We (myself and my wife, who is Chinese) moved to Bangkok and I can confidently say it is a much happier and healthier place in every aspect.
Many things about China are amazing:
- e-commerce speed and proximity of everything, I work in SW/FW/HW intersection (IoT) and the ability to prototype things within a week was liberating,
- public transportation and infrastructure is amazing, perfect roads, huge subway systems, CRH,
- completely cashless society.
Many things are not so amazing:
- stifling censorship of everything even slightly critical,
- food is just not good in Shanghai, quality- and taste-wise, Bangkok is much, much better,
- terrible, overcrowded, dehumanizing healthcare,
- outside of city center the city is rather gray and ugly,
- everything is gargantuan in scale and feels built for aliens,
I lived in China for several years and left during COVID. There are lots of things I miss about living there.
The food was great. You could find fresh cooked stuff everywhere and fresh vegetables at the market every day. Getting delivery was cheap, easy and fast.
As a well-paid tech worker, housing was affordable.
There is a sense you are taking part in something important. That's difficult to explain, and it's something Americans in particular probably can't understand because their country is the same but even more so. When you come from a smaller or less powerful country, there is something exciting about becoming part of a society which has great influence internationally. When stuff that's happening locally ends up being major news because your country actually matters to the rest of the world, that's a neat feeling.
The public transport and urban infrastructure was really good, even in low tier cities, although when the COVID restrictions hit all of that changed.
And that's what made me realize that despite the benefits of centralized rule, it also can turn the country into a prison state overnight.
Anyone living in China is familiar with seeing police and other uniformed and armed officials all over the place. Cameras all over the place. Party propaganda all over the place. But it doesn't seem all that sinister when it doesn't get in the way of your own personal life. When you can go to work, and go to the market, and go to the restaurant, and it's just a backdrop. It's only when those agents of oppression mobilize that it really sinks in how messed up it is. When uniformed officials in their tens storm in with clipboards and mancatchers to shut down your favorite restaurant or street vendor because someone important has decided it should no longer be open. When something the party doesn't like is said on a website you read every morning and suddenly that website is no longer available, period. When walls get erected around every neighborhood in the city and all those markets you used to visit in different districts are now behind checkpoints you cannot cross because you don't have the paperwork to visit them.
Things improved after those first few months of COVID, but for me that was the real eye-opener. A lot of local people realized it too, and there was talk of how "now we are all Uyghurs". Of course, as the holder of a foreign passport, I had the privilege to be able to leave when I was fed up with the oppression. Most Chinese do not have that privilege.
There are lots of other bad things about living in China. The blatant corruption, for one. The endless boondoggles and scams and the greedy scumbags who buy into the system and prop it up to enrich themselves.
The classism is shameful for a so-called "communist" country. The way the urban middle class looks down on anyone who comes from the countryside or works low class jobs or didn't get a good education is depressing.
Foreigners are second class citizens and always will be. Threads here ask about why people are called "expats" instead of "immigrants", and the answers are missing the point a bit. In China, as a migrant worker, you have no choice to become an immigrant. You must maintain your job or your visa will be canceled. There is no chance of getting citizenship. There is not even a hope of getting permanent residence. There is a strong undercurrent of racism that the government allows to exist, in so far as it doesn't actively stamp it out like it does other topics they prefer the people do not discuss. At every step of your life there, you will be reminded you are an outsider. When you can't sign up for the same services local people can because you don't have the same ID card, when you are told you can't stay at a hotel because management doesn't want to go to the trouble of registering you with the police daily, when yet another landlord refuses to rent to you despite you having all the money and the paperwork. However, having lived as a foreigner in other countries, I can say that these things aren't unique to China, they are often part of the migrant experience, and a lot of countries should do better.
Of course, in China the bad things are compounded by the authoritarianism, and in the end, that just outweighed everything for me.
I've been working in, and out of South China since 2009, and have called it quit 2019, when it became clear the industry was done for, and CoVID mess only reinforced my decision.
I never held any fraternal feelings with the country, even though I am ethnic Chinese, nor I had any delusions about making long term plans there.
In my years there, I kept seeing rose coloured glasses wearing American expats. I met Tim Cook during his first travels to China as CEO at some random event in Shenzhen, only to see him regurgitate the official drivel.
Since around 2016, I kept seeing more and more Western high flyers coming to official events there, seemingly trying to network with locals, and only to see them freak out at that.
My regular conversation with them:
- it's a damn communist regime, do your business and get out
- no, it's different! there is no more communisms in China! no, it's state capitalism! no, things will change! no, I have a special plan from EY China expert!
Most of them lived there for 2-3 years, and got out just as I told when the truth hit them. In the end, I outlived all of them there.
China is a communist regime, though a very well doing for some years.
I see comment chains touching on this topic in nearly every post even tangentially related to China, and it's rarely ever that the main issue is mentioned. So I'll write this for the benefit of any passing reader with similar thoughts.
In a country of 1.x billions, it shouldn't be surprising that there would be at least a few tens of millions of hardcore, actual socialists, who genuinely believe in some distant future communist utopia.
Even if the entire rest of the population were the most perfect paragons of virtue imaginable, it's still likely going to be the hardcore folks willing to fight to the death en bloc that end up with the actual power. That's just how the cookie crumbles in every country.
Whether it's ultra-Maoists in China, or ultra-Hindus in India, or ultra-muslims in Islamic countries, ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, etc..
The real question is whether or not the bulk of the hardcore group can be enticed with enough potential rewards to moderate their views.
Wealth works if there's a lot to go around, like in the U.S., EU, etc., but otherwise the hardcore group needs to be paid in some form of power, geopolitical, cultural, etc.
> My view from the outside was that it's really similar to climbing the ladder in a corporation, mouth all the platitudes but only suckers believe them.
Humans are not perfect deceivers, even the average Joe can usually tell if someone's fishy within a 10 minute face-to-face conversation.
There do exist really expert and cunning deceivers, but the folks higher up in the hierarchy will also commensurately be better equipped to see through it.
So for a large enough hierarchy, the practical impossibility of duping so many means that only genuine believers end up near the top.
You don't even need to go Beijing to see this dynamic play out, there's a company in Cupertino where many folks allege this is the case (though to be fair some allege the non-believers are also moving up the ladder).
The fallacy of "reformed communism" hopers is that with development came not their hoped reform, but even stronger regime, and harder life.
Way more, many times more rich Chinese are fleeing China now, when it reached some level of wealth, and industrialisation, than back 10-15 years ago, when China was incomparably poorer, and everyday life was incomparably harder.
All of that was easily predictable. You have a terrible regime, you give it money, and power. It only becomes stronger, and more terrible, not less.
