
China offers 10-year visas to 'high end talent' - dberhane
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42575436
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jimnotgym
> Visa holders will be allowed to remain in the country for up to 180 days at
> a time

So Nobel prize winning academics can _visit_ China. I'm rather less excited by
that than when I read the headline

~~~
ghostcluster
Anyone living in the West who looks down on certain US politicians for their
anti-immigrant sentiments but is fine with China's state enforced ethnic
nationalism might want to stop and think deeply as to why.

It's essentially impossible for a Westerner to gain anything more than a
temporary visa, even if they marry a Chinese citizen.

~~~
maxerickson
Do you think _living in the West...is fine with China 's state enforced ethnic
nationalism_ is a big group of people?

~~~
mc32
I'll just point you to the Assange phenomenon. When Assange was an agent
(provided a platform) bringing light to the consequences of W's and Obama's
wars in the middle east, he was a hero.

Then, one day he also became conduit to information which lead to the
political death of an anointed successor to the Obama presidency and he became
a traitor, a misogynist, an enemy most foul -a Russian agent, in their eyes.

So, yeah. Many people like China when it's expedient, and will forgive those
little sins. You know balance against hegemony, economic rival, bearers of
Mao's torch, the divinity of marginalized peasants who stick it to urban
elites, etc.

~~~
maxerickson
I don't really get your example. There were plenty of people that were
critical of Assange well before 2016 and plenty of people that continue to
praise him today.

So I have trouble with Julian->Large numbers of China apologists, it just
isn't very sound logic.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There were plenty of people that were critical of Assange well before 2016
> and plenty of people that continue to praise him today.

A lot for the people that continue to praise him today are people that were
critical of him before 2016 (and vice versa.)

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inDigiNeous
Hearing all the negative stuff about China recently, like the online
censorship, dictatorship, stories about people not caring about human life,
like hearing it's common that if you accidentally drive over people, many will
backup to finish the job so they wont' have to pay the insurance for rest of
the life and seeings stories like babies on the streets and nobody caring, why
would anyone want to work in China?

Are these stories true, or just negative propaganda to threaten the great
republic of China ? Anybody care to share experiences living there ?

~~~
strebler
I've lived and done a fair amount of business there. The car thing is true. I
would say people there care a lot more about their immediate network of
friends / family and a lot less about anyone else. It's very safe to live
there, but at the same time everyone's trying to take advantage of everyone
else - literal and metaphorical pickpockets are everywhere.

The inherent lack of trust makes workplace environments really difficult.
Everyone's looking out for number one (themselves), to the point of damaging
their own company for personal gain. You have no clue how hard it is to build
a software dev team when ANY of the developers will happily copy the source
code they have access to onto a thumbdrive and sell it to your top competitor
for a modest payday. I highly respect anyone who builds a software team
successfully in China, such a headache.

Frankly, the internet censorship was the deal breaker for me. No Google,
gmail, facebook, twitter, news, etc, is just too much to bear.

But the food was really good, good weather and foreigners are treated like
minor celebrities (everyone is really really friendly), so we don't experience
real China like everyone else.

~~~
anthonyleecook
yup, I've heard many stories of expats turning around and leave the second
they found the internet frustrating, which is strange that they didn't do
their homework before coming.

Also, the food I found ok; lack of variety (hot pot, shaokao, dumpling,
repeat), and no good international cuisines. You can also get safer Chinese
food in Taiwan or Los Angeles. As for weather, it's usually made worse by
pollution. And recently, foreigners have been treated with disdain by locals
because of nationalism.

~~~
strebler
The internet was actually fine for a long time (just proxy over SSH for
everything). But they randomly "turn up the dials" on the firewall to block
SSH and so you'll get intermittent outages. It's gotten progressively worse.
We had a bunch of servers outside of China and I would need to basically round
robin them to keep online.

I was actually somehow impressed by how sophisticated the firewall became over
time from a pure technology point of view. Super annoying though.

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seanmcdirmid
I’m not sure what the big deal is here, they have offered something like this
for awhile, and in my experience, is nearly impossible to obtain unless you’ve
won a Nobel (and not the peace kind). Most of us were just on work visas that
were renewed yearly, the lucky ones got two year visas. Someday that might
change, but I’m not sure how it would make things much better.

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provost
Looked into the taxes: for regular employees there are 7 brackets. Anything
over 80,000RMB (12320 US Dollar) is taxed at 45%. Though it looks like if your
income is derived by a company outside China, and you live there for >=1 and
<= 5 years, you are exempted from taxes. Freelancers have 3 levels (between
20% to 40%).

[1] [https://www.ecovis.com/focus-china/individual-income-tax-
iit...](https://www.ecovis.com/focus-china/individual-income-tax-iit-china-
ground-rules/)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Chinese taxes are a bit higher than the states, but note that is an all
inclusive rate (federal, local). There are also many ways to get some income
tax free for foreigners via special exemption (say around 10%) so it is only a
bit more than USA taxes in the end (I filed the foreign tax credit form way
too many times so have done the math a lot).

~~~
lowpro
This is actually lower than the US in a few places, including California where
the top bracket including local, state, and federal taxes can go up to 52%. On
mobile so don't have a reference on me.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Sure, though coming from Washington state that wasn’t much solace. Even
without state taxes, it some how worked out that I was fairly even with my USA
federal tax liability, probably because the deductions are different in china.

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pimmen
I feel bad about paying taxes to a one party dictatorship. If you qualify for
this visa you have lots of opportunities in life to change stuff for the
better and turning this visa down is one of them.

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ChrisBland
I think I'll pass, too many restrictions and gotchas. This is why we left Hong
Kong after the handoff in 96.

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thisisit
How does this work along with their plan to limit city population?

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/26/chinas-
shangha...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/26/chinas-shanghai-
sets-population-25-million--big-city-disease)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
There are so few foreigners in China relative to locals that they barely budge
any population statistics.

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nolo
I received a 10 year visa and would certainly not call myself Nobel level.
Fairly straightforward process, but you do need to provide quite a few
personal details

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jdlyga
I have a 10 year visa to China from the United States. It's just a tourist
visa though. I think it's a special agreement between the two countries.

~~~
adamson
You can only stay for ninety days at a time on a tourist visa (the point of
which is to prevent you from taking a job and sticking around)

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znpy
Ten-year-visa really sounds like "come and do your things, but then go away,
we don't really want you"

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jijji
What they don't tell you is that two of those ten years will be spent in a
secret gulag for writing a wechat private message to your friend about how you
dont like the great firewall of china. Thanks, but I'll pass.

~~~
BoorishBears
You could also just... not send WeChat private messages to your friend about
how you don't like the great firewall of China.

I mean, I don't support the Firewall in the slightest, but I think the kind
person who wants to send messages like that is exactly who they want to keep
out by keeping brutal punishments for dissident behavior.

I've always felt if you go to a country you should respect it's laws, and if
you feel you'll be unable to respect it's laws due to moral conflict you
shouldn't go to the country.

And it's not like you should want to benefit from a country (or let a country
benefit from you!) that has laws you're so opposed to that you'd be willing to
risk severe punishment to comment on them...

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mtgx
Also 10 years prison for anyone that criticizes the government.

Decisions, decisions.

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TokyoKid
It is tempting.

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robk
Uk us a better visa imo

