
China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-13/why-china-can-t-lure-tech-talent
======
blacktulip
As a Chinese I would say that the points in this article, though true, are not
among the driving reasons.

If you ask me, I would present this list:

1\. Practically, there are only 4-5 cities suitable for 'tech talents' in
China. The properties prices in these cities are comparable to the ones in NY
and SF while the salary isn't. BTW: you have very little chance to be able to
get married without a property under your name in China. This isn't a 'tech
talents' specific issue but 'tech talents' have more chances to emigrate.

2\. There is no union nor labour law in China (well technically they both
exist but..). So labour abusing is normal. Many tech workers are 'voluntarily'
working 996 (which mean 9am-9pm, 6 days a week) on a 955 pay slip.

3\. Chinese society is relation-oriented. Tech workers hate that. For example
often the promotion goes to the guy who has the closest relationship to the
manager.

4\. Primary/secondary education in China is very, very cruel. Many people
don't want their children go through it if possible.

5\. Pollutions etc.

~~~
ar15saveslives
> Primary/secondary education in China is very, very cruel

Could you elaborate? Based upon what I see here in Canada, chinese immigrants
maniacally push their children to all functions that can be found around. And
it's considered good when there're many chinese children in your kid's class.

~~~
blacktulip
It would be a book. There are of course extreme workloads from both the
schools and the parents. But to me there is something worse - the public
shaming culture.

I live in the UK now. Something very odd to me at the beginning is that I can
never know how good my kids are doing compare to their classmates. The
teachers would politely refuse to answer such questions. And the 'parents
meeting' is private to one pupil's parent(s) and the teacher.

In China things do not work this way. Every test - and there are a lot of them
- is publicly ranked. There will be a very large poster at the back of the
classroom with the ranking on it. The parents' meeting is a meeting for all
parents of that class together. A teacher will read the ranking aloud on the
stage to all parents. The top pupils will be invited onto the stage and
receive praise, which is alright. But the bottom pupils will also be invited
onto the stage and receive criticism - in front of all peers and their
parents. The idea here is to motivate them work harder to avoid the shaming -
or to motivate their parents to push them harder to avoid the shaming. It may
work for some. But I see more harm done than good here.

~~~
_audakel
> cruel

def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about
it.

Shaming is undesirable, but I wouldn't say publicly knowing how you rank
compared to others would constitute "cruel". Its really how the world works -
in sports you see exact stats of how your do, publicly traded companies/CEOs
are meticulously analysed publicly on how they perform etc. etc.

There does need to be a balance btwn hypercompetiton, and "everyone gets a
trophy" mentality. I feel like the US has swung far to one side and china the
other. Best would be some where in the middle. Maybe have a live list of the
top 10-15% of student scores.

I am a parent, and don't want to hurt my daughter, but at the same time a
little pain and suffering makes you stronger.

~~~
blacktulip
I agree with you here. I used the word cruel since I couldn't find a better
word - as a none native speaker my vocabulary is limited :( .

I have the same feelings about the UK public education. Competition is
basically non-existence. I wonder why people can't settle in a middle ground.

~~~
Qantourisc
> def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about
> it. willfully: check; suffering: check (the shaming); no concern: check.
> Actor: state/school as a whole. So I think it applies.

~~~
_audakel
I think this is sum of the parts different than the whole.

I was just pointing out that cruel has a very negative connotation ie -
inhuman, barbaric, sadistic, evil, abominable etc. Applying it in the previous
use case seemed excessive and implied a more radical tone than I believe the
author (as he mentioned) wanted.

------
Hasknewbie
The article is avoiding the elephant in the room: the lack of openness and
information access is merely a consequence of having an illegitimate regime
where everything is ruled by coercion, corruption, and political connections.

While you're there, if some company dumps chemicals in your backyard, somebody
with a badge hounds you, or your employer refuses to pay you, good luck
getting your day in court. They'd be doing this knowing they have rank and/or
connections and you don't. There is no real rule of law in China. That makes
it hard to be an attractive destination, regardless of how "hot" the local IT
sector wants to look to the rest of the world.

Especially these days, where a quiet but massive purge is under way, and the
regime's current propaganda is to push a heavily racialist/manifest-destiny
style narrative, as a "welcomed immigrant" not having Youtube access would be
the least of your worries.

~~~
__derek__
What's striking about this description is that a number of would-be Western
leaders seem to be looking at the situation and saying, "Wow, that looks
great. I want my own."

~~~
vtange
But can you blame them? For years China's mantra to the West was, "Look at how
great our economy's doing! Look at how divided and problematic democracies can
be, they are not even that much better than China on human rights! The 21st
century is not for idealistic democracies but for China."

~~~
yvsong
I wonder how many have studied Herr Führer's record on German economy. The 2
major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and communism.

~~~
kmicklas
> The 2 major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and
> communism.

That's a bit misleading cause fascism is just inherently bad while communism
has had some implementation problems.

~~~
woodandsteel
I really disagree with you. We have had a couple of dozen communist states,
and every one of them has turned out bad. That's because communism is
basically an unworkable system. See, for instance, Hayek's argument on
information and economic decision-making.

In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has contradictions
that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the workers, but that
has never happened. Instead communism has always been installed through
violence on the part of a small group or imposed from without, and usually in
states that were not economically advanced.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I really disagree with you. We have had a couple of dozen communist states,
> and every one of them has turned out bad. That's because communism is
> basically an unworkable system.

All of those have been Leninism or its descendants, which break strongly from
Marxism. Starting with the required starting conditions.

> In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has
> contradictions that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the
> workers, but that has never happened.

It's happened in basically all of the countries that were capitalist at the
time, where capitalism (that is, the 19th century system that Marx was
pointing to) has been overthrown (largely, through democratic means) due to
opposition from the working class and replaced with the modern mixed economy
which retains some of the basic structures of capitalism, but many features of
socialism applied to directly to mitigate the effects of capitalism which can
critics from the time the system was named have targeted. (Many of those
sytems even call themselves socialist, and the rest of them are labelled that
way by their capitalist critics.)

~~~
clock_tower
This is going to sound like concern-trolling, but I'd thought that Marx was
afraid of the possibility of the Social Democrats winning (i.e., a modern
mixed economy forming) -- since this would leave the current holders of
property-qua-power still possessing it, while making the workers comfortable
enough to no longer desire revolt. But my memory here's faulty, and I suspect
it might have been Lenin who was hostile to the Social Democrats -- although
Lenin has never struck me as a particularly subtle thinker, to say the least.
Did the Social Democrats even exist as a faction in Marx's time...?

(As for the rest: let's hope that the term "modern mixed economy" continues to
spread. Calling the postwar Western system "capitalism" has led to a lot of
confusion.)

~~~
woodandsteel
From what I understand, Marx was opposed to reforming capitalism, since he
thought it could steer the working class, at least temporarily, from the total
revolution he was pushing.

I have read that Social Democracy arose in part from the failure of the
working class to revolt and overthrow capitalism. In the communist movement at
the end of the 19th century there were two different responses. One, lead by
Eduard Bernstein, decided instead to turn to electoral politics and try to
move the economy to socialism in gradual steps, and so they joined the other
groups that had formed the Socialist Democratic movement.

The other group, lead by Lenin, decided to change the party into an elite
group that would lead the working classes to revolution, and this lead to the
communism movement as we know it and all the totalitarian states it produced.

------
laurent123456
The article doesn't mention that but another possible factor is that life is
not _that_ great over there either. If you are not Chinese, you'll always be a
foreigner there, even if you spend ten years in the same city, so that makes
it difficult to integrate. You'll also have to deal with the Chinese
administration for the visa, residence permit, etc. which is quite a pain.
It's definitely a great place to visit or even to spend a few years, but it's
not that welcoming if you want to live there more permanently.

~~~
officialjunk
A minority in the US could make that same exact argument...

~~~
dethswatch
> you'll always be a foreigner there

This isn't true in the US, if you learn the language.

~~~
evidencepi
language != culture

~~~
st3v3r
No, but communication plays a huge deal in being able to absorb the culture,
as well as share your own.

~~~
samsonradu
Also the american culture is very wide spread through media. Watching
Hollywood, music, sitcoms, talk shows, stand ups etc. ever since I was 10 yo
and able to understand english definitely helps absorbing the culture even
from eastern Europe as myself. Visited the US for 2 weeks and really felt as
if I was no stranger at all.

------
inputcoffee
I believe the author should have explored another reason: English.

One of the legacies of the British Empire is that a lot of the educated people
in the world use English. Even in Europe, it is the lingua franca for business
and academia. (In mighty Germany, the top institutions publish in English).

I think the applications and work would have to be done in English for China
to effectively attract global talent.

~~~
raverbashing
Correct

The problem would be much smaller if they used a non-tonal language with a
manageable alphabet or abjad (like Cyrillic or Arabic)

~~~
Symmetry
Is learning tones much harder than learning all the weird vowel and consonant
sounds that English has? I'd always though of English and China as examples of
hard languages in terms of sounds and languages like Spanish and Japanese as
easy in terms of sounds.

~~~
huherto
> I'd always though of English and China as examples of hard languages in
> terms of sounds

Glad you mention this. I don't think most native English speakers are aware
how complex English phonetics are. There are subtleties that only native
speakers can distinguish. That is why many not-native speakers mispronounce
some sounds. It is not that we are dummy. Our brain is just unable to hear
(and produce) the exact sound.

~~~
3pt14159
English is a strange language, but I wouldn't say especially difficult.
Chinese is much harder to learn because it's so inconsistent between what
you're supposed to say and the way people actually talk. In addition to using
tones that are very unfamiliar and then you also need to learn the written
language which is very difficult and requires a Chinese-Chinese dictionary for
strange words like manticore and sometimes you can't even find them.

I'd put English at around Russian difficulty, hard, but easy to get going.
English also has the advantage of having a simple character set (less letters
than Russian, French, etc) and English also has a ton of cultural artefacts
(songs, movies, etc) to sink your teeth into.

My problem with Russian (unlike say, French, which I've also studied) is that
I can't even find music to listen to that's anywhere close in production value
to English and there are a couple of good movies (Leviathan, for example) but
you can only watch them so many times. I don't know of a single Russian TV
show that is anywhere close to HBO or Netflix quality. I'd love a
recommendation though if someone here knows of one.

~~~
solidsnack9000
English does have a great many more sounds than Chinese, and very complicated
grammar relative to any Asian language. (The tones make up, to some degree,
for the paucity of sounds in Chinese.)

A native English speaker, I have always been perplexed by the tendency of
foreigners to use "the" incorrectly. A space ship orbits "the Earth" but not
"the Mars", for example. But then I tried to find a guide to using "the"...it
is one of our most mysterious words.

~~~
3pt14159
It has more vowels (and more frequent consonants), but _tone_ doesn't change
the word in English. It can change the meaning (denote sarcasm, sadness, or
questioning) but using a higher or lower pitch doesn't change the way you'd
write out the word. Remembering tones is like adding imaginary numbers to your
math, it's something you never thought about that you need to now account for
everywhere. Learning new individual sounds is hard (and I have to do it with
Russian) but I don't think it's as hard as the tone business in Chinese.

As for filler words in English: I totally agree it's madness. The word "set"
has like 20 definitions. But you can mess them up and people will still
understand you. "I break into car" (the way a Russian learning English would
say it) vs "I'll break into the car" are both understood the same; whereas in
Chinese if I mess up a (to my ears minor) tone, the information is completely
lost.

~~~
solidsnack9000
Tonality and use of filler words are not really relatable.

Mistaken tonality is more like saying "tree" instead of "three".

Tonality is another feature of a speech sound like aspiration or voicing.
Although it is not easy for English speakers, there no reason in principle to
single it out as especially difficult.

------
billconan
this is very much true.

Outside censorship, the working culture of China is also quite different. It's
quite common to do overtime in China. work-life balance is less respected.
People accept it as the normal and are proud of it.

My friend worked for an accounting company. In busy season, she had to work
till 5a.m. in the morning of the next day and present her report to her
supervisor at 8 a.m.

she took her toothbrush, pajamas, sleep bag to the company because it doesn't
make sense to go home at 5 a.m. and back at 8 a.m. as commute takes long time
too.

There is another friend working for Alibaba. Once they wanted to release a
messenger app to catch up wechat. The entire team was shipped to a different
city during Chinese new year, they are disallowed from leaving until the
product is shipped.

I also went to a talk by Xiaomi at standford, they were very proud of having
official 6 day work week.

~~~
otoburb
Investment banking/PE, management consulting, and especially US startup
culture all seem to tout similar hours during busy seasons or impending
product launches (similar to programming death marches).

Although more extreme, is this really much different from Google, Facebook,
Apple or other SV/NY firms offering "perks" designed to make your extended
office existence more tolerable?

~~~
st3v3r
YES!

I've never heard of one of those shipping a whole team off, during the
holidays, and telling them they can't leave until a stupid fucking app is
done. Read that again. It was not a vital piece of infrastructure, or an
important breakthrough for science. It was a stupid fucking chat app. For
that, these people were held and denied the ability to celebrate a holiday.

------
appleiigs
The bankers that I've talked won't go (back) to China because of the
pollution, specifically the smog. They refuse to put their children in that
environment.

Cultural, social, language, and food differences are all superficial reasons
not to go to, or stay, in China. They can be dealt with an open, understanding
mind. However, the salary or career benefits don't make up for it when your
children and spouse are breathing that air.

~~~
tannhauser23
Totally this. I have a friend who's running his company's Shanghai operations.
They installed four air purifiers in their home just to keep the smog out -
and Shanghai is a relatively clean air city! They have to check the smog
report every morning to see if it's okay to take their kid outside. I would
never raise a family in that environment.

~~~
zookeepa
Always makes me angry seeing foreigners growing up their children here in
shanghai..

------
hosh
There are some good points in that article, but the narrative doesn't include
the Chinese view of this. China doesn't necessarily have to lure non-Chinese.
They can do well welcoming back the Chinese who came to America to earn a
Ph.D., only to find they don't get the respect or the better life they
expected.

I'm not sure why the Bloomberg article started from quoting a Chinese person
about immigration and then shift into talking as if China is going to recruit
non-Chinese. Maybe it was taken out of context, maybe it doesn't fit the
narrative the author wants to convey.

My family came from Taiwan, and my father and my mother earned their Ph.Ds in
the 90s. My father was one of the top scorers on the Taiwanese National Exams.
Yet here in America, the only people who respect that are other Taiwanese (and
other Chinese if both groups remembered this used to all be one culture). My
grandparents are proud of my father; they were farmers. Growing up, there was
always an anxiety about having to leave the US because the student visa is up.
You can't work in the US with a student visa. Things only got better when US-
based company owned by Taiwanese offered to hire him and pay for getting him a
permanent residency. That gave him the negotiating leverage to get help with
that in his postdoc position. Even so, he stayed as a post-doc for a long time
(which, I get that right now, that's the way it is for a lot of academics,
immigrants or otherwise), before becoming a professor for a short time. He was
never on the tenure track.

People came here because they didn't want to be back in their birth country. I
can tell you, if he had been offered a position in Taiwan with a research
budget, that would have very tempting.

So when the Bloomberg author was quoting the Chinese guy about being able to
recruit more people, having this background, I know the Chinese guy is likely
talking about being able to recruit Chinese ex-pats who earned advanced
degrees in American universities, and not feeling welcomed here.

------
erics32
One cultural factor is the fact that developers have a low social standing in
China (sometimes referred to as 马工). This leads to low pay, reduced dating
pool, lack of respect from people you meet etc.

~~~
Helmet
Can you comment on why this is? Speaking broadly, software development tends
to attract intelligent, hardworking, and educated people - not always
obviously, but I think more so than a most other "office" jobs. What is
contributing to the low social standing?

~~~
mattmcknight
If you aren't in charge of others, you are at the bottom of a hierarchy of
people.

~~~
webmaven
There is an alternate measure, less commonly found but certainly existing in
the mainstream: Rather than how _many_ people are _below_ you, how _few_
people are there _above_ you (in a large organization).

By that measure, the senior developer on a 'special projects' team reporting
directly to a CxO could be quite high status. Similarly, the US National
Security Advisor only has a small staff reporting to them, but their influence
on US policy is as great or greater than the Secretary of Defense and/or
Secretary of State.

------
basseq
TLDR: Tech success is driven by openness of ideas and people, and China's
control and oversight of the internet and other data stifles the ability of
companies to execute quickly or with confidence (e.g., security, IP).

~~~
LoSboccacc
The looming cloud of deadly pollution doesn't help attract talent either.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Or the 12-hour a day, 6 days a week work schedule.

------
LAMike
IP isn't enforced there, technology companies are comprimised from the start,
"failure" isn't seen as a stepping stone to success, basic personal freedoms
for its citizens don't exist.

Hm, wonder why smart people with plenty of options wouldn't want to live under
a totalitarian government like that.

~~~
gcb0
no startups have actual enforceable patents in the usa too. it's not like they
have a research department or a huge legal fund. they may get the occasional
design or method patent that means nothing in the real world. so i don't thin
the China ip thing means anything for startups, other than know you won't be
the target of a troll right off the bat.

~~~
LAMike
At least there is precedent of making big companies pay a licensing fee for
"borrowing" IP from a startup in the US.

------
zpallin
I agree with the article. I've spent a little bit of time in China, and I find
it enjoyable despite its obvious detractors. In many ways, the Chinese
lifestyle is refreshing to someone who has spent their life in California.

The problem is going to be with the Government being so hostile to open
information. That and the salaries are not going to be as competitive. And I
predict Trump will do little to shake the Californian stronghold of
technology.

~~~
zhemao
> In many ways, the Chinese lifestyle is refreshing to someone who has spent
> their life in California.

Could you expand on that? I was born in China, but grew up in the US and
currently live in California. I can't think of many ways in which China is
better and plenty of ways in which it's worse. My mother (who obviously has a
closer connection to the country) tells me she strongly prefers life in the
US.

~~~
zpallin
Californian culture can be stifling at times at how "laid back" it is. There
is a culture of lethargy and apathy here that can leave people wanting more,
which is why so much talent that grows up here ends up moving to far more
rigid cities and cultures like in New York. The rigidity of Chinese cities
coupled with their liveliness makes for a fantastic escape from California.

That and infrastructure here is absolutely frustrating. Everything in
California was structured around car culture. While much of China is now the
same way, there is still plenty of excellent public infrastructure as well.
Some might argue it's worse than the US, and I can definitely see how the
large crowds in subways, the constant construction, and the some of the
cheaper buildings are ugly and poorly designed... but California's ultra-
expensive, 20 year major projects consistently are less effective in sheer
results than China's quick-and-dirty development.

And lastly, I think it needs to be said that China as a culture, nation, and
civilization is ancient! Its deep roots and environment create such a
fascinating mix of old and new. Here in California, we paved over our past
forcefully, and what past there is left to observe is often depressing at the
core; nothing to be proud of.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the countryside. California is beautiful, but
China is so entirely different geographically that just being there feels so
shockingly wonderful.

Don't get me wrong. I love California at the end of the day and would find it
hard to ever leave, but I'm simply explaining my statement. :)

~~~
zhemao
Makes sense, and I guess I agree with quite a few of your points. I actually
moved from New York City, where I did my undergrad, so I totally feel you on
the horrible public transportation infrastructure. But I don't find California
to be less lively. Granted, I live in Berkeley, so it's more urban than, say
South Bay or the LA suburbs. I would consider moving back to NYC if the
weather wasn't much worse and if there were actually jobs in my field
(Electrical Engineering).

~~~
zpallin
Fair enough. Berkeley and Oakland are pretty cool communities to live in and
are very active.

------
divbit
I just spent a month living there, and while I enjoy the country(food in
particular is amazing), internet speed is terrible, and basic developer needs
like being able to download a docker image, is like an overnight download (
because the internet will throttle down to low kb/s on such a download). Doing
full time startup work from there would require working on something fairly
lightweight I think.

~~~
stevesun21
I think you used the Internet provider from a different one, which is cheapist
one -- whole community share one bandwidth.

My friends in China all use at least 30Mbits connection, now there is a
promotion for 100MB for the same price.

~~~
divbit
It's likely that I wasn't on an optimal connection - but I also tried coffee
shops, various different hotels, and several different vpn / proxy strategies
and all were like this (once or twice a proxy configuration would get me about
the speed you are saying for a day, but then would be not working the next
day), so whatever the optimal connection is, it wasn't easy to find.

~~~
stevesun21
I don't know where you lived, normall, in China, you can use Interenet from
Starbucks or any chain coffee stores, they are all have good Internet speed.
And if you try to access Google or Youtube, FB etc, you can try ShadowSocks
instead VPN.

For the slow speed between US and China, Jap (and other asian countries), I
think that's the nature issue for oversea Internet connection. You can use
this website ([http://ping.chinaz.com/](http://ping.chinaz.com/), you may need
google translator) to test how speed looks like as you connect to other
country from China.

~~~
divbit
(Shijiazhuang 3 weeks and Hainan 2 weeks) I did occasionally get good speed (I
tried starbucks twice and one day it was decent, the other day was quite
slow). There was a particular set of docker images that I had to repeatedly
download that I found very painful to deal with, and eventually just decided
to work on something else- I did in fact end up using shadowsocks, but on one
day I set it up with a server in singapore it was reasonable (like 200-300
Kb/s), the next day it was 7Kb/s, so I'm not sure what happened. It might just
be that I had a string of bad luck with connections. I guess if you live there
it seems reasonable that you could buy a private faster internet connection /
maybe find a reliable starbucks coffee shop. I am completely willing to accept
that I might just have run into a set of bad connections and it was luck.

~~~
caoyangs
I heard rumors (just rumors) that Internet providers in China limit your
connection speed to servers outside China unless you upgrade your service and
pay more.

------
throw12313221
For people from Russia or other countries China could be attractive option.
Take-home money can be good, especially with low taxation. US is not really a
competition, it is relatively unfriendly to foreigners, very hard to move
there.

But I think China wants to mainly increase talent retention. There are many
Chinese who stay in US after finishing their studies there. China wants those
educated people back.

~~~
SEJeff
I guess it depends on your idea of "unfriendly to foreigners". If you're
referring to countries where the US has icy relations with, getting a visa
might be problematic, otherwise, I think your experience is a bit off.

As a native born American, I see a surprising amount of small business owners
who are successful are not from America. Even in the small town
(Nicholasville, KY population ~20,000) I'm from, most of the convenience
stores and gas stations are owned by a single middle eastern family that is
super friendly to everyone. I went to school with Charlie, one of their sons,
who was the first to be born and raised in the US. I see so many Americans who
were raised in relative ease and comfort simply being out hustled by
immigrants and "foreigners" who have more drive.

You know what, that is great! The healthy mix of diversity is what makes
America (already) great. If a family legally comes from Mexico and wants to
hustle their way into success, I'm all for it. Immigration is not a bad thing.

~~~
cylinder
No offense but I don't think you really have a grasp of the US immigration
system. It's very difficult to immigrate or even get a temporary work visa.
It's easier if you are the relative of a US citizen, but even then if you are
mainland Chinese born or Indian you have to wait in a long queue unless you
are the spouse of a US citizen.

~~~
user5994461
Very difficult is an understatement. It's basically close to impossible to
work in the US for a EU or russian citizen.

Source: Friends of me who want to move to the USA. I'm talking people with
rare qualifications with a company ready to take them at $200k base salary and
the layers to do all the paperwork for the H1B. They just can't get a fu-----
VISA.

~~~
cylinder
Yes, even in a situation like that, it still comes down to, literally, a
lottery (one with zero transparency). Compare with the independent skilled
migration systems of Australia, Canada and NZ.

------
eva1984
This article is just typical Western nonsensical way of looking at China that
let ideology fool the you and your audience.

If you look at China in a realistic way, its pro/cons are very obvious:

Pro:

1\. Chinese market is huge

Cons:

1\. This market is very competitive. Local giants are not far from their US
counterparts, and they learn(copy) quickly.

2\. Pays are high comparing to other jobs in China, but not living up to US
level(but on par with Europe and Japan).

3\. Long hours and no play.

4\. Air pollution.

5\. Language barrier for Westerners. You cannot go too far if you don't
understand Chinese.

6\. Foreigners, even if they want to, have nearly zero chance to be a
permanent resident. (Extremely anti-immigrant policy, but the reason is
actually consistent. CCP think China is too crowded, so they don't need extra
people, they don't even let its own citizens to have more than 2 kids! :P)

How hard is that to figure this out? However, this article is just making
everything looks like it is about their cherished liberal ideology. No, if
China has money to dig, people will go. But it is not for foreigners, and
probably not worthy it.

------
unsignedint
I don't think it's just information access issue that is issue. The way I see
is that there are many people considering working and living in China as bit
of risk considering government's decisions and policy can change fairly
arbitrarily, which of course the one of prominently seen effect of that is
change in government firewall blacklists.

------
saycheese
Something ironic about an "open" culture being critical of a "closed" culture.

Reality is the American's tech cultural is at its core a very closed
community. Even within America, trying to create a startup outside of the Bay
Area, which is insanely expensive area to do business, will require
exponentially more effort, luck, etc.

~~~
sethammons
I'd be interested in seeing data on successful start ups vs location.

~~~
ComteDeLaFere
_The Effect of Location on a Startup 's Likelihood of Success_

[https://codingvc.com/the-effect-of-location-on-a-startups-
li...](https://codingvc.com/the-effect-of-location-on-a-startups-likelihood-
of-success)

~~~
sethammons
Neat, thank you! The graphs use this nebulous "signal" metric. It is hard to
tell if that includes start up valuation and/or exits, which I posit are more
important than some of the markers they mentioned like advisor or investor
popularity. Neat data point though.

------
sauronlord
Pay better be good to reduce your life expectancy by a few years due to
pollution. Maybe 500k/year would be enough

------
bbbuerty
As an American-born Chinese, the main reason my wife and I chose to move to
China and raise our kids there is to ensure their self-esteem.

Perhaps it's different for West Coast Asians, but when I grew up in in the
States, I went through a period of self-loathing due to my race. With no AA
role models, it took a really long time for me to come to terms with who I am.

Add to that the constantly accepted jokes about Asians, and it really caused
an inferiority complex growing up. Something that I don't see in native
Asians/Chinese.

So when a Chinese company started to recruit me, I jumped at the chance.

Perhaps because I'm Chinese, already married, and I speak Mandarin, the only
issue for me in that list is the pollution factor. Everything else isn't that
big of a deal.

I also disagree with the Chinese tech industry is any more relation-oriented
than the US tech industry. Just like how Asians can beat the "bamboo ceiling"
by using soft skills and mingling with the executives, foreigners can as well
in China.

I would also add that for hardware tech talent, there really is no better
place than China. People lament the IP issue, but for a hardware startup, this
openness is a blessing.

[http://gizmodo.com/why-its-easier-to-innovate-in-china-
than-...](http://gizmodo.com/why-its-easier-to-innovate-in-china-than-in-the-
united-1709911838)

------
paradite
Ironically I just saw this:

[https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1213277725394799](https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1213277725394799)

Also, I will state without proof that the Chinese government are more
knowledgeable in stimulating technical innovations than your average Bloomberg
columnist.

------
homakov
Food? I could put up with everything in China, even the Great Firewall, but
food, except xiao long bao, is really no go.

~~~
magic_beans
How can you even say that?

~~~
virmundi
Personal issue, Gutter Oil. That is a non-starter for me.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil)

~~~
bas
This is real? Terrifying.

~~~
virmundi
There's documentaries and other documentations. The one I saw showed a husband
and wife fishing out of the sewer near a hotel. They take the gunk, boil it
and then fry their street foods. Can't go there.

~~~
magic_beans
There are many other places to eat in China than a street cart.

------
Animats
Well, the US lost the top guy in machine learning, Andrew Ng. In the US, he
was a professor at Stanford, not even the head of the department, with a few
grad students. Now he's Chief Scientist and VP at Baidu.

~~~
zhemao
> Now he's Chief Scientist and VP at Baidu

He's Chief Scientist at Baidu Research, which is based in Sunnyvale. So he's
not really "lost" to the US, just lost to Stanford (and, I guess, to Google,
since he was working with them before).

------
mahyarm
From what I hear, working in government has relatively decent pay, very good
compensation at higher levels and a lot of holidays.

Like government work in the USA, but much higher pay and prestige.

------
anjc
Is it possible in any way to work in tech in China without speaking their
language? Do any MNCs operate entirely in English there?

------
finid
While this article is about China, Russian universities are going all out for
foreign students, mostly for the revenue.

Many of those students will likely hang around. And Russia has a green card
system. Not sure how it works, but it's available.

rbth.com/business/2016/12/12/how-russian-universities-are-profiting-from-
foreign-students_655731

------
ommunist
Well, the only way for China is to create tech incubators in the West with
their investment arm, and build additional facility in Shanghai to interface
English outcome to Chinese lore. I think they are effectively doing that.
Volvo, Opera Software are recent examples.

------
virmundi
Is China really trying? I know they had some initiatives to get Americans with
the Trump election. In general, I don't think it's an actual goal for them.
They have a large pool of talent. They aren't needing to go outside yet.

------
yadongwen
I agree with many of your points, but still China is the second largest
country in information technology, better than EU and Japan. How do you
explain this? Any thoughts?

------
the_duke
Question I have wondered about from time to time:

does China have it's own Github "clone"?

~~~
lsjdfkljdfwkwdf
[https://git.oschina.net/](https://git.oschina.net/)
[https://coding.net/](https://coding.net/)
[http://code.csdn.net/](http://code.csdn.net/)

These are more towards team collaboration. imo China doesn't have the
ecosystem for open source. Too many people just take the code, rebrand and
market it as their own product...

~~~
krona
I've seen this recently with deep-learning libraries on Github (when using the
search); people (located in China, according to their profile) copying other
peoples' repositories (e.g. TensorFlow), changing the title, description and
readme, and then trying to pass it off as their own by rewriting the revision
history.

It's actually becoming an issue when using the search functionality.

------
cnxhk
I have to say that most problem is not true. Most Chinese don't prefer youtube
and even for the university student knows how to pass the block by vpn and
other softwares. Also in some university Google is not blocked.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
You're thinking of it as a technical problem, but government controlled media
and censorship is a social problem.

------
known
Thinking out of the box is prohibited in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism)
regime

------
wnevets
6\. Communist Government, a large number of US tech talent skews libertarian

~~~
frozenport
Or skew away from totalitarian

~~~
SerLava
Yeah you don't exactly have to be Ron Paul to have a problem with the
communist party of China.

------
ommunist
You should educate that hierarchy by trolling them with your mighty flock of
rabid robots.

~~~
dang
Hey. We have a soft spot for former geodesists and forestry specialists
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9910140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9910140)),
but we need you to stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to
Hacker News.

Even if everything you say is 100% correct, posting this way sets a terrible
example for lesser users, so you're pushing this site closer to the wasteland
either way. And nobody bats 100.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168013)
and marked it off-topic.

------
ommunist
Thank you for sharing. But tech China is not only mainland China. Taiwan is
also tech.

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168197)
and marked it off-topic.

------
clifanatic
> There is no union nor labour law in China (well technically they both exist
> but..).

Same thing in America.

> So labour abusing is normal.

Same thing in America.

> Many tech workers are 'voluntarily' working 996 on a 955 pay slip.

Same thing in America.

~~~
mc32
Well, then, I guess we'll see an evening out of talent soon, since things are
the same.

~~~
serge2k
In america people love to complain publicly about the government.

------
necessity
"Something something Trump is a nazi"

~~~
seattle_spring
You must be lost, Reddit is over that way.

~~~
noir_lord
Left at the tire fire?

------
officialjunk
Have you been, or personally know, a minority immigrant in the US?

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168255)
and marked it off-topic.

------
Buetol
The salaries in china are getting way higher than in silicon valley as far as
I can see and that's gonna make people move. Especially with more and more
layoffs in SV and the european market lacking jobs.

EDIT: Looks like I'm wrong, I did the wrong conversion while on glassdoor.
Salary in china are way lower than SV

My point is that people move where the money is, when the salary are gonna be
higher, people are gonna move there

~~~
matt_wulfeck
I really doubt the salaries are higher than Silicon Valley. Do you have any
proof?

~~~
user5994461
And higher than Wall Street too, please.

