
Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley - SirLJ
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-tech/chinese-capital-dangles-carrots-to-lure-foreign-talent-to-its-silicon-valley-idUSKCN1GB0UF?utm_campaign=Newsletter%20-%20Mi5M%20-%20Q3%202017&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=60968683&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9b3puY2RUNq_9NrSirNfW0yD0nl0n9e8sLY6Zv03GUVQ52KSZTr3MVF9f0JwoMdrpx4qKli8LPyzYWuUvV9pitrOX8vA&_hsmi=60968683
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intrasight
Unless they make exceptions for the Great Firewall, this carrot won't be so
enticing.

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pentae
_The Beijing municipality has said it will even consider allowing foreign
professionals to bring in their own foreign maids, currently illegal in
Beijing._

Well shit, sign me up.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
This was actually a big issue for one of my friends. They wanted a Filipino
maid for communication reasons and were even able to manage it for a few years
(before 2010 or so). But then China cracked down on the practice and they had
to go with a chinese one eventually.

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ausjke
No.1 SMOG SMOG SMOG

No.2 No google available

Bring ten foreign maids won't fix that. I'll just pass.

~~~
bsaul
About the smog, i'm in shanghai right now, and i can tell you that the air is
far less polluted than Paris, France. It's actually quite weird, because i
thought the exact same thing as you regarding smog, i thought i would have to
wear a mask for the duration of my trip. I was amazed at the number of
electrical vehicle here (not a single motorcycle running on gas).

Note that it may be due to the chinese new year holidays (although it's been
over for two weeks now), or to the price of real estate that rose to such a
level that nobody can live downtown anymore... I'm not sure the reason, but i
was really really surprised.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The city should be almost deserted during CNY. But right now at the moment of
this post, Shanghai is worse than Paris:

[https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/](https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/) (95)

[http://aqicn.org/city/paris/](http://aqicn.org/city/paris/) (66)

~~~
bsaul
Thanks for the link, i was wondering if maybe shanghai had a different kind of
pollution that i wouldn't notice (i can't really tell from the graph, but i
think maybe pm10 is something that you'd feel more). Although they're both
globally in the "yellow" range..

CNY is really over now. Some shops were closed last week, but everything's
been back to normal for the last three days.. Also, Paris is experiencing a
unusual freezing temperature, so maybe there's less activity.

Do you know if there are some historical data on the site ? i'd be really
interested to compare the days i left Paris with the day i arrived in
Shanghai, because the difference was really amazing.

EDIT : looking more closely at the shanghai map.. If the location is really
precise, then it seems that the indicators are all set close to the huge
circle roads surrounding the central city. If you want to compare that with
the paris equivalent (and not the indicators next to the river), you'll find
the same kind of values.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
CNY isn’t really over for another week or even two. The lull in traffic
usually lasts for around three weeks. Even if the shops are open, many haven’t
returned from vacation yet.

Pm2.5 is the big killer that everyone is worried about these days. PM10 is
larger particles like dust which should be less of a problem in SH. Historical
data is included on site, but no easy way to compare them.

There isn’t a place in shanghai that isn’t next to a major road, it’s a city
of 10 million. They used to try and game the system by putting AQI stations
out in the suburbs but these days those places actually have worse pollution.

~~~
bsaul
The big circles around shanghai are a completely different beast than just
"major road". Just like Paris "périphérique" is in a league of its own.

I've had a 6h foot walk just 2 days ago in shanghai (inside the first circle,
travelling all around the city), and i can tell you the amount of dust i
inhaled was nothing compare to what i'm feeling when i walk inside Paris. Now
maybe CNY is a huge factor indeed, unfortunately i won't be there anymore to
see for myself... All i can say then is that it's a great time to visit the
city ! :)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I've been to SH plenty of time and I know about the ring road topology (same
as Beijing actually). But if you look at the map, it just gets worse, not
better, as you get farther from the center.

CNY is a great time to visit Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, since
people there either (a) go home (they aren't locals) or (b) go on vacation
somewhere else far away. CNY practically lasts longer than the official golden
week, so traffic is light as well.

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landryraccoon
I think it’ll work if the carrots are big enough. People from the west have no
issue working in Dubai if the check is big enough.

------
dannylandau
There are 37M college students in China and around the world. Why do they need
foreigners to come over?

[http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/08/content_243650...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/08/content_24365038.htm)

~~~
mrarjen
Likely because they are still in college, and China would rather want the
leaders in their fields to work for them instead, and also teach the newly
graduated to take it from there?

~~~
yorwba
Also, literally every student I've met in China wants to go to the US.
Undergraduates want to do their Master's there, Master's students want to do
their PhD, I guess PhD students want to become professors at a US university.

~~~
mrarjen
Yea that's also true, in Asia, the western education is perceived as far
superior to theirs.

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cromwellian
IMHO they need to offer an officially sanctioned legal VPN for those with such
Visas. It is too annoying as a technical worker doing research to reside in an
environment where access to information is unpredictable.

------
baybal2
Anybody want a mini-AMA? Worked with Chinese for bigger part of my career and
did two long term on-site consulting contracts. I lived in both Shanghai and
Shenzhen.

~~~
orangehour
How hard would it be to find a position in China if I don't speak Chinese? Are
there certain places I should look for information on this? Job websites?

~~~
baybal2
This will limit you to 1 in 3 jobs open to foreigners. Which is still very
good. See, the main value of a foreign specialist is that he is foreign and
supposedly have rare expertise. Second to that, you will most likely to be
hired with an idea in mind that you can liaise with overseas
customers/specialists/authorities and etc even if your job does not implicitly
require that.

Best option is to actively solicit contacts and network a lot. Foreign
professionals are a closely knit club here. Industry events are the best if
you know nobody here.

Look for job offers in English, job boards of companies with a record hiring
foreigners, foreign companies that are new in China, super senior level
positions, jobs with PhD. level expertise level, jobs requiring people skills
in English "product managers/ field application engineers/ sales or solution
engineers"

Websites: 51job, zhaopin, ChinaHR. Look for English language keywords. A post
in English almost certainly assumes the company keeps hiring a foreigner an
option.

~~~
orangehour
Thank you for the helpful reply!

------
lostmsu
Maybe, once Wikipedia and Gmail are available full scale.

~~~
bsaul
Honestly, the blocking doesn't make any kind of sense. You can literally
create a vpn from within china itself on any cloud provider and surf on
anything you want, in less than 10 minutes using softwares like algovpn.

It's now a moment of truth for internet in china : either they start blocking
vpns for real (although good luck doing that without collateral damage to the
economy, because that would mean shutting down a ton of services), or they
just open it.

My bet is that they'll open it. They have services on the same quality as US
ones, some even more advanced like wechat , they're already 1 billion user
strong, i'm pretty sure they'll benefit tremendously from opening the gates.

~~~
dageshi
The overwhelming number 1 priority of the Chinese Communist party is to remain
in power and remain in control. Everything comes second place to that.
Economically it would make sense to do what you say, but to do so would be an
unacceptable loss of control over the ability to monitor and curtail
communication in China, so they won't do it.

Additionally, they do certainly have the ability to detect and shutdown VPN's
based on traffic analysis, for the most part they don't do this most of the
time but during specific sensitive political events they can and will.

~~~
bsaul
"remain in control" is also what i thought, but then i changed my mind and now
think the reason is now (almost) purely economical. The reason is that :

\- google maps is blocked, but apple maps isn't

\- google is blocked, but yahoo and bing aren't

\- youtube is blocked, but other video sites such as rutube.ru are accessible,
and just searching sensitive keywords led me to things like that
[https://rutube.ru/video/49d364dd24dc25c5855aa9113c107567/?re...](https://rutube.ru/video/49d364dd24dc25c5855aa9113c107567/?ref=search)

and the list goes on and on. Once again, it doesn't make any sense.

~~~
dageshi
Google very publically and explicitly said they would not abide by China's
rules regarding their services about a decade ago. I wouldn't be surprised if
those other services have local chinese servers which are serving the requests
from China and are effectively subject to chinese laws.

------
mtgx
Oh yes, carrots, with a side of dictatorship. Sounds quite tempting.

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antr
US-biased headline. This is what US-tech firms have been doing for years,
dangling carrots on foreign talent. The same reason why the US VC-lobby has
been up in arms on anything and everything work visas related. China is the
new USA.

~~~
Nokinside
The difference is that US lures people to move and eventually become citizens.
China want's people to work there, transfer the technology and go away.

It's basically impossible to naturalize as Chinese citizen even if you marry a
local and live there for decades. Japanese are strict in immigration but they
take ten times more immigrants than China. Only about 1000 people get Chinese
passport per year.

~~~
t1o5
If a 10 year wait time for greencards and restricting the H4 spouses of those
skilled visa workers to work legally is not a carrot, then yes US is doing a
great job attracting and retaining talents.

I went behind the carrot for 3 years and then immigrated to Canada. My spouse
has dignity now and she is a full time employee just like me earning a very
good salary. In US, she lost all her confidence,dignity and was depressed
because she was "not allowed" to work though she was a post graduate degree
holder.

Any skilled workers who care about their H4 spouses should do the same.

[https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-
law0/v...](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-
bulletin/2018/visa-bulletin-for-february-2018.html)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/01/28/green...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/01/28/green-
card-applicants-waiting-forever-told-keep-waiting/#2cb60e411656)

[http://h4-visa-a-curse.blogspot.ca/p/home.html](http://h4-visa-a-
curse.blogspot.ca/p/home.html)

[https://qz.com/797831/the-h4-visa-and-the-desperation-of-
ind...](https://qz.com/797831/the-h4-visa-and-the-desperation-of-indian-
housewives-in-america/)

~~~
adventured
One million people get green cards each year in the US.

Immigrants and their children are now 27% of the US population.

Show me the numbers on China.

And if you want to talk about Canada and dignity. Why is Canada only 1%
hispanic? Because they restrict immigration overwhelmingly by skill. If you
can't meet their skill-based requirements, you're very unlikely to get in.
How's that for treating people with dignity? The US has ~46 million immigrants
currently, ten million more people than the entire population of Canada.

~~~
t1o5
> One million people get green cards each year in the US.

Is a blanket statement. The topic is about skilled immigration. Majority of US
green cards are family based.

Source here: [https://www.us-immigration.com/how-many-immigration-
applicat...](https://www.us-immigration.com/how-many-immigration-applications-
filed-each-year/)

> Immigrants and their children are now 27% of the US population.

Immigrants from 1800s maybe ?

> Show me the numbers on China.

China has just started. I dont think there is any data yet. Even if there is,
wont be easy to find.

> Why is Canada only 1% hispanic? Because they restrict immigration
> overwhelmingly by skill.

No they don't. They encourage both. Express Entry is for the skilled ones,
family based quotas parents and siblings in addition to asylum and refugees.
Isn't that how immigration is supposed to work ?

> How's that for treating people with dignity?

Canada have temporary worker visas similar to H1B. They issue the spouses of
those temporary skilled workers with open work permit. Dignity & freedom from
the day one they land in Canada. There are no carrots in Canada for temporary
skilled workers. If you satisfy Express Entry points which you almost will,
you can apply for permanent residence. Your permanent residence is not under
the control of your employer master. Canadian employers cant threaten your
Express Entry application. You wont have to wait 10 years or get kicked out of
the queue if you change jobs or gets fired while being on H1B.

Those who come to Canada as students get a post graduate work permit. No
lotteries, no quotas and can apply to express entry and become residents
unlike those unfortunate master degree holders who are at the mercy of their
employer masters and waiting 10 years for their GreenCards.

The fact that open work permits are issued for spouses of temporary skilled
workers in Canada proves that temporary workers are treated with dignity in
Canada than H1B workers in the US.

Are the points above dignifying enough ?

------
joncrane
This is an interesting one. Is this related in any way to the "token white
guy" types of jobs which are apparently available in China?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
No. White monkey jobs are mostly over. Maybe you can find one in some remote
tier 88 city, but not in Shenzhen.

~~~
dtornabene
this is crazy, I had no idea these even were a thing. It sounds like a Coen
Brothers plot.

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kryptiskt
Not for me, I like being able to say "I disagree" on social media.

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wakkaflokka
Other than the visa-related benefits, what type of monetary benefits do
foreigners get for moving to China?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Pay is pretty good (about 70% of Seattle) while living costs are low. I was
able to save about 30-40% of my take home over almost 10 years.

~~~
kbwt
So China pays much better than Western Europe? Is this actually true?

~~~
baby
If you're in HongKong probably.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Hong Kong doesn’t pay programmers as well as Shenzhen outside of a few banking
related jobs. Not a good comparison. HK is more of a business/banking center,
so programmers don’t have as much status as they do across the border in
Shenzhen.

