Lots of people used to go to China for work and could do pretty much anything they want, but since Jinping took over it went downhill fast.
Most people in the expat community I know went to Hong Kong and Singapore instead for the following reasons:
1) Easy to do business
2) Easy to get your money in and out.
3) Low taxes
4) Central travel hubs in Asia
5) Less backwards mindset as these cities feel more cosmopolitan and are interconnected with the outside world
With HK having less and less freedom, Singapore is really the only choice for foreigners to have a decent life quality in Asia. Tokyo could potentially be an option too, but it's really hard to live there due the very different structures in Japanese society and taxes are pretty high.
HK, it seems, doesn’t have the death penalty or corporal punishment. Let’s see how long that lasts, but for the time being that’s a huge positive over Singapore.
Expat life is still pretty nice. Soho is bustling. Restaurants are reopening, clubs open to 6am.
Stuff like SVB, CS, and flow on effect to legal is probably just a big an impact.
You are not going to get the death penalty or caning in Singapore if you keep your nose clean (literally and figuratively). Both are only applied for serious crimes, and the few deltas to Western standards on what counts as "serious" (drugs, vandalism) are easily avoided.
On the other hand, HK now has years of imprisonment if you speak the wrong thing. Expats probably less directly affected, but freedom of speech is essential to financial success and the local economy will never recover.
IMO, Hong Kong's number 1 problem is that its unique position as the gateway to China has faded away, both the role as an intermediary and as a key shipping port.
Clean air, clean environment, safety, access to nature, food safety, (mostly) free/uncensored internet, easy to do business, easy to do daily things, good public transportation, safety, good medical system, not a lot of corruption.
There's other things as well, but the above things are quite important to me. Your mile may vary though :-)
I've got some years in China. I speak Chinese, I'm eating a jianbing[1] as I write this. Didn't leave during the three years of zero covid. Reopening has changed everything about daily life in the best way.
But I'm also looking for a way out. For the reasons outlined in the article, yes, and others. General sentiment toward foreigners has rebounded a bit since the early days of the pandemic, but it's pretty clear that the government would like all the Americans, Canadians and Brits to kindly GTFO. And everyone else seems to be leaving: I lost about half my friends in the last two years.
My (privileged) problem is that I can't stomach the idea of moving back to the US. I moved here because I wanted to do something different with my life; the idea of living in the US again makes me feel like life would be over. Friends are moving to Singapore, Bangkok, Bali, Berlin, so I'll likely end up following them. Five years ago HK or Taipei might've been good options, but not these days.
When I left China I spent a year or two traveling and then returned to work in Taiwan. If you already speak Chinese, it's a very soft landing. Imo the food isn't nearly as good as in China, and (depending where you were before) the weather in Taipei is much worse, but the general pace of life is way more relaxed. You don't need to go through security to get on the subway or show your ID to buy a train ticket. You hardly ever see cops pushing people around. The bureaucracy is just regular plain old bureaucracy instead of the latest creepy layer of techno-fascist privacy invasion. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and then I realize it won't, because that sense of constantly fearing the next policy shift, or wondering when something you like is about to be arbitrarily taken away, that anxiety and pessimism really is something unique to authoritarian countries.
To be sure, Taiwan is going to face increasing pressure from China in the coming years, and there is some chance that it might escalate into a hot war. But the sense of existential dread is much less for me than it was in China. Despite their best efforts, the party is much more capable of ruining the lives of people inside China than outside of it. Aside from Berlin, I've never lived in the other cities on your list, so I can't really compare, but if you enjoy the lifestyle of a tier two city in China and would like somewhere similar with a much less oppressive government, Taipei is a pretty good option.
I think it’s not just foreigers with unfavorable origins, in their speaking of ideology/regime/path confidence, anyone not subscribing and contributing to the greater good, foreigners or not, are not welcomed and supposed to stay and share the pie.
Culturally it has a lot of offer, vibrant scenes for any art or music taste and museums stuffed artifacts stolen from all around the globe[0] that might almost rival the British Museum. Also many musicians and artists have called it their temporary home, from Josephine Baker to David Bowie and his flat mate Iggy Pop[1]. Call it a litmus-test for how open a society is, even if you prefer complaining about the noise and waste the Love Parade (or rather Rave the Planet since last year) produces. On the wider geography, Germany itself is quite diverse, with a 90 minute train ride to Hamburg you will notice a difference in culture and into the south your just-acquired German skill will face challenges from many dialects. The city is also a great starting point to across the borders into the nine neighbouring countries we Germans have fought against and alongside at various points of history. Oh, and we Germans thing we have humour...
Just spent a weekend there: I heard more English spoken in public than German, and even found myself having to backtrack and switch to English (my first language) after instinctively starting conversations in German (my second language). It didn't quite feel like I was still in Germany; only the street signs and some business names brought me back.
A few of the people I met at the tech events I visited have lived in Germany long enough to get citizenship, but haven't applied because they aren't sure they could pass the language exams, and would have to take a lot of effort to get enough practice speaking - they work in English all day, and speak English to all of their friends.
Berlin is a different world from even the larger cities in southern Germany, like Munich or Nuremberg - reachable by high speed train in 3-5 hours.
For Americans, think NYC (Berlin) vs. Dallas (Munich).
It is SO hard to not switch to English when you start talking with someone who doesn't speak fluent German. It's some stupid automatism we Germans have and it took me years to break this habit. Maybe you can do the same and stick to your bad German even if the Germans switch to English? Conversations in two languages sound funny :-)
We have plenty of literature and media in German, and few languages get treated with the same effort by Hollywood distributors like German does.
If you already are a EU citizen, you simply won't bother with German citizenship. It will become an interesting problem for democracy to solve with Luxemburg have some 47% foreigners, not sure how many are EU-citizens [1].
I think I would love Berlin. It is just very different than all the other options presented, so I was curious why it was listed. It is like someone saying they are trying to decide between several types of dark roasted coffee but also having ginger kombucha in the list. Put more succinctly, I did see a common trait between Berlin and the other locations, so I wondered what it was.
TomK32's provided some great insight as a German. For me, the common traits are 1) local language is not explicitly English, 2) has a vibrant social scene, and 3) I know people there already. I'm a techie so cost of living isn't an overriding concern.
I used to travel to China all the time for work during my first job in 2008. Those times were super optimistic. Hong Kong was filled with Chinese pride, and it seemed inevitable that China would absorb Taiwan. China had just hosted the Olympics.
I visited Hong Kong late 2018 after many years of not having been there. It was a very different place from the Hong Kong I had visited in 2009-2011. The energy was a bit darker. It almost felt like another Chinese city. I had even been to HK several times when I was in middle school in Taiwan (I was born in America, but was a “reverse import” to Taiwan) as well as a mandarin language tutor during university, and was always amazed by the richness of HK culture from fishing villages in Saikung to bustling life in Tsim Tsa Tsui and in Central with relics of British colonialism. Now many unique elements of HK life had disappeared.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s value to the Chinese diaspora can’t be understated—it’s a bastion of a mandarin-speaking democracy, or in software terms a hard fork of an alternate reality of what China could have been. It has cultivated its own culture, and retained elements of Chinese culture cancelled during the cultural revolution. It has its own identity from the aboriginal population, the settlers from the dynastic period, Japanese colonization, and influences from the Republic of China refugees (or occupiers, depending on your POV, post 1949 Chinese settlers) and American forces. And since 2018, I’ve seen the Taiwanese double down on their Taiwanese identity and pride, and in many ways Taiwan is the envy of China (also literally).
If I were to live in Asia, it might have once included Hong Kong because of its unique British history. Now I would probably live in Taiwan and Japan.
Edit: Taiwan hasn’t always been a democracy, and the path to democracy hasn’t been easy (just ask America). It’s not perfect like any other well-running democracy, but it’s the closest paragon we have in the Chinese diaspora. The presidency has transitioned peacefully to different parties since the 1990s.
I had no idea how wide it is until a family member married someone from Asia and he explained ot me that his family thinks of themselves as ethnically Chinese, although they're totally disconnected from China.
It's actually pretty fascinating if you spend time in SE Asia. Chinese have been immigrating to all the countries for centuries. There are super old communities of Chinese in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, everywhere in fact.
And they are often a distinct community, with their own language (a dialect from where they came from in China). They were often economic migrants, so tend to be seen as a "merchant class" in these countries and hold quite a lot of political power.
The Peranakan in Malaysia are a good example. And there is continued strife in those countries as these Chinese-Malaysian often have much more political power than their numbers alone would suggest.
Thailand is weird[0], in that there's no love lost at all for mainland Chinese or Chinese tourists, but it's very socially important to have a Chinese grandparent or two.
[0]: Actually I think this is true of most of South East Asia where the Chinese community doesn't have as distinct a separation as Malaysia and Singapore
My understanding [0] from speaking with locals throughout SE Asia is a general resentment towards mainland Chinese tourists which boils down to - what else - money.
It turns out most Chinese tour operators throughout SE Asia run a completely vertical business, wherein they own all touchpoints their guests interact with (e.g. the restaurants, the bus company, the gift shops, etc.). Further, these are all staffed by immigrant Chinese. This results in all tourism profits being captured by Chinese nationals and businesses (and being exported back home as remittances) while burdening local infrastructure. Locals hate this.
For what its worth, I never heard / witnessed any hostility towards local ethnic Chinese (Peranakans), whose status, as the parent comment notes, is locally prominent. (Though there have been some bloody clashes in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_Chinese...
[0] Living in SE Asia, lots of extended chats with locals throughout the region.
> It turns out most Chinese tour operators throughout SE Asia run a completely vertical business, wherein they own all touchpoints their guests interact with (e.g. the restaurants, the bus company, the gift shops, etc.). Further, these are all staffed by immigrant Chinese. This results in all tourism profits being captured by Chinese nationals and businesses (and being exported back home as remittances) while burdening local infrastructure. Locals hate this.
I heard the exact same complaint in Italy. Chinese tourist groups come to Venice, annoy all the locals by dropping trash on the floor, but only buy their souvenirs at Chinese-owned gift shops. And they sleep on the Chinese-owned cruise ship.
Last time I was on koh phi phi someone greeted my Chinese wife in Chinese, which was a new development (english is fairly common, mandarin is also becoming more common). It seems like a lot of the tourists are now mainland Chinese, and the Thai tourist economy at least likes their money.
Bangkok is ethnically a mostly Chinese city, and is also Thailand’s richest region by far.
Just before Covid, DMK had a dedicated immigration line for Chinese passports; Chinese visitor numbers were huge already and growing until Covid, when they dropped off a cliff, and they haven't yet recovered in the same way that most other tourism has
> and the Thai tourist economy at least likes their money
Yeeees, but the government (regardless of which) has been talking about trying to move to richer tourists since forever, and discouraging large numbers of Russian and Chinese tourists who they think spend less. So yes, lots of Chinese tourists, but if they could wave a magic wand to replace those with Japanese, Korean, and American tourists, they'd do it in a heartbeat
> Bangkok is ethnically a mostly Chinese city
This is untrue, although I've heard (and would believe) that the majority of middle-class Bangkok has some Chinese heritage
> and is also Thailand’s richest region by far
Actually, until Covid's effect on tourism, that crown was held by Phuket, although Phuket also has a high Chinese influence.
Average Chinese tourists often spend a lot more than Norwegian backpackers. And it is a relatively recent phenomena for Thailand to fill up with Chinese tourists over CNY. Why limit your tourist peaks to just thanksgiving and Christmas?
Ya but it isn’t peak season. Things are much affordable in Thailand in February than they are in December. Heck, a week after new years it’s already sane again.
Places like koh chang (my personal favorite) become really deserted, not devoid of people, but you might be the only person at some lazy restaurant or bar that was full and bustling just a few weeks ago.
> As of the 2000 census, there were 6,355,144 registered residents in the city. However, this figure does not take account of the many unregistered residents and daytime visitors from the surrounding metropolitan area. More than 50% of Bangkokians have some Chinese ancestry.
They are still Thai, they often don’t even speak Chinese, just ethnically Chinese (and then I guess it depends on how you count mixed ancestry).
England has a long and proud history of being invaded, colonised and overbred by the French. Anglo-Saxon isn't exactly an English pedigree. It isn't French either, but "French" doesn't have an etymology that originated in France.
So it is quite possible that the argument of Thai people being Chinese would parallel more strongly; English people don't just speak a bit of French, they have the same ancestors and may as well be French. Hopefully the ethnic Chinese entered Thailand under more rosy circumstances!
> has a long and proud history of being invaded, colonised and overbred by the French
That’s not really true though unless you take an excessively liberal interpretation of what it means to be French. The Celts weren’t French, the Danes weren’t French, the Romans weren’t French, the Saxons weren’t French, and even the Normans had only been in France for a century before invading, although they picked up the local language pdq. The only people to successfully invade after 1066 were the Dutch, and they would assure you they weren’t French.
50% is still close to a majority. Perhaps mostly is the wrong word exactly, but it isn’t far off. And I didn’t claim Chinese language was common in either way, just that Chinese ancestry was common, which has huge ramifications to culture. Like Toledo and poles.
When I worked in Beijing, one of my friends was from Fujian. His parents lived on and off in Malaysia, which isn’t very uncommon for people in Fujian. It is alot southern Chinese, mainly Guangdong and Fujian (and maybe Wenzhou) that go abroad. It is much less common in northern China.
It's mostly because societies, where they're minorities, actively work against their assimilation. Just look at the US alone where they're always the outsiders.
I had no idea how sprawling Chinese diaspora was until I was in Ecuador and a sailor on the boat with me took me to a Chinese restaurant. In Ecuador. Of course there would be a Chinese restaurant in Ecuador, but of course there's also a sailor on my US-flagged ship who's ethnically Chinese and speaks Mandarin. And so we ordered Chinese in Chinese, in a Spanish-speaking country. In 1999.
The dominican republic is covered in "Pica Pollo" restaurants and they are often run by chinese people. The main food at pica pollo is fried chicken and sometimes they also serve dominican beans and rice. The only asian dish is fried rice called "cho fan" in spanish. It wasn't until years later that I learned cho fan is just "chǎofàn" spoken with a spanish accent.
I saw lots of chinese people at Pica Pollos across the country, but never saw them outside the restaurants and don't know much about where they live or what life is like for them in the DR. I'm not sure if each pica pollo is run by a chinese family that lives on site at the restaurant.
Amsterdam, Vancouver and lots of other big cities have a large enough Chinese population that there can be whole districts that are mostly Chinese. To the point where the street signs are in Chinese.
I always like to reference the moment I saw on tv in Vancouver interviewing an old lady who was so immersed in her enclave she referred to white people as foreigners.
Someone married an Asian whose family happened to be ethnic Chinese, which made you think "huh these people are everywhere". (With regards to the diaspora comment)
Then the comment, paraphrasing, "they think they're Chinese when they're not Chinese nationals at all". If their ancestors were from China, they don't "think" they're ethnic Chinese, they are ethnic Chinese. Unless you get into the nitty gritty clans and groups of the gigantic landmass. The use of "think ... although" indicates you disagree with how they identify their ethnicity. Thus I assumed you felt it was a problem.
Apologies if I read intentions that weren't there.
Calling it a strong enough link is giving it too much credit. It's more of an acknowledgement of lineage. Not difficult when names, festivals, languages are retained. In fact, if you're within 3 generations of emigration, you would even know the province and town your great grandparents came from.
Just as an example of something with a flimsier premise. Say a German American who doesn't speak the language, don't have known family there, have no loyalty to Germany, celebrate none of the German festivals, and the only indication left is a last name Schmidt. We don't say, "huh the German diaspora is everywhere" when these people say their ancestors are from Germany.
> It’s a problem in that not a common way to perceive one’s identity
This is super common in Europe. We have people who think of themselves as X and speak Xian as their mother tongue even though the region has been part of Y country for centuries.
Slovenians, for example, managed to survive under foreign rule for about 1100 years before re-gaining independence.
Nationality and ethnicity are very different concepts.
for a more American example: Ask any of the indigenous peoples how they feel about their American, Canadian, Mexican, etc. nationality.
It may not be common in your part of the world, it is extremely common in the former USSR (maybe because it was called "the prison of nations" or something to that effect). I am honestly surprised that anyone would have trouble understanding the difference between ethnicity and nationality as it seems very obvious to me and everyone I've ever met.
> Consider the way Russians-in-exile perceive themselves in the current geopolitical context.
Those who I've spoken to identify themselves as Russian citizens temporarily in exile, whilst I am ethnically Russian who has no connection to the country at all. I don't think these are the same.
That's a bad example because France isn't really an ethnicity. It's a group of regions that used to speak different languages even after World War II.
You have Bretons that are ethnically close to Irish/Scotish, Alsaciens who are ethnically Germans, Basque who are similar to the Spanish Basque, Corse who want to be independent...
A better example of a country that more or less encompass an ethnicity would be Germany, or Japan. But even there you'll find exceptions (Ainu in Hokkaido, Okinawa being also ethnically different as Ryukyu vs Yamato...)
I suspect many powerful people in Thailand feel the same (as many powerful families in Thailand are of Chinese decent).
Another interesting tidbit is that after a civil war in China, part of the Chinese army that lost the war fled to northern Thailand. And there they settled in the mountains [0].
From my understanding (from a Dutch man that lives nearby who used to be a travel guide in Thailand) many (Thai-)Chinese people here in northern Thailand still maintain very close ties with their families in Taiwan. Also, several villages here also have their own little "China-towns", which can be interesting places to visit.
> The soldiers' war did not end after their own "long march" from Yunnan to Möng Hsat in Burma's Shan State. The Burmese soon discovered that a foreign army was camped on their soil, and launched an offensive. The fighting continued for 12 years, and several thousand KMT soldiers were eventually evacuated to Taiwan. When China entered the Korean War, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a desperate need for intelligence on China. The agency turned to the two KMT generals, who agreed to slip some soldiers back into China for intelligence-gathering missions. In return, the agency offered arms to equip the generals to retake China from their bases in the Shan State. The KMT army tried on no fewer than seven times between 1950 and 1952 to invade Yunnan, but was repeatedly driven back into the Shan State. The ending of the Korean War in 1953 was not the end of the KMT's fight against the communist Chinese and Burmese armies, which continued on for many years, supported by Washington and Taiwan and subsequently funded by the KMT's involvement in the Golden Triangle's drug trade.
>In 1961, Tuan led some 4,000 battle-weary KMT troops out of Burma to a mountainous sanctuary in Mae Salong in Thailand. In exchange for asylum, the Thai government allowed them to stay on the understanding that they would assist in policing the area against communist infiltration. As a result, most of the village's inhabitants today are ethnic Chinese and direct descendants of those KMT soldiers. At the same time, General Lee of the 3rd Regiment established his headquarters at Tham Ngob, north-west of Chiang Mai. The KMT army was renamed "Chinese Irregular Forces" (CIF) and was placed directly under the control of a special task force, code-named "04", commanded by Bangkok.
> After the soldiers reached Mae Salong, China and Thailand struck an agreement to transfer the administration of the group to the Thai government. The provincial governor of southern Thailand, Pryath Samanmit, was reassigned as the governor of Chiang Rai, to oversee the KMT division, but upon taking up his position, Samanmit was killed by communist insurgents. Soon afterwards, the KMT division was ordered to assist the Thai government in countering the advancing armies on Thailand's northern borders and the internal threat from the Communist Party of Thailand. Fierce battles were fought in the mountains of Doi Laung, Doi Yaw, Doi Phamon, and Mae Aabb, and the communist uprising was successfully countered. The bloodiest operation was launched on 10 December 1970, a five-year-long campaign that claimed over 1,000 lives, many from landmines. It was not until 1982 that the soldiers were able to give up their arms and were discharged to settle down to a normal life at Mae Salong. As a reward for their service, the Thai government gave citizenship to most of the KMT soldiers and their families.
That's interesting. I learned that historically, China has been many 'nations', with related but different languages - more like Europe than like the US. And I learned that every Chinese government has struggled to hold together these regional peoples under one central government.
The current map of China is one variation of many, many historical maps, which vary considerably. (Ask the Tibetans, in particular.) It might look like a cohesive government today, but so did the USSR - the Communists suppressed the ethnic differences, but the USSR exploded into many different countries when the Communists lost power - including Ukraine, Belarus, Modova (afaik), the Baltic states, Central Asian countries, and more.
I wonder what the truth is of China now; it's a question nobody asks.
It's not that unique, really. It's quite the same as India. I guess it's harder for us westerners to appreciate Chinese diversity because they don't broadcast so much English content about themselves.
If the European Union had been more successful and had a couple more generations totally immersed speaking English, you could imagine some Chinese people in the year 2123 saying 'wow, Europe is actually a whole Civilization politically unified as a nation. Who would have thought".
That'd be true today in a timeline where Napoleon won.
I don't know about Japan, but this is certainly not the case for Italy and Germany. Even though they might have started existing as political entities in the late 19th century, the idea of "Germany" or "Italy" existed long before that. To give you an example, both Dante and Machiavelli mention an idea of a unified state for Italians. Not to mention the Roman home province of "Italia" which corresponds more or less with today's Italy.
Although off topic from the original post, would you entertain this question? What's Taiwan's position on integration with China? What does Taiwan want for itself? I'd like to hear more about that minus American and Chinese input.
This is an extremely interesting question because I’ve heard various viewpoints. The vast majority want to keep the “technical debt” (legacy code being “Republic of China”) of this uneasy bridge to China—that is trade and movement of people between the strait, and maintaining the status quo of the “Republic of China” government (controlling Taiwan) and PRC (controlling China or “mainland”).
Many Taiwanese don’t want war, but they already are functionally independent. The PRC has never governed in Taiwan. The ROC, which governed China from 1912 to 1949, governs Taiwan and its child islands.
Many young Taiwanese just want to be Taiwanese and left alone, but the vast majority want to keep the status quo as long as it’s tenable (it’s not, Xi Jinping has indicated a timeline). The big question is how this might be possible without poking the bear that resembles Pooh… It’s obvious to most Taiwanese that China won’t keep its promises, since it made clear violations of promises made to the HK people and UK.
Recent elections have shown KMT party (pro-PRC relations, the grandfather of the Republic of China government, and in someways the father party of the Communists that forked from KMT) gaining ground because people are afraid of war. Nobody in Taiwan wants war, but as the saying goes, in order to have peace, prepare for war.
> Recent elections have shown KMT party (pro-PRC relations, the grandfather of the Republic of China government, and in someways the father party of the Communists that forked from KMT) gaining ground because people are afraid of war. Nobody in Taiwan wants war, but as the saying goes, in order to have peace, prepare for war.
Maybe data suggest otherwise?
The number of Taiwaneses that support Taiwan to "Maintain status quo, move towards unification" and "Unification as soon as possible" has been dropped from 12.8% and 5.0% in 2018 to 7.5% and 1.4% in 2019. Meanwhile the number of Taiwaneses that support "Maintain status quo, move towards independence" has been rised from 12.8% in 2018 to 25.8% in 2020.
Note: I am a one of the HongKongers fled to Taiwan after the Anti-Extradition protest in 2019.
Well, if China invades it'll have even less incentive to maintain anything remotely like pre-invasion. You gave HK as the example. That was only paperwork to get in the front door.
A HKer murdered a HKer. said murderer moved back to HK. HK government said "nope can't deal with that sorry"
Taiwan: fine, we can negotiate the extradition if you insist on us taking the case.
HK gov: actually we are gonna make an all encompassing law that deals with extradition. It also makes extraditing criminals/political refugees/booksellers/whoever the ccp request quick and easy but please ignore it.
Having lived in Taiwan both before and after China's crackdown in Hong Kong, I can say that post crackdown, I haven't encountered a single Taiwanese that wants any integration with China. They just want to be Taiwanese, which after nearly a century of being an independently governed country, is very different from the life on mainland China.
And yet most of the young people I encounter are somewhat resigned to the inevitability of invasion.
Prior to the HK affair, some older Taiwanese I met would suggest that closer integration could bring economic benefits, but I don't hear that these days.
With a number of HK journalists that I respect now in prison or having fled, I can only agree. The HK spirit and culture that once thrived in the city has all but disappeared, as the Chinese government applies their embrace and extinguish approach to cultural assimilation. When you can be imprisoned for life for uttering the wrong words, it tends to silence any dissent.
Economical benefits has always been a hit and miss and lots of the older generation have learnt their lesson (even before the HK affair).
Lots of producers of different kinds have had their technologies copied, skills learnt and then abandoned for and only to hire them on a consultancy basis for when things break.
In hindsight it has likely hurt Taiwan's economy more than it has helped.
My wife is Taiwanese. She's seriously planning on fighting for her country should there be an invasion. She doesn't want anything to do with China and my understanding is that most younger taiwanese share that opinion. But some consider that a reunion could bring them better economical prospects and would be willing to sacrifice their freedom.
One surprising aspect of that is Taiwan's very limited compulsery military service - I think it was a month, recently lengthened to 6 months? What I read says that such service is very unpopular.
I don't understand a lot about it, but wouldn't people expecting an invasion from a much larger country want universal compulsary service and as much training as they can get? Even for those less motivated about winning, it would help them survive a war.
A strong majority want to maintain the status quo or gradually move toward independence. Very few want unification. It's important to understand that China promises to invade if Taiwan declares independence (the Anti-Secession Law requires that response), which means many people would ideally prefer independence but in practice support the status quo because de facto independence (the status quo) is better than being invaded. Both sides of Taiwanese politics formally support the status quo, although the DPP has stronger pro-independence leanings.
Taiwanese identity (as opposed identifying as Chinese) has also trended up in recent decades and now most people only consider themselves to be Taiwanese and not Chinese. https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7800&id=6961
Since Taiwan became a democracy, Taiwan's stance has always been against "one country, two systems". It was like that wayyyyy before the Hong Kong protest.
Mention of the chip industry makes it hard to take the source as unbiased from US side. Other comments were more insightful on the perspective of Taiwanese and on the cultural and historical aspects.
> it’s a bastion of a mandarin-speaking democracy, or in software terms a hard fork of an alternate reality of what China could have been.
I don't want to reduce what you've said, but the fact is that Taiwan grew rich because of US support that helped integrate it into the global economy, and that wouldn't have come without its opposition to the mainland.
Similarly, China wouldn't have grown rich had it not been a pawn against USSR. India plans on doing the same wrt to China, but that country, like Africa, is too deeply colonized (likewise, with a despicable morally corrupt elite) to do anything of value to its own people IMO.
People underestimate the power of the Anglo-Empire which the British passed over to the Americans, one they continue to run to this day, without so much as a squeak from the mainstream.
Given that the West is banking on India to do their bidding, I doubt anyone will halt China's growth (regardless of what 'expats', who often both fetish-ize and dehumanize Asians, think).
> that country, like Africa, is too deeply colonized (likewise, with a despicable morally corrupt elite) to do anything of value to its own people IMO.
> Since the 2000s, India has made remarkable progress in reducing absolute poverty. Between FY2011/12 and 2015, poverty declined from 21.6 to an estimated 13.4 percent at the international poverty line (2011 PPP $1.90 per person per day), continuing the historical trend of robust reduction in poverty. Aided by robust economic growth, more than 90 million people escaped extreme poverty and improved their living standards during this period.
And, as another reply noted, China grew rich after the USSR collapsed. So your facts are wrong.
But even apart from the facts, your thesis doesn't make much sense to me. "Western powers helped Taiwan and China grow rich because politics, and this is bad because ..."?
Can you provide any good sources for these claims?
> China wouldn't have grown rich had it not been a pawn against USSR.
China's split from the USSR began in the early 1970s under Mao. The first seeds of economic growth didn't sprout until the late 1970s under Deng Xiaopeng. Most of China's economic growth didn't happen until after the USSR was gone.
i can't speak for the Taiwanese link, but my recollection was that China's rise in wealth (and investment and support from the US) only really took off in the 90s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
hard no. usa helped but taiwan themselves made TSMC's due to their work and family culture and studying and working hard their entire lives. To say Nvidia and AMD and Gigabyte and the numerous brands from Taiwan are due to USA is farfetched. It's actually more reasonable to say it's due to China or Malaysia/Thailand etc where the manufacturing is then USA.
They got all the know how from the US as a jump start. Plus loads of financial aid especially during the 90s.
Sure, during the 2000s they moved ahead as they weren't stupid and didn't blow that chance, they're smart and hard working, but their rise is ultimately due to the US great interest in that island for military/strategic reasons.
Still really off the mark. Things like TSMC were started in a lonely garage in a warehouse district in Taipei. No USA help in sight. USA have given a few planes here and there but that's not even close to 1% of the support to have given Taiwan's rise. USA got all the know how from ancient China too. Financial aid is correlative not causative as a majority of countries receive it and don't rise like Taiwan has so it's A/B tested as not the reason. As an American it's egocentric of american's to think another place's rise is due to some abstract american propogandist support that really has no effect on Taiwan's rise.
> Things like TSMC were started in a lonely garage in a warehouse district in Taipei.
What a romantic reinterpretation of reality. TSMC was founded by a guy who studied at MIT and then worked in semiconductors at Texas Instruments for over twenty years, after which he was tasked by Taiwans government to develop the country's technological sector.
> USA have given a few planes here and there but that's not even close to 1% of the support to have given Taiwan's rise.
Maybe if you total it over the last 6 decades or so. It's hardly surprising they don't need financial support for their economy today. In the 50s, their GDP didn't even hit one billion yet, and over that decade and the early 60s, the US provided more than 2 billion dollars in financial aid, in the early years over 10% of their GDP. No other Asian country ever received that much financial aid (in relative terms). This was absolutely a relevant factor that jump started their economy.
> I don't want to reduce what you've said, but the fact is that Taiwan grew rich because of US support that helped integrate it into the global economy, and that wouldn't have come without its opposition to the mainland.
Taiwan didn't get rich because of the US. Taiwan got rich because of mainland china. The rise of Hong kong, taiwan, singapore and even to some degree south korea all resulted from the opening of china in the late 60s and 70s. The chinese elites' decision to open up trade with the world is what resulted in the rise of the asian tigers.
> Similarly, China wouldn't have grown rich had it not been a pawn against USSR.
Had nothing to do with the USSR. China was never a pawn for or against the USSR or US or anyone else. China got rich for the same reason saudi arabia got rich or any other nation got rich. China decided to utilize their greatest resource ( a billion relatively cheap labor ) after the USSR fell.
> People underestimate the power of the Anglo-Empire which the British passed over to the Americans, one they continue to run to this day, without so much as a squeak from the mainstream.
Who underestimates it? The entire world order is understood to be an american world order by everyone on earth.
> Given that the West is banking on India to do their bidding, I doubt anyone will halt China's growth
Barring ww3, I doubt china's growth can be slowed. We shall have to wait and see.
Hong Kong was promised to have democracy, human rights and access to China. If they had kept those promises, then I believe many Taiwanese would have welcomed reunification.
We all knew (hopefully) that would never happen (keep their promise). It's nothing China specific. Even lots of elected politicians fail on it in any country.
I think hindsight might've clouded your assessment of the attitude during the time pre-HK crackdown.
It was originally a time of optimistic hope that China would become more and more democratic, and the integration of HK back to the mainland will not have been hard (at least, china would meet somewhere in the middle).
There was already a wave of people considering, planning and did actually leave pre-1997 and around that time. A few did go back to HK afterwards when things looked better but left again due to the current issues.
I don't know who was optimistic. The West? Definitely not those in HK. It was a time when anti-China sentiment was high and supported by the media, artists, etc as the trend (vs the crackdown now). There were songs and campaigns supporting those that wanted freedom. Learnt from history many of the older generation that have witnessed the war and after knew of how CCP and army worked.
No 1 wanted a death sentence either. Those have worked in the mainland know the "law" doesn't exist as it does in the West (including HK at the time). Gang activity vastly dropped post-1997 because of a fear of the death sentence. A lot of them and their money left for other countries.
British HK was an act of aggression and a national humiliation for China.
The ROC/Taiwan was also happy to see the British go and their regret was that the communists succeeded where they had failed (and in fact did nothing at all as all foreign settlements were kicked out by the PRC).
Why would ROC/Taiwan be happy about it? It helps distract the PRC from ROC/Taiwan. The focus has shifted to Taiwan recently because HK has been "dealt with".
British HK was an humiliation for China. That does not mean for the PRC, that does mean China as a whole and a whole people. Both sides for the straight were glad to see the British go.
It's a lack of cultural and historical understanding not to realise that.
Likewise the focus since 1949 has always been Taiwan. It's HK that has been used as a distraction and 'tool' by the West.
Your statement does not falsify the quoted statement; both can be true that the ROC would not surrender and that China might inevitably absorb Taiwan. If we want to get really pedantic, no timeline was also stated, so this could also be 50 to 500 years from now.
Your comment is indeed pedantic and misses the point.
Obviously, the context the meaning was that there was a cause to effect link between how things were going in China and, especially HK, and the likelihood of a reunification with Taiwan.
So I pointed out that the situation in HK is not really relevant because, even if it had gone perfectly 'well' the ROC would still never had surrendered to the communists. The bottom line is that regime change on the mainland is a necessary condition.
> it’s a bastion of a mandarin-speaking democracy, or in software terms a hard fork of an alternate reality of what China could have been. It has cultivated its own culture, and retained elements of Chinese culture cancelled during the cultural revolution.
How would you wrap Singapore into your comment? I was recently there and took note of what looked like significant Chinese cultural influence almost everywhere.
Unlike Taiwan, Singapore is a multi-ethnic state where English is the lingua franca, and the government has a very heavy focus on racial harmony etc.
Also, Singaporean of Chinese descent are generally not huge fans of China. While some older folks have drunk the CCP Kool-Aid, among the young there is a lot of straight up racism/prejudice against "PRCs" (mainlanders), especially around ten years ago when there was a huge wave of immigrants, many of whom didn't even try to assimilate (learning English etc). Taiwan, by contrast, is viewed very favorably.
Singapore is a republic with a large population of the Chinese diaspora. However, the control of government under its system has not changed parties since its independence from the UK (whether you agree or not, some have called it de facto single party state). Chinese culture is weaved extensively into its culture, including Chinese character names in identification cards for those that identify as Chinese ethnicity.
I have many Singaporean friends of Chinese ethnicity, and most would see themselves distinct from China—not Chinese but of Chinese heritage.
Singapore is a complex beast. On the one hand, all the political tools to kick the PAP out exist. Elections are free albeit not entirely fair.
That said the PAP has used the legal system to exclude opposition candidates and the election districts are gerrymandered [0].
But even with these issues resolved I believe the PAP would still win elections [1]. They've steered the economy well. The PAP regularly receive praise here on HN because of their effective technocracy.
> But even with these issues resolved I believe the PAP would still win elections
It only takes one person going "rogue" to topple this system of trust. Is it so hard to imagine that not all authoritarian systems could be continuously benevolent?
You’re right of course but I think the more likely cause will be typical. A policy misstep, political scandal, protests, external factors etc. The PAP will be booted out democratically if it happens at all.
But having a party that can, during the "good times" manipulate the situation, such that during a bad time, they can still stay in power. Aka, they only "pull the trigger" after they know they'd be kicked out, thus preventing themselves from getting kicked out.
Which is why the preparations should be prevented, even against someone who seems benevolent at the time.
and it's not just one of those fake democracy - it's as free as a true democratic country can be, as experienced anecdotally and demonstrated in their constant top 3 finish in Freedom Index.
I watched a Taiwanese election in Taiwan. I observed their polling stations. A Taiwanese citizen started a conversation and educated me, an American, on democracy and elections.
This Taiwanese person told me that elections are for the loser. If the loser does not believe in the validity of the election, it serves no purpose.
That's why electronic voting machines are anti-thetical to the purpose of an election. Electronic voting machines exchange trust for a more efficient election. That is why Taiwan does not use electronic voting machines.
That is a pretty impressive insight that was absent from my American civic education. I was very impressed with the civic education in Taiwan, and I was impressed with the average level of education in Taipei.
My subjective experience as an American was that Democracy is more healthy in Taiwan than it is in America.
Have to agree, from study in Taiwan, life in the PRC, Hong Kong, and South Korea over decades: democracy in Taiwan is healthier than that in the U.S.
For the skeptical, check out videos of how ballots are counted in Taiwan. Individual ballots are lifted out on the ballot box, one-by-one, and held up for any and all observers to verify. Compare this to how the matter is typically conducted in the U.S., in near-secrecy behind closed doors, involving convoluted use of a congeries of machines, having closed-source software.
every single election in the US is subject to a complete audit after the fact. counting quickly and verifying accurately after the fact are not mutually exclusive.
If you're an American, you'll be all too aware of what a mess the US electoral system is, subject to varying rules across thousands of jurisdictions, large and small, and involving now prolonged "early voting", "absentee voting" for a wide variety of reasons, mail in ballots only for some states, little or no ID verification for some states, outdated voter rolls, legal "ballot harvesting" etc.
Growing up we used to politely nod at the common belief that the 1960 presidential race (Kennedy vs. Nixon) was decided by Mayor Daley's corrupt intervention in Chicago. And, of course, the wild 2000 Gore vs. Bush race decided in Florida further eroded hugely trust in the electoral system. And etc. etc.
Considering how close you came to a coup and how the elected president could spend months trying to destroy democracy while also personally using his power and influence to try to sway local officials, it doesn’t seem like the complete audit isn’t really helping. Especially when 40%+ of the population thinks those audits are manufactured lies from main stream media.
How is the coup narrative so pervasive? There was no institutional support, nobody got killed except for a rioter, they all cleared out promptly by curfew. By all indications it was a riot and a pretty mild one at that given the previous summer. How is that a coup?
We know what rioters are capable of when they actually want to overthrow govt: look at the autonomous zones and capitals that got ransacked in the upper north west (Seattle, Portland, etc). Those were over weeks where cops weren't allowed into entire city blogs, they declared themselves autonomous, and people were killed to that ends. They also received tons of institutional support from media, politicians, and wealthy people.
I don't get how any honest assessment takes the actions by the partisans in DC as a coup. At LEAST the other riots were coups too, or more truly, only the leftist partisan riots can be considered attempted local coups given their stated goals and actions.
If you remember how the narrative evolved in real-time: in the preceding months the talking point was "only leftists riot", then on the capital riot and following days, the dominant narrative was "SEE! right wing people ALSO riot". Only days after that did the language start to coalesce around "actually this was was a COUP", and even then it was seen as hyperbolic even on reddit. Now it's been repeated so many times it's just taken as fact.
Even a successful coup is possible with no one getting killed;
> they all cleared out promptly by curfew
Because the coup attempt had already failed.
> By all indications it was a riot and a pretty mild one at that given the previous summer. How is that a coup?
“Coup” is not defined by intensity but by objective. The overtly intent was to use intimidation and/or violence against government officials to coerce a rejection of the electoral votes from sufficient states to allow the sitting President to extend his term nothwithstanding having been defeated in the election, at the instigation of the sitting President. It is a textbook autocoup attempt by its goals and ultimate instigation, which failed because the rioters were held back long enough for members of Congress to escape, but not by a wide margin.
Was it a hastily conceived, poorly coordinated, amateurish autocoup attempt? Yes, absolutely. Does that reduce its severity as a crime? No, no it doesn’t.
> I don't get how any honest assessment takes the actions by the partisans in DC as a coup.
It was a coup attempt, specifically an attempted autocoup. It wasn't a coup, because it failed.
> At LEAST the other riots were coups
No, none of those were coups, or even coup attempts. (The “Autonomous Zone” might be viewed as a hyperlocalized secession attempt, but that’s a distinct thing from a coup, seeking to separate territory from the control of an established government, not unlawfully take or extend control of said government.)
Why did the "coup" fail? We've all seen the videos, police never really showed up in force, army never showed up, national guard never showed up. It ended because...people went home. If it were actually an attempted coup, why didn't they dig in? Why didn't a single politician back them?
You just seem convinced of a coup and nothing will shake you. What did they do that was wholly different from a regular riot? Even on the inside they're just taking photos and walking around.
I think you are oriented for defending the American election. I think a better way to orient is to compare how Taiwanese elections are run to how American elections are run.
My assertion is that Taiwanese elections are much more simple and therefore much more understandable and much more trustable. American elections might be cheaper per capita.
If we are choosing a method of elections that is more complex and results in less trust, why are we doing it that way?
In many places in the US you cannot bring your children with you to vote. So many people rely on public schools as day care so that they can vote. In places that cancelled school on election day recently (people vote at schools often, and there were security concerns after recent shootings), the voter turnout was lower in segments of the population that statistically are less likely to have family/partner available to watch children, or the means to pay for childcare.
I think it is fair to restate that your argument is: "Because there are classes of people who cannot vote because children are restricted in voting areas, election day should not be a federal holiday."
I am having a little trouble taking that in good faith. For one, the evidence presented is not of a holiday shared by everyone (friends who could watch kids, partners who also have jobs, etc).
That's before asking if it's right that children cannot be with you to vote or if that could be done better. That's before asking if there was higher turnout in other groups, like underpaid teachers.
That really wasn't my argument at all. In so far as I had one. The US system has so many more severe issues that a holiday seems minor and it is somewhat complex as an issue. Letting a parent bring in five children probably does create concerns as well.
Other than bankers and people who work for the government (like teachers) few people get government holidays in my experience. There is a surge of temporary daycare workers for those days so parents can still go to work. Poorer parents dread those days. Public school, especially post pandemic has turned into free childcare and little more due to teacher shortages.
Early voting seems like a good thing to continue to me.
Fixing the issues that make your vote irrelevant at the national level unless you live anywhere but a very short list of places would be much higher on my list than a holiday. The gerrymandering is painfully obvious on the voting maps.
How hard an election is to rig is not the issue,itshow obviously unriggable it appears to the losing voters. That's the (well, an) important thing the American system is missing.
I disagree. There was no evidence of fraud in 2020, yet the losing party at 80-90% rate still believes it was stolen. At that point, there's nothing that can be done to dissuade.
I thought there was evidence of fraud in 2020, but the problem was that the "evidence" was bogus. One of the complaints I remember was that the results swung sharply from one side to the other at some point in the reporting process, but that of course was because the initial results were from in-person voting, and the mail-in/drop-in votes were counted last, so when those results were added, then suddenly the "blue" candidates were winning, because the red voters tended to vote in-person far more than their blue counterparts. The red voters somehow refuse to believe this however and think the election was rigged.
> If the loser does not believe in the validity of the election, it serves no purpose.
The idea seems correct, however, unsure how electronic voting machine comes into the picture, perhaps only in a mental sense, but people have shown that they will not believe in the validity of the election regardless of the evidence presented.
> 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.
This might sound snide, but I assure you I am asking in good faith to prove a point. What does it mean to audit the election, without skipping the complexity?
A few questions I would expect to be answered:
How do we know all votes cast were legitimate?
How do we know that the voting machines recorded votes correctly?
How do we know the auditors are good faith actors?
How do we know ballots weren't lost/delayed (mail in)?
How do we know legitimate looking votes were cast by the right person?
My overall assertion is not that we can't know. It's that voting is so complex that this can't be easily explained in a satisfying way to (or by) a layman. It's so complex that "trust" is a core part of the election process.
Should I have to take a quarter long class in election mechanics to be satisfied that our voting system is legitimate? That's a bit of hyperbole, but I truly don't know how our elections work and I don't think I could understand them in an afternoon and it doesn't have to be that way.
Taiwan's elections are simple and self-evident. American elections are extremely complex and require trust in institutions.
Taiwan's elections optimize for trust. America's elections optimize for cost. Trust is priceless.
I really would like an explanation of what audit means. I am open to the idea of being surprised by a satisfying answer, but I am also asking because I don't think the answer will be satisfying.
> I really would like an explanation of what audit means. I am open to the idea of being surprised by a satisfying answer, but I am also asking because I don't think the answer will be satisfying.
Every electronic vote has a physical record, and is checked against each other. Fraud/mistakes occur, but never at the scale to shift any election.
Ok, a global wikipedia article. Is there any example in the US of fraud existing at a scale that once audited could have changed the outcome on an election?
That's an hour long technical read. Do you think your average person with high school or a GED as their highest level of education or less, ~40% of the country, is going to be able to read such a meaty document and make sense of it?
8% of Americans are basically illiterate. 54% read below a 6th grade level.
I am not trying to attack you with that statement. This is a statement form one liberal to someone else I perceive as liberal leaning:
Your education privilege is off the charts.
We could have a system like Taiwan, but instead we have an electronic voting system. How do they compare and contrast? Why were electronic voting machines pushed on us? Which one has better understand-ability properties? Which one has better trust properties? What are the properties of electronic voting machines that make them desirable? Why do we have to convince people that voting machines are good (implying a lot of people don't think they are)?
Fully electronic voting cannot be inspected sufficiently to audit. Too many points of failure, too many blackboxes, no way to detect failures.
This has been thoroughly, repeatedly, exhaustively researched and debated. Which is why most jurisdictions (in the USA) have returned to paper ballots.
> people have shown that they will not believe in the validity of the election regardless of the evidence presented.
This is misleading. The vast majority will have had no exposure to that evidence (there's no big stage you can do convincing presentations on that everyone will see).
Heck, I wouldn't know how to go about finding that evidence atm.
Democracy is about submission of the minority. To believe in democracy means to believe that when you are in the minority, you must submit to things you disagree with. There is grey area around human rights and bad faith legislation/corruption.
If I don't trust the election, that means I don't believe I'm actually in the minority, and if I don't believe I am in the minority, then I am being subjugated and oppressed by people who are using power to get their way rather than a mandate from the people to execute the people's will.
I am extremely liberal and Trump is the avatar of everything that I hate, but I don't believe the election is legitimate either. A sitting president called an election official to sway the election, and 2 years later it's not clear there are going to be any consequences. The mechanics of mail in ballots was messed with during an election cycle, and the person who did that is still in control of the postal system. If there are no timely consequences for attempting to cheat, how can you trust the integrity of the system? I don't. There are clearly no checks and balances for actual and obvious attempts to manipulate elections.
I think you can talk to just about anyone who works in security and they will tell you there is no reason to trust voting machines. On slashdot, the technical community nearly universally said "this is a bad idea" when Diebold voting machines were first adopted. That sentiment has been strong through technical communities for a long time. Even today, I think if you asked HN "from a technical point of view are voting machines a good idea?" there would be a resounding, absolutely not.
Because we won, it's less of an issue for us, but had we lost, we would question the results too. We would look around us and experience that no one else liked trump and ask "how can these results be legitimate" too, the same way they look at the people around them and go "everyone liked trump, how can these results be legitimate?" He called a Georgian election official, are we sure that didn't work? Did he call other state's officials and we didn't hear about it because it did work? How do we know? How do we know Biden didn't do that?
Denial is the first stage of grief.
> people have shown that they will not believe in the validity of the election regardless of the evidence presented.
You are failing to have empathy for these people. Evidence cannot be presented, because the mechanics of elections are not able to produce evidence. I am a well educated US citizen, but I think our elections amount to "trust us." Of course people don't believe evidence presented, because the evidence amounts to "trust us." "Trust this extremely complex system that only a handful of people might know how it functions in depth."
You say "regardless of evidence presented," but what if the system is not actually capable of producing satisfying evidence? What if the evidence is actually not satisfying? What if there were systems that could be satisfying, bit this one isn't able to be?
In Taiwan I could go watch an election and I found the legitimacy of it to be self evident because I found the mechanics of it simple and hard to argue with. I don't think there is anything self-evident about our elections. In America, who runs the voting machines is an important question. In Taiwan, who facilitates the voting stations doesn't make much difference. "Are the voting stations being watched" is an important question in Taiwan. "Are the voting stations being watched" doesn't really make sense here since we have mail in ballots and other methods.
Taiwanese don't have to say "trust us" they can say "go watch the election happen."
A hard pill to swallow for most of liberal America is that conservatives can be right for very wrong reasons. It's easy to say "you don't think the results are legitimate because you lost," it's much harder to say "can somebody in good faith not trust the election results?" "what might we have done to decrease trust in elections?" "Can we make our election system more resistant to claims of bad faith?"
> That's why electronic voting machines are anti-thetical to the purpose of an election
Losers who have stopped believing in elections will complain about any mechanism, be it electronic or analog.
(In the US, they typically don't believe the hand-recounts, either. They do believe in gerrymandering, and disenfranchisement, though, so that's how the game gets played.)
I don't live in Taiwan but my impressions - people are a lot more engaged with politics, general political knowledge and awareness is higher, voter turnout is higher - all of these may be as a result of the ever-looming threat of being subsumed by the mainland, but also maybe an enthusiasm for democracy since it's relatively new to the country!
Taiwan has its issues with first past the post voting, quality of news media and control of media (eg by sketchy foreign corporations) and conga line of infotainment propaganda outlets. There's a big economic incentive in reunificiation for some actors which perverts politics and discourse to an extent.
But to be honest.. America is currently a really low bar for democracy in the first place (speaking as someone living outside USA as well)
Thanks for the feedback. For example, the US Congress really could use some of the technical bureaucratic competence I hear Taiwan has. US institutions are in post-WWII lows right now, which is like a moist, dark, sugary place for attracting larger-than-life-personalities to no ultimate good.
As one smart guy wrote, there's three kinds of power: tradition, institutions, and personality. My coralary: weak institutions attract strong personality.
See the other conversation re: China & Taiwan below. It'd be a shame to see a good thing go away.
It is difficult to get distances in time into my own mind. But for those other than me reading this and having trouble with this mentally. The first democratically elected president in Taiwan in 1996, which was arguably a high point in the democratisation process, is now in 2023 temporally equidistant to the moon landing in 1969 and us in the present.
It's also difficult for societies with populations absorbed deep into their private sphere, with very little feeling for history, how developments 30, 50, or even 100 and 200 years still leave all kinds of traces and influences, materialized in attitudes, political affiliations, laws, and so on.
History is not a "that was back in the day, doesn't matter anymore" affair.
> societies with populations absorbed deep into their private sphere, with very little feeling for history
That doesn't really describe Taiwan. I'm still not sure of the point you're trying to make, but it seems like you are really trying to push down the people who managed to break free of the dictatorship imposed on them for 50 years by the mainlanders who came to Taiwan in 1949.
I'm not sure what your beef really is, but I have yet to read any reason for dismissing the decades old democracy that now exists in Taiwan. People my age might have been born under martial law, but most Taiwanese alive today have lived their whole adult life under this democracy. That's not incompatible with having knowledge of recent history, and Taiwan also has schools.
Your response feels largely tangential to the point I was making: That the 90s feel closer in history than they really are (especially to those of us that “were there”).
It also feels like a borderline attack, implying that I and others are somehow “absorbed deep into their private sphere, with very little feeling for history”. Pretty odd to make a statement like that in response to someone who you know next to nothing about, no? If you want to contribute to a good debate and hope to bring me around to your point of view, I would ask that you try harder.
>Your response feels largely tangential to the point I was making: That the 90s feel closer in history than they really are (especially to those of us that “were there”).
Well, either the point you were making was even more tangential to what was in this thread - a general observation unrelated to what we were discussing, or (as I read it), aside from the literal point, there was a deeper implicit point pertinent to what was discussed.
In this case, I wrote something along the line of "as close as year X, Y was the case", so your response can be read as: "you might think this date is close and thus events from that era still matter, but we tend to overlook how close a period in living memory is, so they matter less than you think".
>Pretty odd to make a statement like that in response to someone who you know next to nothing about, no
It wasn't writing about you, it even explicitly writes "it's difficult for societies with populations (...)". I was writing about a cultural difference.
Certain cultures got it lucky and didn't have much history of the sort to concern with, and so don't have much of a historical perspective (and how history affects the present). It's easier to have that perspective when you have had huge events like wars, dictatorships, and so on in your local livable history, than when you just read about those in the media (if many even do much of that).
You are entitled to your subjective interpretation. But my own reflection was that I perceived 1996 to be closer to the present than 1969 would have been in 1996. Thus I wanted to state a bias that I had discovered in myself, along with a trick to make it more obvious to perceive it.
> It wasn't writing about you, it even explicitly writes "it's difficult for societies with populations (...)". I was writing about a cultural difference.
Your initial response (which is what I responded to) was phrased differently in terms of the first few words. I do not have access to it, but I think my interpretation was more reasonable before you (arguably) improved it.
Regardless, this is greatly diverging from my minute initial observation. Thus I will “leave it here” and look forward to seeing you in another discussion in the future.
Yeah, god forbid somebody doesn't have the US viewpoint on foreign policy and other countries, especially given its excellent track record and how it has fucked up one country after another for a century!
Anybody having different opinions must be burned to the stake!
I don't believe anyone is saying that. Reasonable objection is fine.
However the reductio ad absurdum tactic you employ to dismiss pointing out actual problematic behavior is typical of trolling itself. My opinion? I don't think that's an accident.
"That was then and this is now" is not how it works in such transitions (and after such wide-ranging power and influence of the far right, and such bad blood from the murders and torture). Not any more than it worked for the blacks after 1865 (or 1964 for that matter), to give an example from US history.
Hell, it took decades even for post-WWII Germany to shake the ex-Nazi-high-ranking influence in its politics, media, finances, and so on, and the Nazi rule was just 12 years, and they had far more horribleness and more shame as a motive to stomp out those elements after 1945...
The same has been true in post-Franco Spain, and any other place with such history.
Keep in mind Germany had to deal with the Soviet threat at the same time. Sadly, the communist influence there will take a few more decades to stomp out.
Things seem to have worked out fine for Central and Eastern European post-communist countries. Also Portugal, Greece.
>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 still exists but less overt than pre NSL. Applies to the mainland as well - first exodus of privileged discontent expats who thought they were indispensable in the mid 2010s - only to be replaced by qualified nationals. Think of it as PRC fixing their H1B problem. Something many in tech have comparably aligned opinions on.
E: over comment limit @charlieyu1
That's ~2 years worth of one way permits from PRC. Xi can snap his fingers and send 1M unemployed college educated mainlanders to HK tomorrow if he wants. Let's not pretend it's a big / existential loss, reality is PRC now has an abundance of talent who are much more deserving of living/running HK than most HKers who were merely privileged to be born in a city with constrained immigration requirements that puts mainland hukous system to shame. Under any reasonably fair system, HK should be treated like just ANY OTHER CHINESE CITY, like how under qualified people get squeezed out via gentrification in tier1 cities in every other country leading to local culture changes. It's not pretty, but it's how most of the world functions.
Ultimately HK "culture" is the result of undue privilege enforced by 2 systems that benefit locals and expats instead of 1B+ PRC nationals. Expats I get, because some expertise needs to be imported and you need foreigners in the country for track2 diplomacy. But unlike pre 2000s when PRC human capital was borderline North Korea, there's nothing particularly deserving about a person born and raised in HK anymore. If anything they are increasingly less deserving, with a particularly bad human capita / talent pool. HK _still_ some of the poorest tertiary education statistics by high income standards (~25% when it should be 40-50+%) to stay competitive. Meanwhile PRC is spitting out 8M+ higher-ed a year, there's no reason why HKers or expats should have priority over qualified mainlanders anymore. If HKers want to emigrate, go ahead, there's no shortage of deserving replacements in mainland with 100x more bodies to draw from. For mainlanders, continuing HK privilege simply doesn't make sense anymore.
And the result is mass exodus of Hongkongers, especially the younger generation. 110K people moved to UK alone in the last two years. That's 1.5% of population, and UK alone. People are leaving the city faster than back in East Germany before Berlin Wall.
And why people born and raised in Hong Kong have to give way to privileged mainlanders who don't share any culture with us at all?
They may have moved, but how many will ultimately stay in the UK?
I find that asians often have very rosy ideas about the UK, but once they're here they're bound to notice that it's a decaying shithole and leave. Or maybe commit suicide like that 27 year old woman in London.
UK is far from a decaying shithole and based on recent polling many of the elements of Brexit may possibly be wound back in coming years so its future is far more optimistic.
And yet for all its problems it is still a modern, vibrant, multicultural, successful democracy on the doorstep of Europe. Which is why so many people continue to emigrate there.
It might still be better than Asia with crazy working hours, bosses that call/text you outside of work non-stop, having to attend to work gatherings, working on weekends, etc.
Not like people don't commit suicide elsewhere. UK might not be the best but it's still a lot better than some places.
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.
So are you distinguishing "Cantonese Culture" from "Hong Kong Culture"? Guangzhou (just up the river) has a flourishing Cantonese culture... which is where most of Hong Kong culture came from originally.
So really you are talking about the cultural differences developed from 1950 to now. Which is still quite large because of the cultural revolution... but "Cultural Genocide" seems like not the correct term.
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 the US racial composition going from 75% white to 60% in the same amount of time.
Que similar REEEs from a bunch of young, privileged HK nativist about dirty mainlander shitting on their streets, taking their jobs and leeching their benefits (all somewhat true). But in America/west they're not called freedom fighters, they're called alt right protecting white culture, and (not accusing you) tends to adopt the flippant narrative accusing immigrants mixing their own culture as "cultural genocide". In HK’s case, mainlanders get lumped together, as if there's no regional diversity from a huge country of 1.4B people. It's the familiar culture war pattern of privileged locals mad at poor mainland (Mexicans) doing menial labour while being unsightly eyesores, while skilled mainland labour is taking their jobs and rich mainland pig farmers are buying their penthouses whilst flaunting wealth and reminding locals that HK was great when PRC was poor, so lets make HK great again.
Broad point being, in-demand urban centres in PRC (and around the world) have experienced dramatic shifts in demographics due to rapid urbanization and migration patterns (both domestic and international) causing city folk to collide with country bumpkins or dominant supremacists with ethnicities they find "inferior". But most places largely integrate while life and culture moves on. Until the alt right, or those nativists/localists parallels in HK politicize en masse and rally against filthy foreigners (alien mainland "locusts") and lose their shit and burn down the city over the fact that culture is changing to accommodate/reflect these inferior outgroups.
I'm not even unsympathetic to groups including in the west who think identity / culture has changed too much too fast. But I'm also not going to shed tears after they get stomped when they operationalize their nativism. 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. From a mainland perspective, the alternative vision of a British HK, lashing out to forever be untouched from 99% of "one" country, is absurd.
> 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, Twitter, Instagram, etc in China? No.
- Do you get a death sentence in China? Yes.
- If you say something against the current government can you get arrested? Yes.
- Do you know what happened to Jack Ma and many others?
- Can you move your hard earned money out of China?
And lots more...
No it's not the same. HK provided what China mainland couldn't. It was seen as a paradise at 1 point and PRC wanted to get rid of this superiority. It made more $$$, had better jobs, better lifestyle, etc. People wanted to go here like in the "gold rush". The hype train was setting foot on HK = getting rich. Of course this didn't happen. This created a huge divide.
It's not that the culture changed. It's not that things moved fast. It's that it's driven away the essence of what made HK great.
And it's not like Americans don't complain about Mexicans. Trump even wanted to build his own wall :)
Nativist attitude predated NSL, when HK had their obscene privileges and responded to rapid shift in culture due to mainland immigration by shitting on the outgroup like many groups in the west in the last decade. The original post touches on why - HK supremacy where taxi drivers can afford to have multiple mainland mistresses like the 90s ended as PRC caught up. Incidentally PRC tier 1/2 is where $$$ 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.
> 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.
No, that's the OG 1C2S vision, and frankly anyone with half a brain should understand why. HK was to implement NSL on her own, with PRC having unilateral ability to implement if HK politics took too long or security situation dictates. Boils down to this:
PRC gave HK 20 YEARS. 20 YEARS where HK existed in a national security state of exception where they can operate as a spyhub into PRC and HKers can conspire with foreign influence consequence free. That patience/benevolence on the CCP part is bordering on retarded. Literally no country in the world that's not a basket case would allow such a lapse in security to exist. Including HK under british admin. Every CCP leader since handover has hounded HK to pass NSL on their own. They failed, because they never took 1C part of 2S seriously. HK is wrong because when given the opportunity to govern itself, it failed with respect to national security, which is near #1 thing on the list of sovereign priorities.
Of course the west/US looks at this absurd situation and tries to defend it because it benefits them. But it’s not complicated - national security oversight applies to all subjects and every inch of a sovereign soil is the norm. HK is not special in that way anymore, but IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSE TO BE,
>turning a blind eye to it all
It's mild because most they did was arrest and purge a bunch of compromised candidates with connections abroad, again treason. Incumbent HK political class drunk on western influence was overdue for purge post NSL, like why would anyone allow compromised candidates to run for office? Except PRC did for 20 years, leading to accumulation of rot. ~200 arrested and ~125 charged almost 3 years post NSL is kid gloves.
>Trump and anything else is treason
I'm saying storming the capitol hill / legco in HK will get your movement stomped regardless of affiliations. Heads roll when gov building starts being attacked.
It's so interesting to read this perspective since it drives home "the grass is always greener.." for me.
I've lived a pretty charmed life in the US for the past few years (like the majority of HN, I imagine) but I find myself longing to move to a country with dense cities, affordable housing in the city center, great public infrastructure and a modicum of agreement among the citizens and China fits the bill pretty great for me. I understand that it might come at the cost of some personal freedom but I'm willing to pay that price for a great society in return. But reading this makes me think this is part of "the human condition" - the more time we spend in a bubble in a place, the more we either become blind to it's shortcomings or become overly rosy about a foreign place that would solve all our problems.
As a sidenote, the author says he does not like his kids playing "war" in Chinese playgrounds - I wonder how he will feel about the active shooter drills that are now part of every kids life in the US.
Ahh yes, China, with its brutal Darwinian rush hour on the metro. The experience of needing to shove aside a 70 year old women with her grocery trolley who doesn't understand you need to wait until people get off before you get on.
That affordable downtown housing which is on par with costs in Manhattan, where you'll hear someone renovating until 9pm every night and smell the sewage gas wafting from bathroom drains because what's a u-trap and inadequate underlying infrastructure.
Agreement between citizens that if they can cheat the laowai, or any mark really, or cut someone's line then they will.
Try living there for a bit. It's nice enough if you don't mind seeing the sun a few weeks a year through the smog.
China is actually fun to live in, but it's not a good place to live if you value your health, physical or mental. At least not the cities.
The bathroom drain thing is so true. I documented that in a bunch of cities all the way from Xinjiang to Beijing. I don't get why they don't install u-traps. There were a couple of my hotels that had them, but most did not. This includes someone's home I stayed in.
When I asked a local about it they got very angry, like I was insulting them. The need to save face in China is real. But I get it, "who is this American who thinks they can tell us how to do things?"
I didn't find the smog to be bad everywhere, though. Beijing was pretty bad in the morning/early afternoon. But from what I remember Chengdu was nice smog/weather wise.
They sell fake pregnancy pillows in China to put in your belly to get people to give you a seat on the metro. Of course that doesn't really work as soon as people knew about it.
I'd encourage you to study Mandarin for a year or so and look into what the non-influencer set is saying about China. My first trip to China was in 1999 and my last in 2019. That was a time of amazing freedom and growth. Beijing went from bicycles to cars to subways and everything was growing. It's not like that now, youth unemployment is very high, foreigners are not welcome, and you really can't imagine the political and economic situation you're walking into. One simply does not publicly discuss problems there without considering the consequences.
Columbine was 1999. I think he'll be more surprised by the level of political division and general impoliteness there is in the US.
This goes way further than most to explain "Chinese characteristics" (my term usage not link's).
China is very complex and belies any simple summary. I definitely think it's a vastly smarter state than Russia... who by comparison it must now regard as a baby sitting project.
This hits home for me a lot. I've lived in Spain, Argentina and Finland, all in hoping to fill whatever gap I thought it would, whether that would be life quality, weather, culture or whatever. But after the honeymoon period, the cracks started to show at every place. I'm now back in my home country, Estonia, which I (now) think is the best for me - but that creeping feeling of something better being somewhere out there is hard to shake, and still with me, even as I try to not think about that.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm Indian and I'm on my third country I've lived in now. I'm beginning to think I should learn to be optimistic and appreciative about wherever I live than trying to find that perfect country to settle down :)
I don't agree. Yes in one sense people are all the same. But differences in each country really do matter. As do cultural differences.
I grew up in the US but I've lived in South Africa for nearly 10 years. I've also lived in Switzerland and Mexico.
So I've seen enough of a range of how people live to know there are better and worse conditions. Maybe there is no true perfect country or culture, but there are definitely tradeoffs.
You might love the culture and hate the government, or love the government but hate the culture.
Like I love how friendly South Africans are, but my God the government is so corrupt. I love how the Swiss government works, but Swiss people aren't known for being easy to make friends with. God forbid you flush the toilet after 10pm.
So depending on what you are optimizing for, some places really are better than others.
This a a strange postmodern take. All places and cultures are really equal?
Maybe Im missing your point, but to take a hyperbolic example, surely you wouldn't live in north Korea and say "There is no place, and no time, where people are better than what you see before you right now."
I have no reason to think people in North Korea aren't just as nice and just as terrible as people in Seattle or anywhere else, really. The political system in North Korea is atrocious, but the point was that people are people.
My counterpoint is that while "people are people", they are impacted and influenced by their material, cultural, and political circumstances.
People can become hardened, callous, mean, and damaged to a greater or lesser degree in durable ways that outlast political circumstance.
If you beat and abuse a child, and that child will be more likely to beat and abuse others. This is called the cycle of violence. You can absolutely have times and places where this is more or less prevalent.
"people are people" on a slave plantation as well, but their behavior is not the same as those living in Seattle. If you flipped a switch on the political system overnight, the people would not flip with it. You might expect to see trauma and damage to impact behavior for generations to come, even if you magically teleported them to Seattle.
I know families that fled the cultural revolution in China, and it still has behavioral impacts on people 60 years later, including children who have never even been to China. Many viewed their neighbors as threats, thieves, and informants and are less "nice" to strangers as a result. It changed who they are as people in durable ways that outlasted the causal circumstance, and informed how they teach their children to treat strangers living in Seattle 60 years later.
Surely you can imagine a place where conditions are not conducive to "being nice" and as a result, people are less nice overall. You might see the same absolute range, with examples of extreme kindness or terrible behavior, but the mean and typical behavior can be shifted.
I understand and agree with what you said. But I'd say what you're describing is how people are affected in a superficial level. In the façade they present to strangers. However, I interpreted the original post to mean that, in an intimate level (within a group of friends who trust each other), it won't be that different. But yes, it may be that you are in a place where for whatever reason you can't form meaningful relationships with others. Usually that happens to people who leave their countries, rather than the ones who stay. But sometimes, it can be the other way around.
Anyway, I think the original point is that you really live in the small group of friends and your interactions with strangers, while also part of life, it's less meaningful. So, you can find a culture that matches you more closely, but unless the culture you are in is completely disgusting to you, you're probably optimising the wrong thing.
Yeah I think you get my point. I was mostly objecting to the strict equivalence they were claiming. Across cultures you will find some relative constants in human behavior. For example, Most people love their children no matter where you go, but even that can mean different things depending on the norms and that culture.
I would push back a little bit on the idea that these differences are purely superficial. Humans can have real cultural differences regarding where they find meaning in life, how they relate to others in society, and if they ever find satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment in their own lives.
Just because such differences can not be summed and weighed against each other to determine which culture is "better", does not mean they are the same.
This is the post-modern sentiment that I reject. E.G the differences can not be compared so therefore they are the same.
That's very interesting, what made you leave those countries? Argentina likely has money issues, but the other two come very "highly recommended" (high quality of life, law & order, etc), especially Finland.
Argentina has big economical issues indeed, and the resulting inconveniences were what drove me away eventually, and yet out of everywhere I've been, Argentina has had by far the friendliest people I've ever met, and the easiest people to make friends with.
Spain (the government and regulations around renting places) was unfriendly to newcomers as its a very socialist country and not very welcoming to digital nomads. Everything there is built in a way to expect a local bank account, local job, etc. From the moment of trying to get a local ID card it was clear that you were not really wanted there. Processes made purposely difficult and requirements differ from police station to police station. Beautiful country, but given that I do not intend to stop working remotely as a contractor it made basic things there very difficult. Spain is quite corrupt however so if you have money you _can_ get around these issues via some lawyer agencies who get you through the door in a matter of days of what otherwise can be a half-year wait in queue, but I just found the system fighting me too much.
Finland is great though, everything runs efficiently, most of everything can be done online, just like in Estonia, but much like Estonia, very difficult to make friends and the culture in general is quite closed and people keep to themselves a lot. Most people I know here have had the same friends since highschool. So when it came down to Finland or Estonia, I just chose the one I already had friends at.
Probably both. Escaping the routine, boring familiarity and searching for that one place where I'd be perfectly content with existence, but that in itself I have come to find is probably not possible to achieve because of the very nature of being human. Being self-aware is such a curse sometimes.
You’re not just paying in your own freedoms. You’re paying in the freedoms of others, like the Muslims that the Chinese government have decided aren’t compatible with the “great society” that you seek.
There are worse places for muslims than China as far as human rights are concerned. I feel the whole muslim issue in China is just a pretext. Have we forgot about Saudi Arabia or whatever mess is left in Afghanistan?
Well, if you would keep signaling your six year old and ignore the "deeds" of his little brother I would say you are biased and have something against your six years old.
Also what made you punish the bad behaviour all of a sudden?
It's not like China was a beacon of human rights until "now".
I don't think SA is really a little brother either. They still behead people in public squares. The whole "human rights" issue in China is really just a pretext and use of U.S soft power to isolate China. But "everyone" know that at stake is really the economic and millitary rivality. The U.S couldn't really care less about the muslims in China. Just look how much it cares about women in Afghanistan. Let's stop pretending we are little children. China is starting to influence our way of life and we should push against that but I just hate the B.S pretexts. It feels like propaganda and we hate propaganda, don't we?
I'm just saying that it's a pretext.
Like China would start saying the world should stop trading with the U.S until the U.S fixes the mess it did in Iraq(i.e war reparations).
In 2014 I worked with a company in Beijing for a few weeks. The local engineers all had pretty long and packed subway commutes from various outer developments, so my first guess would be that "affordable housing in the city center" is long gone for most major cities.
The surface-level infrastructure was interesting, it felt like Los Angeles - much more than it did Manhattan or SF aboveground - just blown up 3-to-5x. Wider streets with more lanes of cars, big mega apartment complexes just all four times taller than the common 5-story ones, etc.
+1, at least anecdotally, at least in T1 cities: I spent a few months in Shanghai for work in 2018 and all of my local colleagues had messed up housing situations of one flavor or another. One guy lived alone in a shoebox but when he had a free weekend, he'd take the train ~2h out to a smaller city where his family lived in a decent house. There were also a lot of complaints about apartment quality even/especially in new construction.
The drive from central-ish Shanghai (Wujiaochang) to PVG was mindblowing because of the scale and frequency of the apartment megablocks ringing the city: identical enormous tower after identical enormous tower, lining the wide (but at the time oddly empty) thoroughfares. Felt like an alt opening scene to a Judge Dredd movie.
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 somewhere to do our laundry, we have laundry machines, we aren't poor" - while since a lot of US cities are older in the dense parts of town, laundry machines in-unit were less common even for sometimes pretty pricey places.
One of my big takeaways is that development is a lot easier and cheaper than redevelopment. Building a ton of new housing? Put in today's amenities! It might be crappy quality even in "luxury" new construction (whether here or there) but it's gonna be a lot easier than retrofitting into a bunch of units from 50 years ago. Want a QR-code/app-based payment system to take off? It's gonna be easier if you're one of the first widespread options to replace cash (like in China at the time) vs if you're competing with ubiquitous credit/debit cards in the US. Really illustrative of how things are path-dependent - and why I'm bearish on "super apps" replacing what we already have here.
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.
Sorry, too colloquial: "messed up" == unusually high rent-to-income ratios comparable to expensive Western cities, resulting in the same sorts of compromises and dissatisfaction found in those circumstances - basically what you said.
"identical enormous tower after identical enormous tower"
That's the drukkhar architecture (we'll get to hear this word more often in the future). They are only missing giant grey flat-top pyramids: jusy as cold, efficient and brutalistic.
The same thing is common in the US, it's just "a complex of ten identical four story apartment buildings" or "an HOA development of nothing but three distinct similar house plans over and over and over again all the same color."
It's efficiency (fewer variants to make) + risk-minimization (design as a way of offending as few as possible for $$$ maximization instead of a way of expressing something).
The reality is someone have pay for those beautiful infrastructure, not going to be the incumbents due to political arrangment, then it’s the vulnerable newcomers shouldering all of it. Just think about those terrifying condo prices.
There are so many great countries/cities in Europe for exactly what you are looking for! And much more. You will avoid all the negative points from China that someone listed on another comment. While improving your life beyond work. 1-3 hours to so many wide destinations from Paris to London, Amsterdam, Oslo, Jerusalem… All while beyond guns you will have same to more freedom. Less crime. On the health side unless you need the best surgeon in the field, you will find overall better healthcare across all level. Education is great to on part with the best (for kids with countries like Norway or Sweden it’s definitely the best. Others are catching up). And I can go on and on with cost of living compare to major US cities, the variety of cultures, landscapes, way of life etc… all packed in a US size continent.
I think if Americans are easy to the idea to leave the US and sacrifice some things, they will find a wide range of interesting opportunities.
Europe is definitely on my list! Some things like economic conditions in the likes of UK and Germany give me pause, but I would love to live in all these different places and experience life there. Such a short life and so many places to be (and such tedious immigration forms)!
> I understand that it might come at the cost of some personal freedom but I'm willing to pay that price for a great society in return.
Does China provide that? Honest question, I don't know much about it.
I visited Beijing once, and it ranks on the bottom of the cities I'd like to live in. Of course, it's just my personal impression and Beijing is obviously not representative of the whole China.
Serious question, if you have to sacrifice personal freedom, what does the great society look like you are willing to sacrifice it for? What freedoms are you willing to give up for what societal benefit?
I’m genuinely curious because every person defines personal freedom differently. And great society is very subjective.
I appreciate your question because I have spent a lot of time in the past thinking about this :)
> I’m genuinely curious because every person defines personal freedom differently. And great society is very subjective.
I couldn't agree more! I believe that all of us have to give up some personal freedom if we want to live in a functional society. I may want to blast music from my rooftop at 3AM but I must curb that urge out of respect for the society I live in. How much of this personal freedom we are willing to give up is different for different people. On this spectrum, I think I lie towards giving up more if it gives me a comfortable society in return.
I am willing to mask up if it means that fewer people in my vicinity may "possibly" get sick less. I am okay with video cameras and facial recognition in public places if it means less crime in my neighborhood. I am willing to pay more taxes if it means public infrastructure can be improved and schools can get better teachers. I might be wrong though, because these things can clearly be taken to an extreme.
Are you really giving up personal freedom if you’re consciously deciding not to do something out of consideration for others?
Usually it becomes a problem because you are infringing on someone else’s personal freedom. So it’s still about maximizing personal freedom in that case.
I appreciate your perspective, because it's one that I've so often found confounding.
> I think I lie towards giving up more if it gives me a comfortable society in return
It seems like you are very practical minded, which I appreciate.
I think the fundamental skepticism that those of us who tend to be more "libertarian" minded is whether you're actually getting value in return for giving up liberties.
> I am willing to mask up if it means that fewer people in my vicinity may "possibly" get sick less.
I think this was the mentality of the majority of people who supported universal masking, and I think it came from a genuinely good place. The issue that I had with it was the lack of evidence to support universal masking, and the draconian implementation without regard to potential negative consequences. It struck me at the time as being the TSA of pandemic response, more theater than effective intervention. Time and research seem to have borne this out.
> I am okay with video cameras in public places if it means less crime in my neighborhood.
Except they don't on their own [1], but they are an incredible weapon and boost in power granted to the surveillance state.
> I am willing to pay more taxes if it means public infrastructure can be improved and schools can get better teachers.
The relationship between taxes and education outcomes is complex (at best) [2], and you need only live in the North East for a short period of time, pay those exorbitant taxes and drive 95 and the Jersey Turnpike to understand that higher taxes don't necessarily translate to better infrastructure.
Drive from New Mexico, through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama to Florida sometime and compare the roads and bridges.
I've lived all over the U.S. and experienced the difference between many states. They each have unique challenges, but I can tell you one rule that's held true in all my travels: granting more power and money to the government past a certain point doesn't translate into a better quality of life for the people.
I do live in the North east so I partially understand. I would love to go around more of the US and understand these differences. Thank you for your measured response!
"As a sidenote, the author says he does not like his kids playing "war" in Chinese playgrounds - I wonder how he will feel about the active shooter drills that are now part of every kids life in the US. Note: I'm not Chinese."
Well obviously, since if you were Chinese you'd know that kids in China are doing drills to protect themselves against psychos with knives who attack schools. Like actual grownups with machetes randomly killing children. Those attacks are happening all the time by the way.
There's a wonderful skit from Portlandia about a couple who visit Spain and come back and everything is now a reflection of what they saw there. They can't help but talk about it... constantly.
I think it's hard to really "know" a place, and frankly your experience anywhere will vary.
Looks like you got a lot of replies so good comment from that point of view. Provocative.
There's a simple way to navigate what you are talking about - look at actual immigrants. People vote with their feet and there's still a ton of Chinese and everyone else trying to come to the US, hardly a trickle going the other way.
Living in the US is amazing. Most of the problems that you are aware of aren't actually impacting you or anyone you know (like, school shootings are clearly top of mind for you but have you met anyone who met anyone affected by one? Probably not.)
I've lived in China and I can tell you, you will NOT like China especially for the reasons you've stated.
China has a ton of problems that aren't readily apparent unless you are feet on the ground. The majority of the culture of china is, "dog eat dog" in that you will be scammed and taken advantage of unless you speak fluent Mandarin.
You will run into problems with excessive Chinese bureaucracy both with the government and services you need. The only way to break through is with a bribe.
Things we take for granted like food and product safety are secondary.
In the first month, I got incredibly sick for a food born parasite (this was from a good grocery store too nonetheless).
Don't ever eat from street vendors (google gutter oil).
You also run the risk of getting physically attacked when relations with America are rough. I heard stories of a guy that got jumped by a group of chinese men after Trump was elected. He didn't even vote for him and the police did not care.
China is the type of place you visit, make a bunch of money, and get out.
In all honesty, you'd be happier living in a 2nd or 3rd tier Benelux or Dach town.
Thank you for sharing your experience - I appreciate that a lot of my views around China (and even DACH where I've also considered moving to) may be too rosy. I will definitely visit any place a few times before I move there!
> but I find myself longing to move to a country with dense cities, affordable housing in the city center, great public infrastructure and a modicum of agreement among the citizens and China fits the bill pretty great for me. I understand that it might come at the cost of some personal freedom but I'm willing to pay that price for a great society in return.
Hope you are white. If so, I'm certain you'll have a great experience. You'll be shown the modernity and good side of living under the regime, and probably made to believe they are the rightful holders of the "Mandate of Heaven". Make sure to stay in Han dominated areas, and don't document of film anything that could make the regime lose face.
> Note: I'm not Chinese.
Why are you explicitly spelling it out? So we don't immediately assume this is propaganda?
Don't worry. If they like you enough, you'll even get paid for comments like these!
Here's my opinion on how China scores against your criteria:
- Dense cities: Yes. I grew up in the suburbs and love the density here and how walkable everything is.
- Affordable housing: A good place in a popular location in Beijing or Shanghai is about $2k USD a month. You can get that down to $1k if you have roommates.
- Great public infrastructure: public transit, yes, but I rarely need to take that anymore. Public parks aren't great. You can't drink the tap water.
- Modicum of agreement: political discussion is so thoroughly suppressed that we all engage in self-censorship. I guess that could be called "agreement", but when I think of agreement I think of a place like New Zealand.
Here are the great things you're maybe not seeing:
- There's a bit of friction in everything in daily life, and that somehow makes life more enjoyable for some kinds of people (including myself). I think a big reason for that is that most people here don't speak English.
- It's incredibly easy to make friends.
- Most people you meet are interesting: either they're an expat and they moved here because they didn't want to coast through life, or they're a local and they're curious about people from other cultures.
- Some jobs pay incredibly well. For example if you're a teacher (not a "teacher"), China is a big step up.
Here are the not-so-good things you're maybe not thinking about:
- Air pollution is still a thing. In some cities, half the days you'd like to go outside for a run, you shouldn't because the air is too bad.
- Things like national parks are more crowded, less natural, and less tastefully done here than in any other developed country.
- As a foreigner you can only stay at maybe half the hotels and guest houses around the country. The others will simply not allow you to stay.
- As an American you'll deal with special attention from the government.
- Going to a hospital where nobody speaks your native language is one of the most stressful experiences you will have.
>dense cities, affordable housing in the city center, great public infrastructure and a modicum of agreement among the citizens
...
>China fits the bill
All those things may exist but sheer concentration of population = QoL / "dynamism" still gets very uncomfortable and cut throat. PRC pace = good cities with livable QoL mix rapidly develop until they're not. Hence you get expat commends like Chongqing reminds me of Shanghai in 2000s. On the otherhand, plenty of big cities at varying degrees of development to bounce around, but that's a very different life style.
While there’s going to be a lot of growth a lot of the same things can be said about Vietnam. Foreigners will never win an argument against locals, some locals will die on a hill defending the 150-200 AQI for 5 months out of the year. I don’t mean this as advice to avoid Vietnam, but just that 1/2 the bad things said about China apply to most Asian countries.
I think Vietnam probably captures the atmosphere of China 20 years ago. Plus, Vietnamese people tend to be much friendlier and have better English literacy. I lived in Beijing and Shanghai during the good pre-Xi times, and I'm dying to go live in VN for a while.
In many major Chinese cities you literally cannot see the sun bc of air pollution. No major city in VN is this bad. Will it get worse? Maybe but I wouldn't necessarily expect it. VN people actually do get quite concerned about the quality of their food and, if air pollution started to become a visible problem, in places like HCMC, I doubt people (govt officials included) would be OK with that. The drive for money is hard but not quite as no-holds-barred as PRC.
It's not a great society for Uyghurs, or Christians, or Falun Gong, or anyone who want to speak their mind. It's not just accepting limitations on your personal freedom, it's being comfortable with the oppression of everyone around you.
Most people in the expat community I know went to Hong Kong and Singapore instead for the following reasons: 1) Easy to do business 2) Easy to get your money in and out. 3) Low taxes 4) Central travel hubs in Asia 5) Less backwards mindset as these cities feel more cosmopolitan and are interconnected with the outside world
With HK having less and less freedom, Singapore is really the only choice for foreigners to have a decent life quality in Asia. Tokyo could potentially be an option too, but it's really hard to live there due the very different structures in Japanese society and taxes are pretty high.