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> Some provinces play a recorded message when someone tries to call a blacklisted debtor, informing the caller that the person they want to speak with has outst

> Some provinces play a recorded message when someone tries to call a blacklisted debtor, informing the caller that the person they want to speak with has outstanding debts. And in May, a short cartoon with the photographs of debtors' faces began playing at movie theatres, on buses, and on public noticeboards with a voiceover that said: "Come, come, look at these [debtors]. It's a person who borrows money and doesn't pay it back." Assuming that's being reported accurately...wow. Although I'm always led to wonder to what extent the facts in articles like this are exaggerated in order to portray one of the US's main global competitors in a negative light.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
It is quite the opposite: China is much crazier than the western press makes it out to be. If western media reported things about China too accurately, no one would believe them. You really only have to read Chinese media to get this, reading even state-owned media (like China daily or global times) will leave you with a much more negative impression of China than reading CNN or NyTimes.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  How do normal Chinese people feel about the things that go on?
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    China is so big and blocks access to information here and there for the average citizen that they might not think that it could be significantly better in the freedom part.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Officially? The state is always right. In private? I think the government's ever tightening grip is going to explode in their face eventually.
    - TrainedMonkey 8y ago
      Or the power of technology will enable them to repeat the message until public believes it. If you repeat something enough people start believing it. Fun exercise, check out persuasive techniques below and count how many of those China (and other governments) are employing en masse. https://www.mindmeister.com/213923097/persuasive-techniques-and-their-examples https://www.mindmeister.com/213923097/persuasive-techniques-...
      - jerf 8y ago
        The inability to instill belief is not the problem... the ability to instill belief is the problem. You instill belief in the place of social feedback, which breaks people's ability to react to the feedback the system is yielding, like "that's too much money being spent here" and "that's not enough money spent there" and "it turns out that while everyone believes everyone believes that the right answer is X, that in fact nobody believes it" and just an uncountable list of other adjustments societies have to make in order to survive. In a hypothetical world where humans were not subject to social pressure and the corresponding ability of social systems to produce situations where privately everybody knows a thing but nobody is publicly allowed to acknowledge it... well... that's effectively a world on the other side of a singularity from us. Presumably it would have its own pathologies, greater ones for all I know. But it would not have this problem of entire societies riding off the rails because it applied ever stronger powers of social coercion to prevent the society from correctly (without reference to any particular definition of "correct") reacting to the changes that occur over time. It would have to come up with its own new pathologies. This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it. (Peer pressure in the modern world is dangerous, and merely "being pressured to do drugs" is a fairly innocent instance of it, because that only does local harm. When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society.)
        stcredzero 8y ago
        This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it. The 21st century 1st world aspirant intelligentsia is in this situation right now. When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society. My "tribe" is trapped in such a bubble. It's intellectually doomed.
  - Chaebixi 8y ago
    > How do normal Chinese people feel about the things that go on? That can be really hard to find out. Chinese culture looks down on people who criticize their own group in front of outsiders. So it's bad to truthfully criticize your family in front of a neighbor, even if you do it at home, and similarly bad to truthfully criticize your country in front of a foreigner. For an example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuping_Yang_commencement_speech_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuping_Yang_commencement_spee.... That student was ripped apart and called a traitor in regular media and social media, even though a lot of the things she said were true and often complained about. Add mass censorship to the mix, which denies access to honest options shared among the Chinese themselves, and it gets to be extremely difficult to get an accurate sense of true Chinese public opinion. There are also other confounding factors: such as the CCP not emphasizing the distinction between the the government and the nation. Lots of people might not realize "you can love your country and hate your government" at the same time.
    - kika 8y ago
      > "you can love your country and hate your government" Reminds me of Russia very much. Self-proclaimed "patriots" standard response to any critics of government is "you just hate everything Russian".
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Generalized: Self-proclaimed [X] standard response to any critics of [X] is "you just hate everything [X]". I think it's a standard self-defense mechanism for any meme in the Dawkins sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
        larkeith 8y ago
        Slightly off-topic, but you might want to avoid using "[X]" as a general placeholder - I was momentarily thrown off, as I expected each instance of X to be the same.
        8y ago
  - devy 8y ago
    If you read Chinese, you can usually get a sense from Weibo (Chinese version of twitter), sometime censorship come into play but those are always after the fact.
  - codedokode 8y ago
    If you are interested, there is an interview with Chinese people in the street about this system [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAIKh7AnTIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAIKh7AnTIk
    - aplc0r 8y ago
      This channel is very interesting. Thank you!
  - rqs 8y ago
    What it takes to be normal? I mean, I'm a human being who can type comment and send it online, does that makes me normal? Anyways, I actually asked around about that topic on an domestic Chinese online forum that only had few dozens of visitors, the result that I've received showing that the most of those people who replied are actually ... let say ... not in the opposition of it. Things are vastly different on another domestic website, where most of people are (implicitly) against it. So, it's actually depends on who you asking. And remind you, we Chinese are also effected by echo chambers.
- cryoshon 8y ago
  this is a very interesting phenomena to me -- the truth being too ridiculous to believe even if it confirms our biases and supports our worldview. do you have any examples?
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    It’s like trying to explain to an American what a 800 2.5ppm AQI day feels like. They think, LA during a forest fire or something, since they can’t really fathom anything beyond that. For the same reason, they can’t really fathom Xi’s cult of personality that his is building, CNN can’t describe it since the reality would come off as bad fiction. But reading Global Times on any odd day of the week, it is fairly apparent that it really is the truth.
- Jerry2 8y ago
  So why is the Western media inaccurately portraying China?
  - nimrod0 8y ago
    The Western media doesn't know how to portray China, or any foreign country. Everything is a caricature and taken as a mere curiosity or monstrosity. It remains at the stage of minstrelsy and Indian dress-up. If you read serious news from abroad, you'll see this.
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      Reading news about New Zealand from the international media, you'd think that it's some quaint rural backwater country, where its biggest problems are picking a new flag and people throwing dildos at politicians. The news doesn't like to report on the growing methamphetamine problem, the youth suicide rate, or the increasing poverty. And why would it? Nobody overseas cares about these things happening in NZ, they have these problems at home.
- nimrod0 8y ago
  You're giving the wrong impression. Let's parse this a bit. China is "crazier" in that it's different in a way that's hard to explain in Western discourse. In order to analogize for the reader, quite inadequately really, the portrayal becomes "exaggerated" and "incomprehensible". To the extent that what's different and unusual is generally perceived as "negative" -- because if they were positive you'd be doing that in your society -- the portrayal of China tends to be negative. Both views are valid.
- throwaway505938 8y ago
  If it's that much crazier, why is it whenever I visited China it didn't seem crazy at all? Are they that good at hiding things from foreigners? I should add that I don't stick to the expat bubble and I can understand Mandarin. Reading China Daily and the Global Times, you also get stories about all the good things that happen in China. So it definitely seems more well balanced. Whereas the Western press seems to only focus on the negative and sensationalist pieces.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
And also: Hou Yunchun, is quoted as saying the system needs to be improved so "discredited people become bankrupt." That's pretty clear exactly what they are going for. Not a lot of ambiguity there, but it's unclear if it's a strategy that will have a positive outcome, my guess is probably not. Certainly not ethical in my opinion.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  This gives you a nice feedback loop, because once the person becomes bankrupt, you can use the bankruptcy to (further) discredit them...
  - sitkack 8y ago
    The US has the lite version of this where the poor pay disproportionally more for everything and face harsher penalties for when stuff goes wrong.
- rdiddly 8y ago
  Can't see the benefit of creating so many losers. Somebody who owes money gets blocked from having a job? Not smart.
  - rdiddly 8y ago
    Somebody who owes money can't take a trip? Kind of smart.
- Cogito 8y ago
  The article was careful to put that quote in context, which you haven't supplied here. They were almost certainly referring to the system being used against debtors who are not paying their debts. It's not a case of saying "people who have a bad score should be made bankrupt" but "people who are not paying their debts should have so much social pressure exerted on them that they would rather go bankrupt than not pay their debts". Their are situations I can imagine under such a system that are unethical, but I'm not as certain that it's unethical by definition.
tinus_hn 8y ago
It’s quite extreme but is it so much different from the US’s system of publicly shaming suspects using their mugshots in sensation pieces?
- KennyCason 8y ago
  I'm not sure why this got down voted. While I do think some of the Chinese methodologies/laws are a bit extreme, we have similar punishments and rules in the United States. Certain felonies cause people to lose the right to vote or own guns. Companies can perform background checks and not hire you based on criminal record as well. You can also be denied loans and housing based on a numerous amount of factors. Go apply for a house loan and see how invasive that is. In regards to the comment on shaming, we are very horrible about that. The moment you are arrested/jailed, a nice little mugshot of you appears on the internet. This all despite the fact that you have not yet been tried and convicted. I think in the U.S. we should also be challenging our own moral compass a bit more.
- krageon 8y ago
  I've always found that really incomprehensible as well - it's not something that is allowed here (legally) and it seems like it's basically just mean and nothing else. Why does that even happen?
s2g 8y ago
> Although I'm always led to wonder to what extent the facts in articles like this are exaggerated in order to portray one of the US's main global competitors in a negative light. What you should be wondering is how much is glossed over to avoid painting a major trading partner in a bad light.
lopmotr 8y ago
I think this mainly seems bad because of the risk of false positives. If someone has a legitimate outstanding debt, then everyone who calls him should be made aware of that - all of them are at risk of being suckered into lending him more money otherwise. I've been stung by entering an agreement with someone who had failed to repay his debts - guess who the next person he didn't pay was? Western countries have sex offenders registers for the same reason.
Karishma1234 8y ago
Western media does not get the eastern world. A BBC journalist said it is stupid and oppressive to ban cow slaughter in India. So I asked him if it is oppressive for USA to ban Cat and Dog meet when many people want to eat them. He was deeply offended. Just about last week NYTimes published a piece where they called a certain two penny politician "Prime minister material" so I asked my friend why would NYT publish such inaccurate description. Her response was "he has such amazing english and Oxbridge accent". Indians worship Shiva-Lingam (a complex idol that looks like a penis.) So a Berkley student/researcher. said Indians worship Penis which is weird and is symbol of patriarchy. I asked her if worshiping a cross makes Christians a cult of torture and worshipping a zombie corpse (jesus) makes them necrophillic. Western media has a very different outlook (white man's burden) and will never truly comprehend the eastern culture.
- throw121312313 8y ago
  I couldn't agree more. It's also quite insulting then they think their opinions are of some universal truth even when presented with evidence. I have seen Americans with superiority complex when faced with an unfamiliar surrounding. They seems to go around talking about how everyone is doing everything wrong and their own culture is without fault. The majority of Europeans I have met seem a lot more willing to accept other cultures. Europeans often have to learn a second language that isn't English and frequently travel to neighboring countries. I think the simple understanding that there is a world outside theirs from a young age makes a world of difference is separating their perceived negative emotions and facts. I am going to get serverely down-voted for this, but look at seanmcdirmid as an example. He almost exclusively posts on Chinese articles on Hacker News. His past comments always paints an entire country as negative. He likes to state his opinions are facts and when saying something mildly racist, he ends is posts with "my wife is chinese". Like that makes any difference, its the equivalent of those saying they aren't racist cause their neighbors are black. I have no doubt his experience in China has largely been negative, but with his attitude I am not surprised.
  - 3131s 8y ago
    I live in Cambodia and I see this all the time from tourists and expats. It's actually stunning how nearly all of them parrot the same stereotypes about the country, even though they've barely spent any time here and have only read secondhand information from racists who came here before them. A mild but classic stereotype is something about Asians and "saving face", as if avoiding embarrassment whenever possible isn't a shared tendency of everyone all over the world. Another favorite is complaining about a "foreigner tax" (raising the price for foreigners), when in fact that is actually quite rare and is only perceived to happen because touristy spots and expat bubbles have higher rents and thus higher prices. This is not even getting into the more malicious variety of shitheads and degenerates that come solely to exploit the country, all while endlessly complaining about and stereotyping the people here.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

It is quite the opposite: China is much crazier than the western press makes it out to be. If western media reported things about China too accurately, no one would believe them. You really only have to read Chinese media to get this, reading even state-owned media (like China daily or global times) will leave you with a much more negative impression of China than reading CNN or NyTimes.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago
How do normal Chinese people feel about the things that go on?
- Mirioron 8y ago
  China is so big and blocks access to information here and there for the average citizen that they might not think that it could be significantly better in the freedom part.
- jandrese 8y ago
  Officially? The state is always right. In private? I think the government's ever tightening grip is going to explode in their face eventually.
  - TrainedMonkey 8y ago
    Or the power of technology will enable them to repeat the message until public believes it. If you repeat something enough people start believing it. Fun exercise, check out persuasive techniques below and count how many of those China (and other governments) are employing en masse. https://www.mindmeister.com/213923097/persuasive-techniques-and-their-examples https://www.mindmeister.com/213923097/persuasive-techniques-...
    - jerf 8y ago
      The inability to instill belief is not the problem... the ability to instill belief is the problem. You instill belief in the place of social feedback, which breaks people's ability to react to the feedback the system is yielding, like "that's too much money being spent here" and "that's not enough money spent there" and "it turns out that while everyone believes everyone believes that the right answer is X, that in fact nobody believes it" and just an uncountable list of other adjustments societies have to make in order to survive. In a hypothetical world where humans were not subject to social pressure and the corresponding ability of social systems to produce situations where privately everybody knows a thing but nobody is publicly allowed to acknowledge it... well... that's effectively a world on the other side of a singularity from us. Presumably it would have its own pathologies, greater ones for all I know. But it would not have this problem of entire societies riding off the rails because it applied ever stronger powers of social coercion to prevent the society from correctly (without reference to any particular definition of "correct") reacting to the changes that occur over time. It would have to come up with its own new pathologies. This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it. (Peer pressure in the modern world is dangerous, and merely "being pressured to do drugs" is a fairly innocent instance of it, because that only does local harm. When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society.)
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it. The 21st century 1st world aspirant intelligentsia is in this situation right now. When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society. My "tribe" is trapped in such a bubble. It's intellectually doomed.
- Chaebixi 8y ago
  > How do normal Chinese people feel about the things that go on? That can be really hard to find out. Chinese culture looks down on people who criticize their own group in front of outsiders. So it's bad to truthfully criticize your family in front of a neighbor, even if you do it at home, and similarly bad to truthfully criticize your country in front of a foreigner. For an example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuping_Yang_commencement_speech_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuping_Yang_commencement_spee.... That student was ripped apart and called a traitor in regular media and social media, even though a lot of the things she said were true and often complained about. Add mass censorship to the mix, which denies access to honest options shared among the Chinese themselves, and it gets to be extremely difficult to get an accurate sense of true Chinese public opinion. There are also other confounding factors: such as the CCP not emphasizing the distinction between the the government and the nation. Lots of people might not realize "you can love your country and hate your government" at the same time.
  - kika 8y ago
    > "you can love your country and hate your government" Reminds me of Russia very much. Self-proclaimed "patriots" standard response to any critics of government is "you just hate everything Russian".
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Generalized: Self-proclaimed [X] standard response to any critics of [X] is "you just hate everything [X]". I think it's a standard self-defense mechanism for any meme in the Dawkins sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
      - larkeith 8y ago
        Slightly off-topic, but you might want to avoid using "[X]" as a general placeholder - I was momentarily thrown off, as I expected each instance of X to be the same.
        8y ago
- devy 8y ago
  If you read Chinese, you can usually get a sense from Weibo (Chinese version of twitter), sometime censorship come into play but those are always after the fact.
- codedokode 8y ago
  If you are interested, there is an interview with Chinese people in the street about this system [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAIKh7AnTIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAIKh7AnTIk
  - aplc0r 8y ago
    This channel is very interesting. Thank you!
- rqs 8y ago
  What it takes to be normal? I mean, I'm a human being who can type comment and send it online, does that makes me normal? Anyways, I actually asked around about that topic on an domestic Chinese online forum that only had few dozens of visitors, the result that I've received showing that the most of those people who replied are actually ... let say ... not in the opposition of it. Things are vastly different on another domestic website, where most of people are (implicitly) against it. So, it's actually depends on who you asking. And remind you, we Chinese are also effected by echo chambers.
cryoshon 8y ago
this is a very interesting phenomena to me -- the truth being too ridiculous to believe even if it confirms our biases and supports our worldview. do you have any examples?
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  It’s like trying to explain to an American what a 800 2.5ppm AQI day feels like. They think, LA during a forest fire or something, since they can’t really fathom anything beyond that. For the same reason, they can’t really fathom Xi’s cult of personality that his is building, CNN can’t describe it since the reality would come off as bad fiction. But reading Global Times on any odd day of the week, it is fairly apparent that it really is the truth.
Jerry2 8y ago
So why is the Western media inaccurately portraying China?
- nimrod0 8y ago
  The Western media doesn't know how to portray China, or any foreign country. Everything is a caricature and taken as a mere curiosity or monstrosity. It remains at the stage of minstrelsy and Indian dress-up. If you read serious news from abroad, you'll see this.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    Reading news about New Zealand from the international media, you'd think that it's some quaint rural backwater country, where its biggest problems are picking a new flag and people throwing dildos at politicians. The news doesn't like to report on the growing methamphetamine problem, the youth suicide rate, or the increasing poverty. And why would it? Nobody overseas cares about these things happening in NZ, they have these problems at home.
nimrod0 8y ago
You're giving the wrong impression. Let's parse this a bit. China is "crazier" in that it's different in a way that's hard to explain in Western discourse. In order to analogize for the reader, quite inadequately really, the portrayal becomes "exaggerated" and "incomprehensible". To the extent that what's different and unusual is generally perceived as "negative" -- because if they were positive you'd be doing that in your society -- the portrayal of China tends to be negative. Both views are valid.
throwaway505938 8y ago
If it's that much crazier, why is it whenever I visited China it didn't seem crazy at all? Are they that good at hiding things from foreigners? I should add that I don't stick to the expat bubble and I can understand Mandarin. Reading China Daily and the Global Times, you also get stories about all the good things that happen in China. So it definitely seems more well balanced. Whereas the Western press seems to only focus on the negative and sensationalist pieces.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

And also: Hou Yunchun, is quoted as saying the system needs to be improved so "discredited people become bankrupt." That's pretty clear exactly what they are going for. Not a lot of ambiguity there, but it's unclear if it's a strategy that will have a positive outcome, my guess is probably not. Certainly not ethical in my opinion.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
This gives you a nice feedback loop, because once the person becomes bankrupt, you can use the bankruptcy to (further) discredit them...
- sitkack 8y ago
  The US has the lite version of this where the poor pay disproportionally more for everything and face harsher penalties for when stuff goes wrong.
rdiddly 8y ago
Can't see the benefit of creating so many losers. Somebody who owes money gets blocked from having a job? Not smart.
- rdiddly 8y ago
  Somebody who owes money can't take a trip? Kind of smart.
Cogito 8y ago
The article was careful to put that quote in context, which you haven't supplied here. They were almost certainly referring to the system being used against debtors who are not paying their debts. It's not a case of saying "people who have a bad score should be made bankrupt" but "people who are not paying their debts should have so much social pressure exerted on them that they would rather go bankrupt than not pay their debts". Their are situations I can imagine under such a system that are unethical, but I'm not as certain that it's unethical by definition.

tinus_hn 8y ago

It’s quite extreme but is it so much different from the US’s system of publicly shaming suspects using their mugshots in sensation pieces?

KennyCason 8y ago
I'm not sure why this got down voted. While I do think some of the Chinese methodologies/laws are a bit extreme, we have similar punishments and rules in the United States. Certain felonies cause people to lose the right to vote or own guns. Companies can perform background checks and not hire you based on criminal record as well. You can also be denied loans and housing based on a numerous amount of factors. Go apply for a house loan and see how invasive that is. In regards to the comment on shaming, we are very horrible about that. The moment you are arrested/jailed, a nice little mugshot of you appears on the internet. This all despite the fact that you have not yet been tried and convicted. I think in the U.S. we should also be challenging our own moral compass a bit more.
krageon 8y ago
I've always found that really incomprehensible as well - it's not something that is allowed here (legally) and it seems like it's basically just mean and nothing else. Why does that even happen?

s2g 8y ago

> Although I'm always led to wonder to what extent the facts in articles like this are exaggerated in order to portray one of the US's main global competitors in a negative light. What you should be wondering is how much is glossed over to avoid painting a major trading partner in a bad light.

lopmotr 8y ago

I think this mainly seems bad because of the risk of false positives. If someone has a legitimate outstanding debt, then everyone who calls him should be made aware of that - all of them are at risk of being suckered into lending him more money otherwise. I've been stung by entering an agreement with someone who had failed to repay his debts - guess who the next person he didn't pay was? Western countries have sex offenders registers for the same reason.

Karishma1234 8y ago

Western media does not get the eastern world. A BBC journalist said it is stupid and oppressive to ban cow slaughter in India. So I asked him if it is oppressive for USA to ban Cat and Dog meet when many people want to eat them. He was deeply offended. Just about last week NYTimes published a piece where they called a certain two penny politician "Prime minister material" so I asked my friend why would NYT publish such inaccurate description. Her response was "he has such amazing english and Oxbridge accent". Indians worship Shiva-Lingam (a complex idol that looks like a penis.) So a Berkley student/researcher. said Indians worship Penis which is weird and is symbol of patriarchy. I asked her if worshiping a cross makes Christians a cult of torture and worshipping a zombie corpse (jesus) makes them necrophillic. Western media has a very different outlook (white man's burden) and will never truly comprehend the eastern culture.

throw121312313 8y ago
I couldn't agree more. It's also quite insulting then they think their opinions are of some universal truth even when presented with evidence. I have seen Americans with superiority complex when faced with an unfamiliar surrounding. They seems to go around talking about how everyone is doing everything wrong and their own culture is without fault. The majority of Europeans I have met seem a lot more willing to accept other cultures. Europeans often have to learn a second language that isn't English and frequently travel to neighboring countries. I think the simple understanding that there is a world outside theirs from a young age makes a world of difference is separating their perceived negative emotions and facts. I am going to get serverely down-voted for this, but look at seanmcdirmid as an example. He almost exclusively posts on Chinese articles on Hacker News. His past comments always paints an entire country as negative. He likes to state his opinions are facts and when saying something mildly racist, he ends is posts with "my wife is chinese". Like that makes any difference, its the equivalent of those saying they aren't racist cause their neighbors are black. I have no doubt his experience in China has largely been negative, but with his attitude I am not surprised.
- 3131s 8y ago
  I live in Cambodia and I see this all the time from tourists and expats. It's actually stunning how nearly all of them parrot the same stereotypes about the country, even though they've barely spent any time here and have only read secondhand information from racists who came here before them. A mild but classic stereotype is something about Asians and "saving face", as if avoiding embarrassment whenever possible isn't a shared tendency of everyone all over the world. Another favorite is complaining about a "foreigner tax" (raising the price for foreigners), when in fact that is actually quite rare and is only perceived to happen because touristy spots and expat bubbles have higher rents and thus higher prices. This is not even getting into the more malicious variety of shitheads and degenerates that come solely to exploit the country, all while endlessly complaining about and stereotyping the people here.