5 ms·

I moved from Europe to China to work as a mobile/backend dev. Pros: - Salaries these days in China's big cities are pretty much same or better than in Europe

I moved from Europe to China to work as a mobile/backend dev. Pros: - Salaries these days in China's big cities are pretty much same or better than in Europe - Income tax and living costs are significantly lower - Former two combined: your living standards will increase a lot here. - If you live in big cities, life is good and you can live really western life style - Extremely safe and very peaceful. Street crimes and violence are pretty much nonexistent. Cons: - You really have to take much more responsibility. You might find your dream company with excellent salary here or you might end up in sweatshop with shitty salary. General rule: Avoid really local Chinese companies and work for international ones like Apple, Microsoft, Google, western startups etc. - Internet is blocked (can be easily bypassed with VPN though) - Chinese culture might be hard to deal with for many foreigners. - Competence of Chinese developers and especially managers is really low when compared to the West In general: It's a wild and scary ride, but I'd recommend it at least temporarily.

abc-xyz 8y ago
More cons: you're directly supporting a surveillance state that has no regard for human rights, that is engaged with concentration camps and medical genocide, and that won't hesitate a second to kick you out of the country and ban you from entry without telling you why or for how long, likely resulting in you losing any type of investment (relationship/financial/etc). It doesn't matter if you've been a good citizen for many years, and you have no way of appealing the decision. If you end up in a relationship with a Chinese citizen then you also risk (s)he won't be allowed to go abroad to a Western country (quite common for those who don't belong to the higher class). You'll also be denied entry at most hotels that aren't 4-5 star because they don't allow foreigners, and the same goes for apartments. If you try to stay at a friends apartment then you risk the landlord calling your friend to say foreigners arent allowed to stay there. I tend to stay at relatively cheap hotels (often the cheapest I can find), in China I'd get denied by 9/10, in any other country I've not once been denied. Trying to rent an apartment in China without going through an agency that have a "Green Book" will result in similar odds. Do yourself a favour and go to any other Asian country where you won't be supporting modern day Nazis, and where you won't be treated as dirt by the government. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. are all great options that will most likely give you a better experience.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  I'm actually surprised that this is the first comment of this nature I've encountered on this page. China is that country that checked out the show Black Mirror and was actually inspired by the dystopias: https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/chinas-13-million-discredited-individuals-face-discrimination-thanks-social-credit-system/article/3003319 https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/chinas-13-million-discred...
- qlk1123 8y ago
  > You'll also be denied entry at most hotels that aren't 4-5 star because they don't allow foreigners, ... This reminds me the trip to Shanghai in 2013. We were a group attending Student Cluster Competition at ASC13 [1]. The first night we arrived Shanghai, we were rejected by one or two hotels, with the reason that they cannot accept foreigners （外賓: direct translation to "foreign guests"） to stay. It is so irony that Taiwanese are treated as Chinese citizen at airports but not at hotels. An another funny but out-of-topic story during the trip is at the first day of the competition. Team members got their T-shirts with school name, "National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan." But after the opening ceremony, we were asked to return the T-shirts soon. The new ones arrived in the afternoon with "Taiwanese Tsing Hua University" on it. But you can find that the first press release [2] was not updated correspondingly. My personal interpretation to this was that, it is safe to assume that CCP ideology is not rooted in Chinese academic people, but as they notice anything that might be inappropriate they would still eliminate potential threats to ASAP for their good. [1] http://www.studentclustercomp.com/tag/asc13/ http://www.studentclustercomp.com/tag/asc13/ [2] http://www.studentclustercomp.com/asc13-field-of-ten-chosen/ http://www.studentclustercomp.com/asc13-field-of-ten-chosen/

abc-xyz 8y ago

More cons: you're directly supporting a surveillance state that has no regard for human rights, that is engaged with concentration camps and medical genocide, and that won't hesitate a second to kick you out of the country and ban you from entry without telling you why or for how long, likely resulting in you losing any type of investment (relationship/financial/etc). It doesn't matter if you've been a good citizen for many years, and you have no way of appealing the decision. If you end up in a relationship with a Chinese citizen then you also risk (s)he won't be allowed to go abroad to a Western country (quite common for those who don't belong to the higher class). You'll also be denied entry at most hotels that aren't 4-5 star because they don't allow foreigners, and the same goes for apartments. If you try to stay at a friends apartment then you risk the landlord calling your friend to say foreigners arent allowed to stay there. I tend to stay at relatively cheap hotels (often the cheapest I can find), in China I'd get denied by 9/10, in any other country I've not once been denied. Trying to rent an apartment in China without going through an agency that have a "Green Book" will result in similar odds. Do yourself a favour and go to any other Asian country where you won't be supporting modern day Nazis, and where you won't be treated as dirt by the government. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. are all great options that will most likely give you a better experience.

pmarreck 8y ago
I'm actually surprised that this is the first comment of this nature I've encountered on this page. China is that country that checked out the show Black Mirror and was actually inspired by the dystopias: https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/chinas-13-million-discredited-individuals-face-discrimination-thanks-social-credit-system/article/3003319 https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/chinas-13-million-discred...
qlk1123 8y ago
> You'll also be denied entry at most hotels that aren't 4-5 star because they don't allow foreigners, ... This reminds me the trip to Shanghai in 2013. We were a group attending Student Cluster Competition at ASC13 [1]. The first night we arrived Shanghai, we were rejected by one or two hotels, with the reason that they cannot accept foreigners （外賓: direct translation to "foreign guests"） to stay. It is so irony that Taiwanese are treated as Chinese citizen at airports but not at hotels. An another funny but out-of-topic story during the trip is at the first day of the competition. Team members got their T-shirts with school name, "National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan." But after the opening ceremony, we were asked to return the T-shirts soon. The new ones arrived in the afternoon with "Taiwanese Tsing Hua University" on it. But you can find that the first press release [2] was not updated correspondingly. My personal interpretation to this was that, it is safe to assume that CCP ideology is not rooted in Chinese academic people, but as they notice anything that might be inappropriate they would still eliminate potential threats to ASAP for their good. [1] http://www.studentclustercomp.com/tag/asc13/ http://www.studentclustercomp.com/tag/asc13/ [2] http://www.studentclustercomp.com/asc13-field-of-ten-chosen/ http://www.studentclustercomp.com/asc13-field-of-ten-chosen/