9 ms·

Your comment is about 15 years out of date. There isn’t much that is “excellent beyond what is available” in China anymore. This type of thinking is why western

Your comment is about 15 years out of date. There isn’t much that is “excellent beyond what is available” in China anymore. This type of thinking is why western foreign policy continues to get China totally wrong. Chinese people who study abroad are more often confused by the things missing in the west than they are liberated in the way you describe, in my experience.

Symbiote 6y ago
What is missing in the west?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- yumraj 6y ago
  Fear of being taken to a dark hole somewhere for making fun of the ruling junta, especially the top boss AKA the President/Chairman. /s
  - Taniwha 6y ago
    Pretty sure that fear is very much alive in Portland right now
    - yumraj 6y ago
      Sure, let’s point to a single, or two, case in one city in the US, in which case the DHS is being sued last I checked, to contrast a ground up system in the whole of China. Just today, or yesterday, a respected prof got fired from Tsinghua for being critical of CCP and Xi in particular.
    - CamperBob2 6y ago
      Pretty sure that's an outrageous exercise in false equivalence. What's happening in Portland isn't right, but it is an aberration, and it will be stopped. Nobody has "disappeared." What is the mechanism for redressing grievances like this in China, exactly?
thedrbrian 6y ago
>Chinese people who study abroad are more often confused by the things missing in the west than they are liberated in the way you describe, in my experience. As someone who has never been to China could you list some things the West is missing?
- nsl73 6y ago
  Public transportation, affordable healthcare, & weechat are all things that are significantly better in China. — An American that spent a few weeks in China.
  - jdm2212 6y ago
    I doubt you'd want to trade your healthcare for what is available to the average Chinese person (as opposed to wealthy urban elites and expats). The public transportation really is extraordinary though.
  - esrauch 6y ago
    The healthcare thing doesn't jive with what I've heard from my native Chinese friends; I've heard if you have the right connections (and by association, wealth) you can get exactly what you need, but without that you can't get anything.
    - elliekelly 6y ago
      I can’t speak to healthcare generally but one of my college roommates was from China and she just could not wrap her head around the politicization of birth control in the US. I remember her asking us if Americans thought it was dangerous or addictive because she couldn’t understand why it was so controversial that the affordable care act required birth control to be covered.
      - i_am_proteus 6y ago
        The PRC perspective on birth control, specifically, is unique, since the CCP forced birth control and abortion on its population for decades as part of the "one child" policy.[0] [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
pmontra 6y ago
Examples? From my direct experience from a 3 weeks journey 5 years ago: A super app like WeChat. I'm happy we don't have one because super app == super control. (BTW WhatsApp was still legal back then.) A ban on gas powered small motorcycles. All of them were electric, some with a retrofitted electric engine, some natively electric. I wish we did the same. I can't think about other things that were or could look better. In most cases it was the same stuff / processes with a Chinese twist.
- whoevercares 6y ago
  Half joke/half serious: 1. Food(any objection?) 2. Public transportation: high speed rail road 3. Huge and fancy malls: USA is behind believe it or not 4. E-payment & WeChat: Chinese people think differently. 5. Food delivery and all kinds of half-day delivery 6. Free of Racism: invisible ceiling 7. Cultural recreational activities that you don’t understand 8. Crowded.
  - paulnechifor 6y ago
    Nice to know that the Uyghur genocide is racism-free.
    - yumraj 6y ago
      And Tibetan subjugation.
  - jdm2212 6y ago
    China's great if you have a decent amount of money -- labor's cheap, so all sorts of stuff (food prep, transportation, delivery services) that's heavy on labor is dirt cheap in China even if it's unaffordable in the West. But racism... speaking as a rich white guy who was treated as nicely as you'd generally expect, even I could tell it wouldn't be fun to be an ethnic minority there. Chinese ethnic minorities visiting Beijing are themselves something of a tourist attraction; tour guides leading Westerners around point and stare and talk about those minorities sort of the way you'd point and stare and talk about a wild animal you found roaming the streets. Thing is, 95+ percent of China is a single (self-identified) ethnic group so there are just fewer encounters with minorities.
ptx 6y ago
What about clean drinking water and clean air? I certainly missed that in China.
- throwaway2474 6y ago
  The air quality has actually improved a lot in recent years, and I’d expect that trend to continue. The govt is putting a lot of emphasis on it recently. But yeah, it’s still pretty bad.
throwaway_kufu 6y ago
> There isn’t much that is “excellent beyond what is available” in China anymore. Democracy and freedom of thought. Despite your experience of Foreign Chinese Students being confused rather than liberated by the West...in my experience I’ve never met a Foreign Chinese Student that didn’t want to permanently relocate to Canada or the US.
- nmfisher 6y ago
  For those in an (economic) position to emigrate, China lacks nothing in a material sense. Cars, electronics, clothes - they're not only available, they're well within the purchasing power of these people. In fact, what I dislike most about modern China is the endless gleaming shopping malls full of the same (mostly Western) brands. But not everything is material, and creativity and freedom of expression definitely have an impact. I have a reasonably large circle of Chinese acquaintances via my wife, and anecdotally, I've never met a single emigrant who actually returned. A lot of them definitely complain regularly about how much better China is, but none of them actually pack up and head back. I think that's telling.
  - whoevercares 6y ago
    A bit Survivor bias? Recent six years about half of my friends went back. I’m biased as well since many of them got green card and/or coming from Tier-1 city
    - nmfisher 6y ago
      As I admitted, it's purely anecdotal - I'm not denying that there are a lot of Chinese who do in fact return. But net migration is still negative, meaning there's more people leaving China than returning. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/net-migration#:~:text=The%20current%20net%20migration%20rate,a%201.66%25%20increase%20from%202017 https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/net-migratio.... I'm not sure how that figure is calculated, but I also wonder if it under-represents "pseudo-migrants" who claim to be living/holidaying temporarily in (say) Australia, but who seem to stay indefinitely.

Symbiote 6y ago

What is missing in the west?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
yumraj 6y ago
Fear of being taken to a dark hole somewhere for making fun of the ruling junta, especially the top boss AKA the President/Chairman. /s
- Taniwha 6y ago
  Pretty sure that fear is very much alive in Portland right now
  - yumraj 6y ago
    Sure, let’s point to a single, or two, case in one city in the US, in which case the DHS is being sued last I checked, to contrast a ground up system in the whole of China. Just today, or yesterday, a respected prof got fired from Tsinghua for being critical of CCP and Xi in particular.
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    Pretty sure that's an outrageous exercise in false equivalence. What's happening in Portland isn't right, but it is an aberration, and it will be stopped. Nobody has "disappeared." What is the mechanism for redressing grievances like this in China, exactly?

thedrbrian 6y ago

>Chinese people who study abroad are more often confused by the things missing in the west than they are liberated in the way you describe, in my experience. As someone who has never been to China could you list some things the West is missing?

nsl73 6y ago
Public transportation, affordable healthcare, & weechat are all things that are significantly better in China. — An American that spent a few weeks in China.
- jdm2212 6y ago
  I doubt you'd want to trade your healthcare for what is available to the average Chinese person (as opposed to wealthy urban elites and expats). The public transportation really is extraordinary though.
- esrauch 6y ago
  The healthcare thing doesn't jive with what I've heard from my native Chinese friends; I've heard if you have the right connections (and by association, wealth) you can get exactly what you need, but without that you can't get anything.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    I can’t speak to healthcare generally but one of my college roommates was from China and she just could not wrap her head around the politicization of birth control in the US. I remember her asking us if Americans thought it was dangerous or addictive because she couldn’t understand why it was so controversial that the affordable care act required birth control to be covered.
    - i_am_proteus 6y ago
      The PRC perspective on birth control, specifically, is unique, since the CCP forced birth control and abortion on its population for decades as part of the "one child" policy.[0] [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

pmontra 6y ago

Examples? From my direct experience from a 3 weeks journey 5 years ago: A super app like WeChat. I'm happy we don't have one because super app == super control. (BTW WhatsApp was still legal back then.) A ban on gas powered small motorcycles. All of them were electric, some with a retrofitted electric engine, some natively electric. I wish we did the same. I can't think about other things that were or could look better. In most cases it was the same stuff / processes with a Chinese twist.

whoevercares 6y ago
Half joke/half serious: 1. Food(any objection?) 2. Public transportation: high speed rail road 3. Huge and fancy malls: USA is behind believe it or not 4. E-payment & WeChat: Chinese people think differently. 5. Food delivery and all kinds of half-day delivery 6. Free of Racism: invisible ceiling 7. Cultural recreational activities that you don’t understand 8. Crowded.
- paulnechifor 6y ago
  Nice to know that the Uyghur genocide is racism-free.
  - yumraj 6y ago
    And Tibetan subjugation.
- jdm2212 6y ago
  China's great if you have a decent amount of money -- labor's cheap, so all sorts of stuff (food prep, transportation, delivery services) that's heavy on labor is dirt cheap in China even if it's unaffordable in the West. But racism... speaking as a rich white guy who was treated as nicely as you'd generally expect, even I could tell it wouldn't be fun to be an ethnic minority there. Chinese ethnic minorities visiting Beijing are themselves something of a tourist attraction; tour guides leading Westerners around point and stare and talk about those minorities sort of the way you'd point and stare and talk about a wild animal you found roaming the streets. Thing is, 95+ percent of China is a single (self-identified) ethnic group so there are just fewer encounters with minorities.

ptx 6y ago

What about clean drinking water and clean air? I certainly missed that in China.

throwaway2474 6y ago
The air quality has actually improved a lot in recent years, and I’d expect that trend to continue. The govt is putting a lot of emphasis on it recently. But yeah, it’s still pretty bad.

throwaway_kufu 6y ago

> There isn’t much that is “excellent beyond what is available” in China anymore. Democracy and freedom of thought. Despite your experience of Foreign Chinese Students being confused rather than liberated by the West...in my experience I’ve never met a Foreign Chinese Student that didn’t want to permanently relocate to Canada or the US.

nmfisher 6y ago
For those in an (economic) position to emigrate, China lacks nothing in a material sense. Cars, electronics, clothes - they're not only available, they're well within the purchasing power of these people. In fact, what I dislike most about modern China is the endless gleaming shopping malls full of the same (mostly Western) brands. But not everything is material, and creativity and freedom of expression definitely have an impact. I have a reasonably large circle of Chinese acquaintances via my wife, and anecdotally, I've never met a single emigrant who actually returned. A lot of them definitely complain regularly about how much better China is, but none of them actually pack up and head back. I think that's telling.
- whoevercares 6y ago
  A bit Survivor bias? Recent six years about half of my friends went back. I’m biased as well since many of them got green card and/or coming from Tier-1 city
  - nmfisher 6y ago
    As I admitted, it's purely anecdotal - I'm not denying that there are a lot of Chinese who do in fact return. But net migration is still negative, meaning there's more people leaving China than returning. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/net-migration#:~:text=The%20current%20net%20migration%20rate,a%201.66%25%20increase%20from%202017 https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/net-migratio.... I'm not sure how that figure is calculated, but I also wonder if it under-represents "pseudo-migrants" who claim to be living/holidaying temporarily in (say) Australia, but who seem to stay indefinitely.