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My take is if you look at Chinese people anywhere outside China, say in the US, Singapore or wherever they are hard working, educated and prosperous, it's a cul
by tim333 1y ago
My take is if you look at Chinese people anywhere outside China, say in the US, Singapore or wherever they are hard working, educated and prosperous, it's a cultural thing to a large extent. In China they were reduced to poverty by communism and are now catching up with their brethren elsewhere and still a fair way behind the US, Singa etc on a per capita basis.
- xphilter 1y agoCultural thing or…selection bias. The people who left were the ones with the personality and work ethic that leads to being successful.
- fakedang 1y agoThat does not explain why other similar communities haven't done as well, even though more of their people have migrated. Take the example of Britain, where they currently have a larger ethnic British Pakistani population than the British Indian population. Yet there are only 25% Indian households and 33% Chinese households in the bottom income quintile, while there are 44% Pakistani households and 49% Bangladeshi households in the same (White British is at 17%). On the other hand, Indians and Chinese are massively represented in the top income quintile at 20% and 28% of households (compared to White British at 21%). Only 7% of either Bangladeshi or Pakistani British come in the top income quintile, even underperforming the Other Asian category (who are 2x at 14%). Data source: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/pay-and-income/income-distribution/latest/ https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-...
- dboon 1y agoIsn’t it more likely that Pakistani folks in Britain are more likely to be first generation immigrants? You’d need to compare generationally to get apples to apples
- fakedang 1y agoThe number of Indian immigrants in 2023 was 3x the number of Pakistani immigrants to the UK. 250k vs 83k. https://m.economictimes.com/nri/migrate/indians-top-list-of-immigrants-to-uk-in-2023-heres-how-many-went-to-work-study-and-play/articleshow/110490709.cms https://m.economictimes.com/nri/migrate/indians-top-list-of-... Perhaps one could argue that Indian migrants tend to be educational and work migrants, while Pakistani migrants tend to be family reunification migrants. But that again points back to the cultural reasons behind certain communities doing well, based on what they prioritize.
- dash2 1y agoThe raw numbers don’t seem to address gp’s point. Indian migration started earlier than Pakistani migration, so you’d expect more second+ generation migrants among Indians. Edit: sorry, I didn’t realise you meant migrant flows. That is relevant, though it would still be better to control for generation.
- aurareturn 1y agoCultural thing or…selection bias. The people who left were the ones with the personality and work ethic that leads to being successful. Historically, people who have left China are from Guangdong and mostly the poor & uneducated people. So the Chinese people you see in the US, west, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc. are mostly from Guangdong. Read up on Chinese migration from Guangdong during the US gold rush and railways and why they left. Eventually, Chinese people in nearly all countries rise to the top of the income/wealth chart. For example, the richest group of people in Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia are all descendants of Guangdong people who migrated. In Indonesia for example, Chinese are 1-2% of the population but owns 70% of private wealth. Fun fact, most Chinese people in China do not eat dim sum. Dim sum is a cuisine popularized by Guangdong (Guangzhou/Hong Kong area). There are also many regions in China that don't even eat rice. They eat bread or noodles mostly. Chinese image outside of China are heavily influenced by a small area in Guangdong due to immigration.
- Crestwave 1y agoSmall correction, a significant amount of Chinese migrants are from Fujian, which borders Guangdong. You can usually tell from the language spoken—Fujian descendants speak Hokkien while Guangdong descendants speak Cantonese, though it's not a hard rule with the regions being adjacent, of course. In countries like Malaysia, it seems to be an even mix of both but in others like Philippines 90% are actually from Fujian.
- fakedang 1y agoPrecisely. And you'll see parallels across other similar communities - Gujaratis, Persians, Keralites, Armenians, Jews, Punjabi Sikhs, Lebanese Maronites, Ahmadiyyas, Sindhis, Parsees and Dawoodi Bohras, etc. All communities which faced/face historical or modern-day persecution, or rampant corruption and cronyism in their original regions, but tend to do miraculously well once they leave them behind. Either these people will migrate abroad and improve their host countries, or their home countries will grow a brain and beg them to stay behind with carrots. Lots of carrots. Like China.
- anigbrowl 1y agoreduced to poverty by communism Communism does not take off in stable prosperous societies because there isn't a market for it. It quite literally requires an underclass of people unhappy enough to stake their lives on establishing a different social order.
- imtringued 1y agoAccording to Marx, communism will arrive in wealthy industrialised countries first, due to the contradictions of late stage capitalism. In reality, however, the opposite happened. Russian potato farmers without any machines or capital started industrialising the moment the communists took over. Communism is a dead ideology, because it failed to evolve in the face of reality disagreeing with the communist world view. Communists think that capital grants its owners power and that competition leads to exploitation, when the exact opposite is true.
- CamperBob2 1y agoCommunism does not take off in stable prosperous societies because there isn't a market for it. I'm more careful with those kinds of generalizations these days than I used to be. As a rule, Trump-like demagogues don't win elections in stable, prosperous societies, either. It always takes some kind of crisis -- a lost war, oppressive debt, ruined national self-image, runaway inflation, intolerable abuse by the incumbent regime -- yet here we are. Propaganda is more powerful than I thought it was... and who's better at propaganda than the Communists?
- psychoslave 1y agoOk, sure I'm genuinely with you camarade. Now let's also give the benefit of the doubt to the author of the comment, and suppose they were pointing to Mao's governance period, rather than communism at a general level. And even if they didn't, that still something to consider actually.
- Leary 1y agoAmazing analysis, except for the fact China was dirt poor before communism.
- aurareturn 1y agoSure but China was historically wealthy and advanced well before communism and century of humiliation.
- Crestwave 1y agoThat's essentially a blip in time for China's 5000 year history. They quite literally invented paper, printing, gunpowder, etc. It's not like their society randomly collapsed by itself, either, they had plenty of help with the opium wars...