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Comment by wfo | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps, if funding to research is cut in the US via Trump policies (or even remains small as is currently the case) and China jumps on this opportunity to snatch the world's best talent, the question for brilliant young students will be China, a fascist regime where you are funded, or the US, a slightly less fascist regime where you are not funded and face hate crime, discrimination, and constant threats to your ability to remain due to your immigration status.

PhDs take a long time; do you want to commit 5+ years of your life to being in a place whose leaders are psychotic and don't want you around? Remember, if you are forced to quit your PhD program early, you don't get one and you have to start over somewhere else. And the time you've spent you're being paid nothing. Stability is key when you're making decisions like that, and it's something we've lost here inarguably in a big way.

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So why do so many Chinese students chose to come to the US for college? Do they not know that China is better?

To call the US a slightly less fascist regime than China is wrong. Go read up on human rights violations in China some time.

Other areas of concern include the lack of legal recognition of human rights and the lack of an independent judiciary, rule of law, and due process. Further issues raised in regard to human rights include the severe lack of worker's rights (in particular the hukou system which restricts migrant labourers' freedom of movement), the absence of independent labour unions (which have since been changing[3]), and allegations of discrimination against rural workers and ethnic minorities, as well as the lack of religious freedom – rights groups have highlighted repression of the Christian,[4][5][6][7][8][9] Tibetan Buddhist, and Falun Gong religious groups. Some Chinese activist groups are trying to expand these freedoms, including Human Rights in China, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, and the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. Chinese human rights attorneys who take on cases related to these issues, however, often face harassment, disbarment, and arrest.[10][11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

The gap between the US and China in most measures of freedom and business rights is absolutely massive and isn't going to shift because six Muslim countries have restricted immigration. Maybe see how China treats Muslims in the western part of the country?

> So why do so many Chinese students chose to come to the US for college? [...] To call the US a slightly less fascist regime than China is wrong.

You aren't reading very carefully. They're speaking of a plausible hypothetical future. Whereas your evidence is from a past that, even if it's a few months ago, now seems quite distant.

Notice how of all the groups listed there, "foreign university students" are not included.

I have little doubt that human and especially political rights in China are considerably worse than in the US overall, but you can live well anywhere if you're part of a preferred class and don't intend to rock the boat.

Believe the OP is suggesting it's on its way, not that the US is there quite yet. And the US certainly has our own questionable human rights issues.

Right now it's better in the USA and presumably easier to get funding for various R&D projects at post-grad level.

However your parent post was suggesting that this could extremely easily shift if it's hard for talented African/European/Asian students to get US visas, and China siezes the opportunity - investing heavily in R&D making student immigration easier.

Likely it won't change overnight, but it's not impossible to imagine a world where this scenario plays out - a few more Trump Executive Orders, a savvy couple moves from the CCP and you're not far off.

Another possible reality is that nobody benefits - the USA squeezes its intake of the worlds best and brightest, the EU is too busy puzzling over Brexit and similar distractions among South American, Asian and African nations (sorry I'm not familiar enough with their internal troubles to speculate) scupper their own efforts.

There are more than a billion Chinese, and only a tiny number of them came to US for college. From such a large population pool, you can find people with all kinds of options. Even if all of those who came to US are aligned with western ideology, it really doesn't mean much.

On top of that, from what I see most of the Chinese that came to US nowadays are becoming more patriotic, and more tolerant about Chinese government before they came.

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