Last year I stayed in China for quite some time. I traveled across various provinces and cities and I found I was in love with Hangzhou. I wanted to settle down there. After all, it seemed perfect.
A month later, I flew back to my home. Days passed and I realized how much of a blunder I would've made if I had settled down there. Especially don't under-estimate the firewall, surveillance and safety issues. If these attributes don't matter, you'll be fine, but, if you're a developer, VPN isn't sustainable and will get frustrating after a while.
However, this is all my personal experience. Just my $0.02.
Can you explain what you mean by safety issues? Having traveled to China a lot I've always been under the impression that it's quite safe so I'm assuming since you've bundled it with the firewall and surveillance that you refer to something to do with the government making one unsafe.
2. Crazy car drivers. I almost got killed twice during my short stay.
3. Laws. If something happened to you, you can never fight a case against them. It's always Chinese first vs foreigners.
4. Air quality isn't the best. That's a health issue, but just want to add it here.
4. Drunk people roaming at odd times. But this varies from city to city.
5. Food hygiene. (Also a health issue).
Just a few from the top of my head.
Other things include food safety. Most Chinese people buy infant formula outside China because they dont trust what China has to offer.
Is that really true? Considering there must be hundreds of millions of parents I seriously doubt most of them buy outside of China.
i heard stories from some places that they had to ration the selling of formula lest a few chinese students would swoop in and buy up everything in order to send it home and sell it there at a profit.
but i agree, it's probably not most of them. most shops do stock formula, and they wouldn't if no-one would buy the stuff locally (which may also be imported).
greetings, eMBee.
as for surveillance, at this point i don't know a country on this planet where surveillance is not a concern.
for safety, you need to learn how to keep yourself safe. but that applies to china as well as eg. downtown los angeles. i have been warned not to go there as it would not be safe. but i never had any issues. china is very safe. yes, you hear horror stories. but you need to scale those in relation to the size of the country. for every horror story about china, you can find you 10 such stories about the US.
greetings, eMBee.
Life in general is still quite interesting, and I like the city, love the food and travelling around in China. But government and rule changes, the bad pollution days, crazy real state market, all contribute to not settling down per se.
quitting your job and selling your old home, potentially making it harder to go back.
and finding a way to stay in china permanently.
the latter is only easy if you get married to a chinese. the former is not a dealbreaker, as you can always find a new job and home in your native country.
i have been living in different countries across the planet, and in any one of them could have settled. but even if i had decided to settle, nothing would have prevented me from reversing that decision.
even now, although i am staying here with the vision that i might be here for a few decades or even the rest of my life, i am not prevented from changing my mind at any point of time. the only "difficulty" is making sure my kids can go to school somewhere, but other than that, i am settled on the planet earth, and the only reason i can't leave that is because we haven't developed the technology for space travel (as opposed to space exploration) yet.
what i am trying to say is: don't worry about the question. don't worry about making an impulsive decision.
go to china and see how you like it. find a job and stay there as long as you like it. nothing is permanent, and you can always go back or try somewhere else.
greetings, eMBee.