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Comment by physPop | Hacker News Reader

They can't "give up their nationality". Chinese government's position is that once Chinese always Chinese, and emmigrating doesn't affect that. They will still come after your family on mainland. Or use their "local police" forces stationed in most western countries to harass you in your new location.

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“ use their "local police" forces stationed in most western countries to harass”

Totally under appreciated point. It’s not “over there” anymore, the CCP have a strong and growing presence in the Bay Area now. Penetration into the FBI will take longer than google or local law enforcement but it is inevitable.

> They can't "give up their nationality"

You can, but it's a fucking pain in the ass, and when Zero COVID kicked in, the Chinese Embassies and Consulates stopped processing anything.

Its a formality they can ignore though. At least they have recent precedence with that Swedish bookseller who was abducted in Thailand a decade or so back.

I mean, you historically could ignore it, but it's changed since the anti-corruption purge began in 2016.

Imo there's no reason to poke that bear anymore - a lot of bad practices that were common 10 years ago are not tolerated anymore (though sadly, a lot of good practices have also started getting cracked down, like domestic criticism)

Edit: you're talking about Gui Minhai. Ok yea that's fair.

I would place money on China in 2024 being worse at rule of law, not better, than in 2016. They granted defacto citizenship to that snowboarder, for example, even though there is no way she qualified under the text of its own law (China doesn't allow for dual citizenship...unless convenient). That was 2022.

It has been downhill since Xi took charge, but yet, he was able to use accusations of corruption to purge his competition. The things that have improved are mostly public order (like prostitution being much less visible than it was).

I agree with ya!

A lot of the crackdown was performative, but silver lining is that at least some bastards got punished as they deserve (albeit by equally reprehensible bastards).

Sort of a broken clock is right twice kinda situation.

Do you not know any first generation Chinese Americans to say such inaccurate statements? This is incredibly inaccurate, naturalized citizens are treated as foreigners by the PRC.

Only when it's convenient to the PRC to do so. When it isn't, they're Chinese:

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

Who, after being kidnapped, conveniently and totes voluntarily applied to have his Chinese citizenship reinstated.

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