The same applies to other sectors as well. Top talent is genuinely valued in China.
What data do you have for this conclusion?
Funny, that's never on YouTube.
That's the point. And who trying to lie about eliminating poverty in China (or making the US look much worse), and why are people repeating that lie?
Meta, OpenAI employees aren’t living in Bakersfield. Google NY employees aren’t living in Clifton or something. Very dumb comparisons, obviously, but when you have a good comp in China, your quality of life is just great. There just isn’t that much of a reason to move.
Another note, it's correct that some people want to live in the states. But there's a nuance. From my personal observations, a good chunk of them don't want to live anywhere in the US, but they want the American passport/green card. It's just a hedge for the worst case scenario and to have an escape route if something bad happens. Like life in Tokyo is pretty decent if you're in top percentiles. But most people understand problems (like demographics), however until it becomes an actual issue, it's still preferable to live here.
I wonder if the true mark of civilization will eventually be clean public bathrooms. It cannot be that hard because some select countries have managed to do it. Too few though.
I was worried about Vietnam, but this is encouraging. I always wanted to visit.
(Don't worry, I understand what "on average" means, and I also understand it varies from location to location).
Smoking is still ubiquitous, though. "禁止吸烟" signs are just completely ignored.
Not sure why we are making that mistake here.
Of course there are more rich people in China today than there were in decades past. That doesn't mean a rich kid of Red Note is good representation of the average Chinese, who is still poorer than the average Mexican, and trending in the wrong direction.
Low crime is simply not true. Most crimes are not reported or swept under the rug as local statistics are reported back to the central government and no one wants to look bad. But wow if you have Weibo you can see some pretty horrible stuff daily before it’s deleted. Nothing worse than seeing 2 woman hacked to death with an axe because of road rage. Cheap food in China comes with a lot of trade offs such as quality. Many shops recycle left over hotpot for the following day. Gutter oil is a real thing. Fake meats or meats from other animals is a real thing.
Every country has homeless people. There are truly homeless people in China. You don't need to put it in quotes, either.
Truly homeless exist, but statistically and visibly much less problem, because typical local gov very proactive/interventionist in moving them off streets... truely urban homelessness is like... not a really a social option... no right to be homeless. VS in west where homeless don't get cleaned up unless for the occassional politically motivated reasons. In PRC it's default, homeless get detected fast -> get moved into local shelter system where system ids them and tries to guilt trip family into caretaker roles -> can come with modest stipend to cover costs.
The government wouldn't allow encampments, so how can you even tell?
The claim was:
> Urban life in China, excluding pandemic times, is better than urban life in the states.
“Showing off main cities” is a perfectly reasonable thing to do to support this claim.
This reminds me of something I read recently...
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/02/sergey-brin-says-agi-...
Guess why most those recently emerged Chinese high tech companies (DeepSeek, Game Science, Unitree etc) are all located in Hangzhou? Because property prices are insane in tier-1 Chinese cities like Shanghai which is just 200km away from Hangzhou. You know it is a huge ponzi scheme when even those well paid high tech engineers couldn't afford a modest apartment in those major cities.
$3m USD buys you a 3 bedroom apartment in Shanghai next to a noisy main road, you have unlimited free supply of all types of pollutions. PM2.5 pollution was about 100 yesterday, any self respecting medical professional would suggest you to wear a mask when going outdoors in such environment well known for causing lung cancer. By moving to Hangzhou, you ONLY need to pay $1.5-$2m for the same shit.
Oh, btw, prices above are after the 30% drop. Just imagine how stupid it was before the crash. Of course you can jump up and lecture me how affordable it is to just spend like $1m to secure a nice family apartment of 40square meters built 60 years ago with disgusting everything inside of it.
by paying 100 years of local average salary for a modest apartment in a not that desirable location? that is not "pay premiums", that is modem slavery.
stop spreading your misinformation, life in China is like the Nightmare mode of DOOM2.
You're deluded. Hyperbole doesn't help either. When you resort to lying or exaggeration, it shows China must be starting to get even, if not ahead in the race.
Yeah, PRC RE in T1/2 cities stupid expensive, but highly compensated PRC talent always have option to rent for dirt cheap in T1 and buy something nice in T2/T3 city with a few years wage. Many highly paid Hangzhou tech workers renting in nice districts while buying equally nice in less expensive cities close by, i.e. renting nice condos in Binjiang for $2000 USD and buying 150sqm apartments for 400k USD in Yanghzou on single salary. Let's be real shitty T2 and nice T3 cities that puts most north American cities to shame, factor in cost of living relative to wage and it's much better QoL than most tier1 north American cities if you prefer urban life. Living really well in PRC on high end tech salary (i.e."AI leaders") is babymode if you're not a retard insisting on living in tapped out T1. Granted tech wage cucks in some western cities get to live in large houses which isn't available in PRC, which has it's appeal.
When I was bumming around US, I kept telling people how my best time in NA was living in a 800sq ft. apartment, in the best neighbourhood in the continent (also subjective), and I never upsized because it was subjectively the best choice for my lifestyle. Most of the responses were something like “you made yourself to believe in that”. Or “if you moved lived in X state you would have a better life”. But those were just not true for me, and will never will be. And from my personal circles, the same applies. People are just having a hard time to understand that if you make decent income, the life for some people is just better in other countries than US.
Hangzhou is horrible place to live, if you check the PM2.5 of Jan and Feb 2025, a total of 5 days had PM2.5 readings below 75. That causes China to have the highest rate of lung cancer in the entire world. Interestingly, this is suddenly not even considered as "QoL".
Your entire argument that people on wages 10x to 20x times of the local average are still being priced out of the city should just buy into places further 400km out is the exact proof that there is no QoL whatsoever. Why should any "AI leader" be forced to buy in a city 400km away from his workplace if the whole propaganda is about QoL.
Smoking less good stuff than you - there's countries with way higher per capita lung cancer rates. PRC ASR higher than US, but skewed only because men smoke like chimney. Female lung cancer ASR is same as US. Not to mention life expectancy recently passed US... interestingly, this suddently not even considered as indicator for "QoL" blah blah.
Hangzhous a great place to live. Most PRC T1 cities are (well BJ boring)... if you have money. AQI is fine, it's like ~100 average... which is moderate, aka barely perceptible vs 20 years ago when urban AQI was like 200-500, i.e. actual struggle to breathe tier bad. ~100 is like bad day in Toronto, AKA it's fucking nothing.
Who gives a shit about locals average. Let's not pretend average bay area tech workers can afford nice local property. This thread is on elite earners, i.e. >2M RMB / ~300k USD per year . Of course they can afford obscene T1 property if they want to grind. But they have many great options if they chose not to. I'm merely illustrating high earners have obscenely high QoL urban easy mode if they wanted it. Like you're not going to find many countries in this world where 400k USD buys you a nice 150sqm / 3br / 2bath apartment in a nice district of a ~10m+ large modern city with world class infra and stupid cheap daily costs that one can likely retire after a few years. Oh while being surrounded in home cultural and not be treated as 2nd class citizen (if anything treated as elite).
Family friend at has this setup working at one of the giants, had nice housing allowance as part of total compensation (~3000 usd per month) where he lived downtown in nice T1 city for free, bought a sweet villa in a T2 city with ~2 years of savings (got a few million RMB of interest free housing loan from company)... it's what he chose instead of the T1 RE, which was attainable but a grind. In the meantime he's basically living for free. Like what's his comparable option in the states? Spend $6000 USD per month on rent around SF and then fuck off to pittsburgh, cleveland, buffalo, kansas etc with their 300k homes, and 2 million population that's worse than a T3 city where he's treated like a foreigner and have to deal with shit tier urban decay on the regular. Maybe if he likes SUVs and big yards. Austin also nice too.
TLDR it's batshit insane to think a high earner don't have a lot of very nice options in PRC especially once you throw in cost of living where that 300k stretches to 600-900k depending on where you go.
Prices are high in Shanghai because everyone wants to live there.
This year China's advice just sounds reasonable TBH.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/green-car...
And yes there are still a lot of Chinese who do want to go to US, but from other areas.
Worse, you've been repeatedly posting nationalistic flamewar comments in recent weeks. This is bad. I understand the frustrations, but this is no way to make your case.
There's a greater burden on commenters who are representing a minority view, especially when the topic is divisive. That's arguably unfair, but it doesn't make it ok to break the rules, and it's not in your interest to do that.
I've written a lot about this over the years (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), including this just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213858.