Hacker News Reader

Comment by yieldcrv | Hacker News Reader

A lot of developed countries like across Europe and Singapore dont have the same geopolitical history with China as the US does, as such the Sinophobia isn’t really there

Many people really enjoyed Shanghai and other cities and are recipients of expansive social safety nets of China

If you’re middle class and in a big city or some of the planned cities, China is fine, not without its difficulty of adjusting to, some people sour on etiquette and difficulty founding entrepreneurial things. But an academic or programmer would be fine.

So people in the US often try to focus on political edge cases to write off an entire country but its easy to see that focus going away

View on HN

> expansive social safety nets of China

can you provide more detail on what you mean by this? Are there labor laws preventing 996, for example? what kind of medical care is there?

Excellent medical and dental care for ridiculously cheap. On par with countries like Germany

If you work, you contribute to a fund that you have access to if you lose your job.

To me, the big three of "social safety net" is education, medical care, and retirement pension. For normies, I doubt any of those are better than other highly developed democracies.

China has never been a place, historically, that has welcomed foreigners as anything other than short-term visitors. To the extent that it has, those foreigners have become Chinese (Manchu, Mongol - and the "welcome" there is uh… being used pretty liberally). From a legal and policy perspective, there are very few paths to long-term residency in China for people who are not of Chinese descent, and of the nominal few there are, there are only a tiny handful of foreigners who live there for longer than a decade or so. By law you can't become a citizen of the PRC without being of Chinese descent. Chinese people are wonderful and on an individual level are incredibly warm and open to all the depths and facets of human relationships with non-Chinese foreigners. As a society, China has, in general, never been a particularly welcoming place for folks who aren't Chinese. I don't see any indication of that changing any time soon. Would love to be wrong.

My impression with the visa situation is that while technically green card is very difficult, in practice most expats have no issue renewing their work visas, so effectively living as long term residents - buying properties, getting married, and sending their kids to (mostly international) schools. I've also seen quite a few who worked for a few years and then started their own businesses.

In terms of how well expats integrate, I've seen people from across the spectrum. There are definitely those who are meshed into the local social circles. Foreigner privilege is a thing, and I find that how you view social status is a strong determinant in how well you integrate. Those with a more egalitarian mindset seem to do well in this regard.

Sure, just don't practice Falun Gong or be a Christian or an Uyghur.

Exhibit A

And yes, that’s correct.

Regarding Christianity, religious people have the choice of being in the registered religious practices there. Sometimes the registration requirements are incompatible woth the religion, such as a religious leader sent by the state, as opposed to someone chosen or independentally wants to lead/control people.

and unregistered religious practices are cracked down on. western society chooses to masquerade the unregistered issues as the state of religious practices in china. the unregistered population is just as large as the registered one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com