A Princeton nuclear physicist. A mechanical engineer who helped NASA explore manufacturing in space. A US National Institutes of Health neurobiologist. Celebrated mathematicians. And over half a dozen AI experts. The list of research talent leaving the US to work in China is glittering – and growing.
Errrr, you can’t pay me enough to work in China. Why go from an county starting to go towards authoritarianism to a country that is ALREADY authoritarianism. China is def not the lesser of the two evils.
Like. I get it. China is absolutely an authoritarian state. But it also isn’t coming apart at the fucking seams, really seems to have its shit together, and offers a very good quality of life if you make enough money, from what I’ve heard.
It isn’t a glittering wonderland or anything but you’re not going to be deported for no fucking reason if you’re an expert in your field (unless you get on the wrong side of the government).
The USA is coming apart at the seams. It isn’t just authoritarianism, it’s ineptitude and implosion. They’re totally different situations.
China’s authoritarianism is more palatable for the people who live in it because they don’t deport people to random 3rd world countries’ terrorist prisons. If you’re valued, they make your life exceptional. But this all comes with the looming threat of “speak out against us and you’ll go to jail without trial”. So basically you live under fear in both China and the US, but in China you know what to do to avoid being a target and in the US it can be pretty random
Honestly, if they offered me a million euro per year salary, I’d go and be quiet as a lamb. But I don’t think they want me in the first place and also they probably know my opinion of the country.
There is a literal concentration camp for theUyghurs because of their religion. They are sending jets and navy ships to sovereign nations all over south east Asia. Even building man made island to build bases to do so. There is a social points system that is designed to punish the poor and middle class.
You’re watching too much TikTok bro. China is brainwashing you.
Lol I have never installed the TikTok app even. I can show you a screenshot from the App Store if you don’t believe me.
Definitely an issue regionally (and globally because TSMC), but a non-issue to anyone living in China (unless they have family at one of those countries)
I agreed, it’s bullshit bad faith diplomacy.
Same as the credit score system in the US then. It’s provincial, anyway, not a centralized system. A lot of people in China are saying it doesn’t affect their lives too much. Many haven’t heard of it.
So this is the worst of them all. But then nearly every single article about it is written by, or cites, Adrian Zenz, a notoriously anti-China reporter. The multi-million person concentration camps might be a myth. There’s definitely some human rights abuses going on there though, even the UN has reported on that. But again, this doesn’t affect most people.
We’re talking about over a billion people in one country. 99.9% of them aren’t going to be affected by any of this. Can you say the same regarding the systemic racism, the ICE raids, etc, in the US? And those are accelerating, China seems to be keeping their authoritarianism stable.
In China they also imprison the wealthy that exploit people. I may not agree with how China treats their citizens but they have some things right.
No they don’t. They only do that if you become too powerful. Nobody can be more than Xi Ping. If you are then you get punished…
Ehhhh so and so. They imprison you once it gets too public. Otherwise they’re happy about the money.
They absolutely are less evil than the US and by a wide margin
Care to explain?
Absolutely!
The US was born from genocide and built by slavery. We’ve been at war constantly for close to three centuries now. We have a long and extremely well documented history of invading and overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world to further our foreign policy that is still verifiably ongoing. We have military bases occupying every habitable continent. We have the largest prison population on earth both total and per capita, and we have explicit allowance in our constitution for slavery as a punishment, this is not a coincidence. We let our law enforcement murder people with impunity. Our elected officials engage in blatant bribery and open corruption without consequence, and we’re finding new ways to lower the bar on that front every day. We surveil our own citizens and the rest of the world constantly, and we use that information to bully and blackmail dissenters into submission, and when that fails we assassinate them. Our government knowingly allowed Epstein to sex traffic children for years unimpeded because it gave us an easy way to control a bunch of celebrities and foreign dignitaries, and when he became a liability he was extrajudicially murdered. We spend billions maintaining our surveillance and military occupation networks while our own citizens die from preventable illnesses and the breakdown of basic infrastructure. We’re actively gutting our education system, medical care is increasingly unaffordable and for people outside of major urban centers straight up unavailable as more hospitals are closed entirely. Economic inequality is worse than it’s ever been, many americans have no hope of ever actually owning a home and are a paycheck or two away from financial ruin. We’ve always been fucking evil and we’re getting worse at an accelerating rate.
What little military conflict China has been involved in over the same time frame, and the rest of their history for that matter, has been limited to their immediate surroundings, regardless of arguable justifiability the scope and scale are significantly smaller than the US. For per capita incarceration rate China isn’t even in the top 100 globally, and their total prison population is lower than ours despite having more than 4 times our population. Chinese law enforcement and elected officials who abuse their positions are actually punished for it, up to and including execution, as are their billionaires. Clearly they also have a robust surveillance apparatus and aren’t afraid to use it in support of their own foreign policy and domestic security, but we’ve got no evidence to suggest they’re up to anything close to the sort of degenerate fuckery we’ve been committing. Their level of investment in domestic infrastructure is absolutely unmatched, they’re actively prioritizing reducuction of wealth inequality and regional disparity, directly improving rural areas, and and their allies benefit from similar improvements via the Belt & Road Initiative & similar programs. Their citizens have one of the highest rates of home ownership in the world, around 90%. However imperfect they may be they’re causing far less harm overall than the US and are steadily improving.
This is relevant for immigrants who are trying to escape poverty, almost with no future in their own countries either for their personal or professional aspirations. I am not a China fan, but when you look at countries around the world, many of which are very poor and underdeveloped but with lots of brilliant, hard-working people with dreams and potential, they would rather go to a place where they have at least some stability, predicted living and working conditions, and a future, rather than to a place where one doesn’t know whether the potential future mayor of New York City, born and brought up in the USA and hence of course a citizen who happens to be the son of a world-famous filmmaker and a well-known academic, will actually be deported or not. I mean that’s a real possibility at this point - let that sink in. (I am not even going for more extreme examples)
I wish things were better, and I wish we didn’t live in a world where China, yes, China – of all the countries, might become a viable alternative for people from the developing or underdeveloped world compared to the USA.
The dude is brainwashed by TikTok. As a person who’s family has a factory in china, it’s a terrible place to live.
Yeah, but there are other and much better places to go than China. The world doesn’t consist of only the US and China.
The money, however, is in the US and China. You’ll have a better life on average in Europe, but if you’re super aspirational about your career and total compensation, Europe sucks.
LOL
Trust me. I’m a software engineer in EU. I could make 4-5x as much in the US. The truly high level compmaxers make even more.
Try asking how much China parts for SWE right now. Then look up what the 996 culture is in China.
Being the 2nd most riches country doesn’t mean you get paid more for your skills.
China has the lowest GDP relative to the country’s wealth. They simply exploit their people way more than the USA.
There was literally a thread somewhere on the fediverse where someone said their friend (scientist) got invited to China for a 7 figure salary job. That’s not a thing in most countries.
I know what the 996 culture is. These are also mostly people working in the private sector. This article is more about government-paid people.
So what country you want to be in depends on whether you’re a researcher (China good, US becoming increasingly shit), software engineer (China bad, US good), etc. But it still holds true that the US and China have the highest salary ceilings if you’re strategic about it. If you’re a scientist here in Estonia, you need to take foreign assignments to make any real money. Otherwise you don’t earn shit, especially before you finish your PhD.
Cope