They went to the best universities in China and in the West. They lived middle-class lives in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen and worked for technology companies at the center of China’s tech rivalry with the United States.
Now they are living and working in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia — and just about any developed country.
Chinese — from young people to entrepreneurs — are voting with their feet to escape political oppression, bleak economic prospects and often grueling work cultures. Increasingly, the exodus includes tech professionals and other well-educated middle-class Chinese.
“I left China because I didn’t like the social and political environment,” said Chen Liangshi, 36, who worked on artificial intelligence projects at Baidu and Alibaba, two of China’s biggest tech companies, before leaving the country in early 2020. He made the decision after China abolished the term limit for the presidency in 2018, a move that allowed its top leader, Xi Jinping, to stay in power indefinitely.
“I will not return to China until it becomes democratic,” he said, “and the people can live without fear.” He now works for Meta in London.
Not here for this xenophobia. The people leaving are the people who don’t particularly like the government.
It’s a little ridiculous we have to keep saying that it’s not OK to say “all X people can not be trusted.” Even if the X is Chinese people, I know China is today’s boogeyman. When X was Japanese people we got internment camps.
Careful if you don’t think Chinese people are mindless CCP drones with no independent thought you’ll be down voted. Really disappointed with Lemmy’s community so far it’s just as bad as reddit.
People are definitely more reactionary here (imo). The ‘downvote train’ can be just as powerful as reddit if other commenters don’t like what you say.
You’re being hyperbolic though if you’re referring to my comment in particular, I never said Chinese people are mindless CCP drones. I said that Chinese expats with family still in China are a security risk. I hoped that anyone reading that sentence would extrapolate from it that I meant in relation to military / national security roles, and there was not a need to directly specify that I didn’t mean every Chinese person is a security risk. Reading it back though I can see how it wasn’t very clear.
Yes I meant to be hyperbolic because that’s the general sentiment I see in the post and community. Not trying to call you out in particular. Though I would like to see some more sources for “Chinese gov threatens family members to pressure and blackmail residents abroad to perform espionage” because the main source I see from searching for it is from the FBI director himself.
You’re not really refuting the point though. It’s not that ‘Chinese people are untrustworthy’. It’s ‘Immigrants from China are vulnerable to blackmail and extortion by the CCP’.
The point as written in their comment is that we can’t use smart Chinese immigrants at all. Quote “Chinese expats are a security risk.” No nuance.
Anyone can be vulnerable to blackmail. People with gambling debts, people with credit card debt, business entanglements, money problems of any kind, cheaters, people who request to stay in a Russian suite once visited by Obama just to have prostitutes pee on the bed. Could be anyone.
In positions where blackmail is a concern, we have vetting procedures. So we can do better than just blanket saying Chinese people can’t be trusted.
They don’t have to particularly like the government in order to engage in espionage. Like the commenter above said, they just have to have family still in China. Just within the last few months, there were two separate cases of USN sailors, both from China but naturalized citizens, who turned over classified information to the Chinese government following family pressure from the Mainland.
We should never engage in the sort of blind discrimination that resulted in internment camps. The associated risk of having family/ties in China just needs to be properly evaluated when placing people with family in/ties to China in positions of trust. The vast majority of Chinese people will never engage in espionage. And they should also never be unduly punished for the actions of the very few among them who do.
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