> Basically, they understand very well that top talents are essential for developing advanced technology they need

Because companies around the world are now aware of the fact that Chinese government steals technologies. Also, Chinese government is too late trying to get talents back.

Most of the laowais (expats) that were in Guangzhou, that were in technology, have left in recent years. The only foreigners left are africans trying to eek out a living and English teachers who can't make it anywhere else. You can imagine the reasons why: poisonous air that will give you cancer, poisonous food that will give you cancer, dirty water that will give you cancer, horrendous traffic (and everyone driving around honking and disregarding rules), bad mannered locals (imagine jackhammering at 4am, spitting, elbowing, cutting in lines), censorship, foreigners getting arrested without a reason, expensive rent (compared to quality), no way to be connected to the western internet without VPN (and recently, VPN have been failing as well), no way to talk to families overseas. And this is in the top province in China. Imagine tier 88 or even tier 2 cities. (shudder)

There's no reason to be in China other than to make money, then get the hell out. And that seems to be even harder now with the economy stagnating and everyone blowing bubbles into the real estate.

Thank god I got out of China. Many already have.

Your story illustrates why they are focusing on pollution control and developing the Social Credit System.

"..the Social Credit System will focus on four areas: "honesty in government affairs" (政务诚信), "commercial integrity" (商务诚信), "societal integrity" (社会诚信), and "judicial credibility" (司法公信). Media coverage has thus far focused mostly on the rating of individual citizens (which falls under "societal integrity"). However, the Chinese government‘s plans go beyond that and also include plans for credit scores for all businesses operating in China."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

China's too late.

China's Debt to ratio is a staggering 833%

http://www.baldingsworld.com/2017/10/23/everything-we-think-...

Why China Lost About $3.8 Trillion To Capital Flight In The Last Decade

(FDI was only 1.3T over the same decade, leading to a massive loss)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insideasia/2017/02/22/china-cap...

So no money.....and recently it prevented South Korean companies from withdrawing assets from China. Now companies around the world knows. Who's gonna invest in China now?

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/national/19352-e...

I think there's an important distinction missing here.

First, NET FDI (foreign direct investment) into China was 1.3 trillion USD over the last decade, not nominal: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.KLT.DINV.CD.WD?locat....

FDI is a pretty imperfect measure for a short period of time. If a Chinese company buys foreign assets, say mines in Africa or forests in South America, that counts as a net outflow. In the long run though, those investments may well pay off handsomely. For a rapidly developing country with a high savings rate, there's no inherent reason why Chinese companies investing abroad should be an indication of doom for China.

As someone who regularly does business with Chinese companies, it has been my experience that it has never been harder to remove currency from China. It is true that capital controls have become increasingly tight.

Edit:

Additionally, given the regulatory difficulties of foreign companies investing in China, it's not surprising that outflows of investment by Chinese companies outsize incoming foreign investment into China.

if someone is interested in the actual situation, the following videos are a good starting point

Davos 2017 - China's Pivot to World Markets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8HsNfQIZQs

Davos 2017 - Strategic Update: The Future of Energy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wvln5Ce_Sk

Just for your info, China has been said to crush by the west media for over 30 years or even longer since PRC founded.

China's also been said to be an unstoppable juggernaut that will rule the world for the next century by western media.

Funny, that.

That 833% figure is for financial assets and gives the UK's figure at 1008%. It just indicates that banks are doing loan swaps and the like.

The semi communist system actually makes China quite stable. In the west if the mortgage holders can't repay the bank kind of goes bust, in China the government would just lend it more money. Well... I guess the west bails out too but more so in China I think.

These four areas are quite interesting. Each defines a specific role a person holds in society. If nothing other than adopting formalized views and conversations along these roles, the West would benefit. The US appears to be failing in all of them, in aggregate.

This is inevitable in any fast developing economy. There is chaos and there is growth. You will see the exact same conditions in western economies when they developed.

Its because they offer opportunity that people flock there. And China has 1.3 billion to deal with, this will challenge any government to an extent that cannot be underestimated or brushed aside.

Not many people on this thread are thinking or have a basic Empathy like you do, China is still not 'stable'.It's still on a fast track. There are problems need to be addressed. But If you look it via History scope. It's has mainly done well.

Yea I think we in the West are too quick to forget our rampant corruption and pollution directly after our industrial revolutions. It'll take China awhile to catch up in livability, but they'll get there once they get richer.

I really dislike this the west got to pollute while developing so other countries should be able to also mentality.

It's apple and oranges. People then didn't have technologies to choose like we do, didn't realise the impact of pollution, nor did things on the scale we are today.

Its cherry picking the bits the want for an economic advantage. If countries want to use the 'they polluted before' argument then they should go back to steam trains and gas lighting etc. Otherwise maybe the west will say look at what they did to get economic growth, now its our turn...

Sorry for the rant but I find this such a poor excuse. All countries should be held to better standards. We seem to forget a key component of capitalism is for the government to create a level playing field. And ability to pollute (or not) the enviroment should be a global tenant for all who engage in the open market.

There weren't over three billion people living in the west during the time you speak of as there currently are in Asia. There aren't even that many people in the west now.

China, India, Indonesia, etc "catching up" is a great goal to work towards but not at the cost of ecosystem collapse and permanently wreaking the oceans.

Seems pretty much like India.

Same issues. I think that will be with any country aiming for a very high rate of growth. Rapid progress is often chaotic.

What if you don't know any English? Should you stay put in China or move to America if you have the chance?

I know many Chinese that manage to live in America with minimal knowledge of English. There are many sizeable Chinatowns and "bubble" communities in America where a Chinese/Taiwanese person could immerse himself/herself in and never really have to deal with English.

How do these people get visas?

they have relatives in the usa.

Or EB5. If you have $500k you can buy in. Apparently about 99% of the 10k issued each year go to Chinese.

Or move to Taiwan if you have the chance.

Taiwan is lovely but still suffers from air pollution. Much of it is local pollution, but some also that drifts over from China. I found it quite challenging when I was there.

But the food is great, so there's that.

That same pollution drifts over South Korea as well.

The same pollution drifts to Los Angeles.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/03/518323094/...

> Also, both Tsinghua and Beijing are ranked in the world's top 10 in AI publications recently, but they plan for more universities to move up in more fields

Sure they moved up in number of publications, but as with so many things in China, what's with the quality of this research? Only a few days ago we had a post here on fraud in China scientific work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473719

Are you in academics? If you see some Chinese is cheating on his paper. You cannot effectively prove that the whole academic people are cheating. Given the basic ratio out there. Top-schools rarely cheat(https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2017/institution/a...), Tsinghua is top tier. And its graduates are welcomed by top tier schools in Europe/US or tech companies. As for cheating, there are metric-system problems in China. For instance, to be a physician in China, you will be buried in day-to-day operations, however, if you want to climb up, you will need to have essays. I am not saying those cheaters are right, they are definitely wrong, but the system need to reconfigure itself as well.

> This is the Singapore playbook

Interesting. When I toured several companies in Singapore, including Google, most of the staff were from Europe or the States. If Singaporeans are indeed doing well in their own schools, my guess is many are still leaving to work elsewhere. I frequently attended programming meetups where about 90% of the attendees were non-Singaporean.

But then, most of the Singaporeans I've known were quite happy to live and work in a Western country; I lived there briefly and was frequently asked by locals, "why would you want to live here, it's so small."

Regarding pollution, it was actually Singapore's air pollution that caused me to leave. I think I'm not alone with that sentiment.

As a Singaporean born and raised there and then left, you are spot on. Most Singaporeans, esp talented tech workers, do not wish to stay there. It's a gilded birdcage - if your moral values and behavior align with the government's, Singapore is a very clean, safe and prosperous environment for you. If you even have the notion to disagree with the government on anything, go somewhere else.

Because of such authoritarian attitudes in society, Singaporeans are raised to be subservient and fearful of authority (whether they know it or not). This means no creativity - the prevailing mentality in Singapore is "don't try to be clever - do what the authorities say and you won't go wrong", sort of like the local version of nobody gets fired for buying IBM. this is the reason why there is no innovation coming out of singapore despite the govt trying to offer all sorts of grants and schemes to "support local entrepreneurs" - because singaporeans have been psychologically beaten to subservience and are crippled when it comes to thinking out of the box because they have been conditioned by society to believe when you fail, you will be ridiculed and mocked and maybe even punished.

You are completely correct. This is exactly what I've noticed among people when I lived there. A lot of it is subconscious. Singapore really has this strange and pessimistic psychological effect on its citizens.

This is a good example of why public policy should, in principle, just do the right thing for the people merely for the sake of doing the right thing--most of the time it works out in your group's self interest.

Sometimes in public policy it seems like we forget that we evolved to care about right and wrong for our own survival.

And yes, there are contentious topics which reasonable people can disagree on, but many are essentially the people vs special interest groups (pollution, healthcare, military expansion, etc)

I don't think those extra privileges would be a very strong enticement - it would be too clear how fragile my freedoms are when no one else is experiencing them, and from what I've seen, academics tend to prize freedom.

That said, I'm sure the draw of the idea of living in their native culture is strong.

It's shrewd. Can't always rope-in top talent by force, so commercial and residential centers must be organized/redeveloped to be more attractive than competing global options.

PS: If it were SimCity, tear up roads, bulldoze industrial areas and build some parks. Sadly, PRC often does exactly that. :'( It was insane to see this empty new highway in Shanghai c. 2002 that had hedges, trees and flowers all the way down its length to the horizon. Oh, and a shiny, brand-new airport.