Almost any foreigner who lives in china for more than a few years develops a healthy amount of cynicism to keep going (those that don’t inevitably leave). It has nothing to do with an expat bubble (most of us work jobs around mostly Chinese, and spent way more time in zhongguancun than sanlitun).

A lot of my Chinese coworkers left for the states while I was there. Something about “pollution and young kids” was their reason, not to make more money. You can make a lot of money in china, as long as you don’t mind knocking a few years off your lifespan (and just forget about it if you have kids, unless you can afford the private schools with full bubbles around them, and even then....).