HK is not a tech startup place, programmers outside of banking and finance get paid very poorly compared to Shenzhen. I lived in Beijing for 9 years and found that, besides the air pollution, everything was definitely workable. I only left because when my wife and I were expecting a baby. Beijing has gotten better recently, though still too bad for the baby, while Shenzhen has always been better and comparable to Shenzhen.

China has plenty of its own talent and has been attracting back those who went overseas. While I agree that they will need to attract worldwide talent in the long run to fully compete with the USA, they are not in a bad place ATM.

>China has been losing technical talent left right and center. If they want to compete, they need to be able to attract top talent to their country

Well, they have a 1.4 billion pool to draw from, from themselves alone.

>There's a reason why their military and space hardware is Russian or Russian-derived.

Because they're starting out on those things. But their stuff at least works -- analogous us endeavors of late have been failing after spending tons of money (F35 for one).

This is changing. China are actively pursuing top scientists that have left the country and giving them large budgets on return with more freedom to spend as they see fit. Many people interesting in the science and opportunity to create will lap this up.

And not sure if you have been to China but outside pollution, they have very good living standards of you have the income, though obviously this is subjective to what is important to you. But say for example, go stand on the Bund in Shanghai. It feels like London meets NY in China.

Not sure about Americans, but more and more Chinese are moving back to China when they could have lived in LA or New York or anywhere they want. Also, Hong Kong is not as important as it used to be. It's also very common to see people from Hong Kong and Taiwan moving to China mainland to work nowadays, especially if they work in tech.