Many scientists and academics immigrated to the US because of its values: it was a free country and a multicultural country where immigrants are welcomed. The knowledge drain moved smart people to a free country to build a knowledge economy. (Economists too: the Bretton Woods system was built in part by smart people who fled the autocratic or fascist countries). That system of free exchange between stable democracies with social safety nets kept peace in the world for 50 years.

Not sure this brain drain has equal intentions for rule of law and democratic societies.

> The trend is just reverting to the mean.

That's a lie. United States get 1M immigrants a year since 2000. There's over 37,000,000 legal immigrants in US. United States gets the creme of the crop from countries around the world. On the other hand, there were approximately 594,000 immigrants living in China in 2010, most from Asia.

If you can live in US and make 300k-400k, you would do that in a heartbeat, vs living in China where the pollution could shorten you and your family's life, a brush with someone in CCP could destroy your life, no way to get the money you make in China out, no ownership of properties, censorship prevents you from doing research in the real internet, etc.

Oh yeah, what do you think will happen to China after additional $400 billion tariffs, when XiJingPing dies, when the massive shadow debt ($12Trillion and counting) causes widespread defaults and 30% devaluation of yuan?

The current US government approach to immigrants, legal or otherwise, would seem designed to convince immigrants to go elsewhere.

I think China will be fine given that it can simply shut down exports to the US if T​r​u​m​p's tariff pettiness starts to sting. Where, precisely, do you think your phones and computers are manufactured?

> The current US government approach to immigrants, legal or otherwise, would seem designed to convince immigrants to go elsewhere.

I'm curious where you live and wether or not you can actually, personally, witness the effects of legal immigration there. In SoCal, where I've spent the last decade+, what you're saying rings completely hollow, to me. I have seen literal tour buses of mainland Chinese folks touring new developments, inside of my own new development, in fact, as recently as this spring. If what you're saying were true, why aren't these folks getting the message? That they're touring these homes this way is a discussion for another day. But, as far as I can tell, the only morale panic happening about legal immigration to the United States is happening with American citizens.

> I think China will be fine given that it can simply shut down exports to the US if T​r​u​m​p's tariff pettiness starts to sting. Where, precisely, do you think your phones and computers are manufactured?

What does that have to do with anything?

Are they touring those developments in order to find a place to live?

Or are they investors who will stay in China?

As far as I've seen from the last 2 years of living in this neighborhood, they're moving in and staying here. At least enough time out of the year that you don't notice if they're gone for prolonged periods of time (and it would be hard not to notice, the neighborhood is blanketed by solicitors and their ridiculous flyers). A few homes are known to be empty, but only a few, and this development has > 2k homes in it. There are a couple of rentals, but from what the neighbors and I have gathered there really are only a few. It's Irvine, CA, so it's just sort of like this, I gather.

edit/ Having said that, it's not very different from what you'd see in the San Gabriel valley in recent years, either. If they're living here full-time, or not, is any ones guess. I suppose I could find out if I really wanted to, but it'd probably take weeks.

I live in New York City. We have all sorts of immigrants here.

> Where, precisely, do you think your phones and computers are manufactured?

Vietnam, which now produces more Samsung phones than China does.

"Samsung has invested $17.3 billion in eight factories and one research and development center in Vietnam, turning the country into its largest smart phone production base, the government said. ... Exports from Samsung Electronics’ factories in Vietnam totaled $54 billion last year" [1]

US trade with Vietnam has massively exploded higher over the last decade. The US now imports as much from Vietnam as it does France (an economy 12 times larger). That trend will continue.

China's low value manufacturing is too easy to replace.

The US can move its manufacturing to any number of about two dozen other low cost countries. Just as US capital and the vast US consumption machine built China (and Japan + South Korea before that), it can next build up numerous other nations. The US has no permanently fixed need for China, there's nothing they contribute that can't be manufactured elsewhere (as witnessed by the way clothing manufacturing rapidly fled China on cost, and now eg Samsung's smart phone manufacturing).

Most of what China is looking to do is copy and then compete with what the US already does, from Boeing planes to military tech to semiconductor tech to software to biotech, medtech & pharma. China is a giant clone machine, nothing has changed about that at all. Accordingly, China has nothing novel that the US doesn't already have access to elsewhere or otherwise.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-vietnam/sams...

“I think China will be fine given that it can simply stop accepting money from the US if T​r​u​m​p's tariff pettiness starts to sting. Who do you think precisely, phones and computers are sold to?”

Fixed it for ya. (I tease)

lol right, China is going to stop exporting $100B a year of electronics to US. Even though Xi Jing Ping begged Trump not to kill ZTE.

China is not fine. China is trying to balance its shadow debts (12T, 170% corporate debt to gdp), prop up stock market (lost 15% this year), prop up real estate (decline in 1st tiered cities, 25.96x House price to income ratio), and prop up yuan (4% loss this year).

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle. That's not ok here, as the site guidelines make clear: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Where are the guidelines on usernames?

Xi Jing Ping bribed Trump not to kill ZTE.

OTOH, China doesn't seem to want immigrants either. It's close to impossible to get Chinese citizenship if one would want to, for example.

I would assume there are lots of expats living and working in China.

Yeah, certainly, especially in places like Shekou. It just doesn't seem possible to fully assimilate, you will always be a laowai.

Just curious, have you been to China?