> [..] any writer who adopts the totalitarian outlook, who finds excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality, thereby destroys himself as a writer. There is no way out of this. No tirades against ‘individualism’ and the ‘ivory tower’, no pious platitudes to the effect that ‘true individuality is only attained through identification with the community’, can get over the fact that a bought mind is a spoiled mind. Unless spontaneity enters at some point or another, literary creation is impossible, and language itself becomes something totally different from what it is now, we may learn to separate literary creation from intellectual honesty. At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity. Any writer or journalist who denies that fact — and nearly all the current praise of the Soviet Union contains or implies such a denial — is, in effect, demanding his own destruction.

-- George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature"

This is just as true for scientists. Bought, caged, too addicted to harmony with peers -- all these and more have the same result.

If you cannot even say that the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, if there is an arbitrary set of facts you are even allowed to acknowledge, determined basically by brownshirts through violence, you may be doing something, but you're not being a fully fledged scientists anymore than an elephant could be found in a small fridge. I don't even need to look at the person, the circumstances are fully sufficient for this determination.

Which is kind of insane to think about. I don’t know them too well otherwise I’d ask them of their reasons for moving permanently out of China.

Just that I have a sample size of 1, so take it with a grain of salt.

The government has many "legal" means to "take everything away" from someone, including taking away their means of doing business or their access to power, running stories to defame them, using threats of tax issues, fraud, sexual crimes, national security violation, and other means of control. Sound familiar?

If you think human nature is different because there is some scrap of paper from two hundred years ago you may be sorely disappointed when trying to redeem on your protections and rights, which it sounds like you've never had to do. This, mind you, is the same scrap of paper that claims all men are created equal.

In the US, a certain level of person has nearly carte blanche against scandal, against being accused of crimes or pursuing pathological policy positions. Of course, in the US, a small person's life can be snuffed out if they annoy the wrong cop and their life can be made miserable if they go up against the justice system or other powerful forces.

I'm sure what how well the two system play against each other on the world stage at this point.

Is US / the West fair? Not by a long shot. Tons of shitty stuff happening, from George Floyd, to Harvey Weinstein, to Jeffrey Epstein, to Julian Assange. But at least we know about them.

But compared to China? You won't even hear about the "small person's life". I'm sure life in China can be great, unless you're Muslim, or Buddhist / Tibetan, or Falun Gong, or Canadian, or ...

I don't know about you, but for me, there's no question which of these systems I'd prefer to live under. Even if I were black! (Notify me when China gets a black president.)

I would prefer live in the West also. I also know a lot of people in the world value security over free expression.

Just as much, I'm reasonably sophisticated in my reading of the news and the open expression here allows me to pick the truth reasonably easily out of a stream of lies. But the stream of lies is there, every day I encounter people online who instead fall for the stream of shrill claim sloshing around both the Internet (aside from Murdock crap, you have "Russian Bounties", etc). Again, the US still looks better to me but the way things are going, the US is not doing a good job selling it's model.

Of course, if you mention Epstein, everyone here knows about him but few-to-no US paper, "pedophile, apparently murdered in prison by persons unknown" and people in China know often know the operations of the state to that degree, at points when the real story is obvious and the state isn't that concerned. Admittedly, there are stories about prison officials moving Maxwell around the prison to prevent her from also being murdered - but directly calling officials for Epstein's murder, not visible (no, I don't miss him but his murder was clearly to protect the guilty and nations should pretend the rule of law at least).

The US definitely has more free expression, of course.

In the US we have been selling off our privacy and ability to affect public policy through our leaders for much the same reasons, ie short-term gains for the few. Difference is we gave it voluntarily.

The probability of that happening is not so big considering people from such areas tend to have low quality schools around them, which tends to mean low test scores, maybe even involvement with the "justice" system, no real opportunity to land a semiconductor job.

What you said sounds nice, but I doubt happens much in practice.

I have friends living in Shenzhen, I asked them, and they said they never saw such signs. It could be that they are visiting different groups of restaurants or hotels etc.

[1] https://twitter.com/BlackLivityCN/status/1249011762638266374

Not necessarily. You could also lose your job and get totally screwed professionally if you speak against the last political trend. University professors could for instance lose a job over a pronoun matter. Sharing a memo have also been proven risky. The actors are different (state in one case, mob and PC in the other) but the end result can be pretty similar.

Try organising a Tiananmn protest, or criticising the Uyghur internment camps within China

I think he's referring to Han people studying/working overseas returning to their ethno-state. I can't imagine many non-Chinese would move to China instead of choosing to live in a fairer, rule of law Western democracy where the work is often better paid.

Careful with present tense, things have taken a stark turn for the worse in terms of the day-to-day reality of western foreigners in China, and it already was not spectacular (minders checking in on your domicile every couple weeks or month, basically zero standing in legal disputes including routine contract disputes).

China isn't afraid to play nasty political football using imprisoned and tortured and unconnected westerners as pawns.

It's easy to romanticize tech in China from afar, but in reality it's like how it was in the 90's in the US and needs a lot of catch up. One issue that I'd highlight right away is that there seems to be a real lack of interest in the actual work; everything's done at breakneck speed for purely practical reasons and they wouldn't get very far without being able to copy/paste from github.

Hence throwing money at strategically important industries like semiconductors. The goal isn't to pay more the west in everything, but to enough premium attract the necessary talent to meet development objectives. Like attracting sufficient Chinese engineers from the valley to sea turtle back to bolster domestic innovation while locals spam derivative products until something competitive arises. At least data from the last few years shows it's drawing Taiwanese and Korean semi engineers. But semiconductors are very hard, like turbojet engines which China also has difficulties tackling, so who knows how well this strategy will work. Only that it's worked for everything else.

>Chinese Tech

It's not romanticization, I'm not in tech and I don't know what goes on method of cultural wise behind the scenes. I just know most everyday services I interact with when in China is ahead of the west, with exception of Google maps. Maybe the code is all duct taped from github, the workers are underpaid and overworked, but the experience is better from a consumer experience. So for me whatever is happening is sufficient, and breakneck speed for practice reasons might be the kind of consumer oriented process I prefer. Silicon Valley may poach most of the talent, and have the best pay, but they haven't made my life as convenient in comparison.

The way China has developed and the growth potential still there, I can totally see Chinese expats moving back there.