It's hard for humans to be unbiased. Part of the reason is he seems to be an ABC.

ABCs are attached to both worlds, and thus are likely to feel pride and shame for both countries. Sometimes they will feel more loyalty towards one world over the other and sometimes the loyalties cancel out where you're left with a rare person who can look at the situation completely impartially.

A lot of ABCs have more of a chip on their shoulder about China, or for that matter immigrants from China itself. Every Saturday, a bunch of falun dafa protesters are out in downtown Seattle protesting against the CCP, most of them just Chinese Ayis (middle aged women).

Gordon Chang “china will implode” articles are a popular straw man whenever any news articles mentions China possibly going into recession.

It's a whole spectrum. But almost everyone on the face of the earth has some bias towards their own country.

The percentage of impartiality among ethnic minorities born in the US like ABCs have a tendency to be much higher then normal. I wouldn't say it's the majority but it's definitely much higher then normal.

ABC = American born Chinese?

Likely. Not to be confused with ABCD.

American born Chinese dumplings.

No, ABCD is a pejorative term referring to US born people of Indian origin - American Born Confused Desi.

Oh… my bad. Didn’t know that was a term. Sorry

No worries :) I didn't know about ABC either - so we're both part of the lucky 10000 today.

Ref: https://xkcd.com/1053/

Haha, thanks for the insightful comic

TBH Dan's still an Anglo Chinese Canadian who grew up under western pedagogy that colours his analysis, but it's fairly level-headed given his background.

Dan's letter is a largely objective personal account, but it is heavily biased towards a particular worldview. This "Ezra Klein" liberal worldview is absolutely not representative of China. It represents a tiny (affluent, expat-oriented) minority.

He spends a few paragraphs talking about how returning to NYC/SF was disappointing, that the NYC subways were strictly worse than he remembered, then turns around and says "the real [America] is getting better". Huh? Based on what? The stock market?

Being a Chinese liberal in 2024 is an exercise in cognitive dissonance and blind faith. You have to just believe that Xi's China is about to collapse, and Biden's America is on the cusp of a golden age. You have to ignore decades-deep trends (in education, development, economic inequality, geopolitics) and wish that they are going to suddenly reverse. Because of an 80 year old POTUS who has been US Senator since 50 years ago when Shenzhen was a dumpy fishing village? It's a very difficult ideological position right now.

I think it's hilarious that when westerners provide data based arguments that China is failing, China supporters will say you don't understand China and you need to live there, and they've heard China's impending fail many times. And then when a Chinese person that lives in China provides arguments that China is failing, China supporters will say well they're biased.

Cherry-picking can look superficially like a "data-based argument", but that doesn't make it a good argument or approximation of the truth.

Dan isn't outright lying, but he is omitting a lot of uncomfortable truths (long-term trends) in order to reinforce his worldview.

Voluntary expats in particular are unreliable narrators because they are incentivized to fit in their new home and defend their major life choice. An expat that expresses loyalty to their old country over their new one is not really an expat, they will be viewed socially as an eternal outsider, foreign agent or invasive settler.