You can by marrying a Chineze citizen. It won't make you a citizen, but you can get long term residence permit, and your children will be Chinese citizen.

They don't do naturalisation of foreigners, that's true. You can only give that to your children.

> regardless of background

I seem to recall that is a problem with Switzerland too; people can be refused citizenship by bureaucracy at the local level. Yet people still flock there (perhaps because of the money).

Switzerland's draw is the money. It's true that a significant proportion of the population is foreign born, but the whole country is smaller than some tier 2 cities in China and many foreigners do not stay longterm. If China paid Swiss-level salaries there would be more people going for sure, but the country is so big that at a relative level I'm not sure if the proportion would change significantly

Why would anyone want to become a Chinese citizen? How's everyone discussing linguistics while completely ignoring the authoritarian elephant in the room?

Because we hn people are used to reduce the world to a set of technical parameters. I am not intending to blame or shame anyone here, but to take it more broadly, the discussion around Doge showcased many such problems that arise from unawareness about the limits of our approach: context blindness, taking narratives at face value, narrow focus on technicalities, no consideration for ethics etc.

Tech people need to reduce complexity to make it computable, that's our job. Our strong points are the weak points too. Again: no blame or shame. Just wanted to point out we are susceptible in these matters.

It's not exactly a linguistics discussion, it's a discussion about attracting talent to live/work somewhere. Im not saying whether it's good or bad on China's part, that's a separate issue. Im saying that the possibility of integration is harder than just learning the language.

Because the vast number of people already live under some variation of authoritarianism.

Comparatively few people live under worse authoritarianism than the one in China. Definitely not enough to form a talent pool that would make any dent in whatever China already has. Especially when you factor in education quality.

OP said most people live under some form of authoritarianism, not a worse form than China's.

How is it that the form of government comes up so often when discussing the decisions of ordinary people?

I would think for most people, you care about whether you can fit economically before you consider something that is unlikely to matter.

Obviously don't go and try to immigrate to China if you are planning to be a political commentator.

But for most people in most places, what will you notice? Are there jobs, how is tax, are the streets clean, are there homeless people, can I see a doctor, is there a lot of paperwork? Will I find friends?