this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023

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148

China Is Suffering a Brain Drain. The U.S. Isn’t Exploiting It. (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

They went to the best universities in China and in the West. They lived middle-class lives in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen and worked for technology companies at the center of China’s tech rivalry with the United States.

Now they are living and working in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia — and just about any developed country.

Chinese — from young people to entrepreneurs — are voting with their feet to escape political oppression, bleak economic prospects and often grueling work cultures. Increasingly, the exodus includes tech professionals and other well-educated middle-class Chinese.

“I left China because I didn’t like the social and political environment,” said Chen Liangshi, 36, who worked on artificial intelligence projects at Baidu and Alibaba, two of China’s biggest tech companies, before leaving the country in early 2020. He made the decision after China abolished the term limit for the presidency in 2018, a move that allowed its top leader, Xi Jinping, to stay in power indefinitely.

“I will not return to China until it becomes democratic,” he said, “and the people can live without fear.” He now works for Meta in London.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 year ago (5 children)

You can't exploit it. I know some people won't like to hear this, but Chinese expats are a security risk if they have any family still in China. It's well known at this point that the Chinese gov threatens family members to pressure and blackmail residents abroad to perform espionage.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

100%. How many instances were there where they just straight up stole resources/IP? CCP backed Industrial sabotage and IP theft is very much a concern.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

My old company started a collaboration with a Chinese government subsidiary to get market access. When they announced it at a company meeting they almost literally said, "yes, we know they are trying to steal our IP"

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You absolutely can still exploit it. Assign them to public and open research projects.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Good point, anything where Chinese govt can't get an advantage by stealing proprietary info.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not to mention the recent string of hacking groups that have clearly had internal information.

They accessed an air-gapped system at Microsoft because they knew who to target.

They stole an expired cert out of a stacktrace that was moved from the air-gapped system to a compromised developer machine. They then were able to use this expired cert as part of an exploit chain.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

That whole episode was crazy to read about. Like hollywood-grade hacking skills

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

Proper integration is needed, and I mean really really good integration, gov. funded!

[+] [email protected] -22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Not here for this xenophobia. The people leaving are the people who don't particularly like the government.

It's a little ridiculous we have to keep saying that it's not OK to say "all X people can not be trusted." Even if the X is Chinese people, I know China is today's boogeyman. When X was Japanese people we got internment camps.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're not really refuting the point though. It's not that 'Chinese people are untrustworthy'. It's 'Immigrants from China are vulnerable to blackmail and extortion by the CCP'.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

They don't have to particularly like the government in order to engage in espionage. Like the commenter above said, they just have to have family still in China. Just within the last few months, there were two separate cases of USN sailors, both from China but naturalized citizens, who turned over classified information to the Chinese government following family pressure from the Mainland.

We should never engage in the sort of blind discrimination that resulted in internment camps. The associated risk of having family/ties in China just needs to be properly evaluated when placing people with family in/ties to China in positions of trust. The vast majority of Chinese people will never engage in espionage. And they should also never be unduly punished for the actions of the very few among them who do.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Careful if you don't think Chinese people are mindless CCP drones with no independent thought you'll be down voted. Really disappointed with Lemmy's community so far it's just as bad as reddit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

People are definitely more reactionary here (imo). The 'downvote train' can be just as powerful as reddit if other commenters don't like what you say.

You're being hyperbolic though if you're referring to my comment in particular, I never said Chinese people are mindless CCP drones. I said that Chinese expats with family still in China are a security risk. I hoped that anyone reading that sentence would extrapolate from it that I meant in relation to military / national security roles, and there was not a need to directly specify that I didn't mean every Chinese person is a security risk. Reading it back though I can see how it wasn't very clear.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

Yes I meant to be hyperbolic because that's the general sentiment I see in the post and community. Not trying to call you out in particular. Though I would like to see some more sources for "Chinese gov threatens family members to pressure and blackmail residents abroad to perform espionage" because the main source I see from searching for it is from the FBI director himself.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Most of the emigrants I spoke to, explaining why they did not pick the United States, cited America’s complicated and unpredictable process for applying for visas and permanent resident status.

Am honestly surprised our volatile political landscape didn’t figure into the equation more.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

America's politics are probably the last thing on their mind.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

only surprising to someone who's never known what real oppression feels like

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

..don't downplay USA's oppression just because it's not as bad in some ways. The US is quite bad on many fronts, even when compared with China. For example, abortion in China is legal, and the US incarcerates proportionally more people to what china does (although admittidly those are just public numbers).

Sure, I still would prefer to live in the US to China.. but it still ranks quite far down compared to many many other nations.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thought you were gonna go full tankie there for a minute.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Nah, they're both bad.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Possibly. Since every person with a uterus knows what oppression feels like the good ol USA, when their medical privacy and autonomy where stripped from them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Sounds like a win-win to me?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

This article was written by your he Chinese secret services in order to easy the integration of their spies

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

Nytimes

Next.....

[+] [email protected] -10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The U.S. doesn't want smart people anymore. The U.S. wants obedient consumers.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think this article focuses more on personal reasons. For example:

When Ms. Zhang decided to emigrate in July 2022, she made a list: Canada, New Zealand, Germany and Nordic countries. The United States didn’t make it because she knew it would be extremely difficult for her to get a work visa.

Ms. Zhang, 27, a computer programmer, felt the hustle culture of Silicon Valley was too similar to China’s grueling work environment. After putting in long hours at a top tech company in Shenzhen for five years, she was done with that. She also sought a country where women were treated more equally. This year, she moved to Norway. After paying taxes for three years and passing the language exam, she will get permanent residency.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hey good for her, Norway is awesome if she can live with the winters, the different culture and a relatively small Chinese population. Sounds like it worked out for her in the end.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

I know Lemmy is just Reddit 2.0 and aMeRiCa bAd and everything, but believe it or not we still attract and churn out some of the world's brightest and are leading the pack in tech development and entertainment (which are often not coincidentally intertwined).