If China is to the 21st century what the US were to the 20th century - economically, scientifically, industrially - what should I do as a US citizen working in tech, besides signing up my kids and myself for Chinese classes?
Australians don't like to acknowledge it, i guess to avoid being flooded since house prices are high, but it's the easiest pick by far. A western nation which rises as China rises due to sheer resource wealth and stable government.
Currently it's already >3x the median wealth per capita of the USA. Slightly lower on average but medians the real way to judge for the typical (non-0.01%) person.
Exports more than it imports.
Government revenues have been far ahead of spending for the past few years. Can you believe that?! A western government not just going into ever increasing government debt!
An extraordinary rollout of solar and batteries (dwarfing China's attempts at solar on a per capita basis) to the point where you can sign up to plans where power is free during peak daylight hours and the government will pay you $3k to install a home battery to store that free power.
Basically no tariffs so you can buy an electric car for USD$15k. Which goes well with the above point.
I look at the USA, UK and EU and people seem to have given up trying to vote in a better government? They don't seem to care about importing more than exporting or government spending exceeding revenue as election issues worth voting on?
Hard to say what good the Trump admin is doing except exposing the rot in right wing “governance.”
Not saying these countries don't do good things too, but a lot of bad things compound when the government has to balance its books.
I couldn’t imagine a better place to live than Northern Europe, but Australia is a close second for me. Been to China, Japan, Canada, the US and I think parts of those countries are also really nice to live, just not a good match for me culturally.
Now South America is a different story. If you like good weather and a festive atmosphere it’s actually the best place to live, just don’t expect to have money or to live in a functioning state where services work!
It's impossible for every country to be a net exporter so I don't see the issue on "care about importing more than exporting", exporting high-value added products and services while importing products/services lower in the value chain is how countries that aren't so lucky as Australia with immense natural wealth and low population get to be rich as well.
Many countries in the EU also have a balanced budget, it's a mixed bag, France overruns its revenue consistently, Germany had a debt brake and until the past few years consistently had surpluses, Sweden has quite low debt and a balanced budget, the Netherlands has a small deficit, so on and so forth. So it's entirely country-dependent instead of being a general EU issue.
They love money so much, you could swear they're American!
US was arguably the most open country on the planet in terms of acceptance of ideas and cultural diversity especially in 20th century.
But I also don't think people need to be very worried but still we haven't had monocultures on the top or close to the top of power hierarchy for several decades so it's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people.
For instance China is heavily censorious of LGBTQ and very likely against the Idea they haven't banned it outright yet thankfully. But then again lots of countries are in a similar boat.
But the biggest difference is China can easily back slide without possiblity of return on any metric because it's not a democracy.
American culture is capitalism, and that isn't changing, just getting more extreme. Equally American culture is "white European" and the resistance to change there (racially and culturally) is woven into US history.
*Edit it's a typo. You meant big.
I had lots of friends when I lived in Beijing who were gay, the gay bars weren’t underground and my gay coworkers weren’t in the closest, for L/girls it was even more out in the open (especially at the art schools). If you haven’t lived in China I guess you wouldn’t have a clue.
Again it's hard to say where it's open or where it's closed, they seem to be back sliding in very weird ways. I am not part of the LGBTQ community so I can't say for certain how bad it is, so I won't comment further but UN & human rights watch has been citing increasing censoring of LGBT representation and open-ness in China in recent times.
The biggest concern with China is lack of democratic freedom means as long as it's not bad enough to revolt the country can back slide pretty easily on many metrics with complete silence, no protests etc.
[1]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/06/25/china-social-media-films...
Even countries with back sliding freedoms with good democratic structures have a fighting chance, China is just so weirdly removed from it that it's concerning when and if something does go wrong.
China welcomes all skilled foreign talent to come work and take residence in the country with open arms. The process to live and work in China is open and transparent as in any other major Asian economy: first find a job there and second, apply for the visa. You can even work for a major Chinese multinational outside of China, provided that they aren't blacklisted like ZTE by the US government.
Don't enter with the expectation to naturalize and you will find you can do more than you think: go work for Baidu in Beijing, study in Fudan University as a student, or start your own business. Whatever you feel like mostly. Understand that you are on a visa and adjust your conduct like any immigrant in any western country understands.
Learning Chinese has amazing utility but most expatriates can get by without knowing a lick of it, my own family is living proof of this. Any multinational hiring a foreign talent will also hire translators for said talent. In day to day life there is no shortage of people in the city who can speak english, for the rest there are LLM's and translation apps. The Chinese community is behind on truly understanding life from the immigrant's perspective but it is adapting positively.
The most common objection from outsiders is the restricted access to global services like Google, Facebook, OpenAI, the easiest remedy for that is to just use a VPN. You can order a latte from Starbucks down the road in the meantime - or Luckin coffee if you want a better option.
A lot of the fear is unfounded. The local police station is not going to arrest you for accessing the outside world. You aren't going to lose a "social credit score" for being late to work, cutting a line or being obnoxious in public, the scoring system exists but AFAIK it serves as a tool in extreme scenarios, but AFAIK most foreigners don't get one.
Finally, coming back to intentionality of the restriction - most restrictions that irk outsiders are codified and enacted to protect domestic business and individual interests. Reasonable to heavy restrictions on curtailed big American conglomerates and services allowed for amazing domestic alternatives like TikTok/Douyin, BYD, Deepseek to flourish. Companies which provided keystone infrastructure the economy - like Visa - were deemed too critical to allow for a strangle-hold and regulated, for these acted as a foreign tax on every domestic transaction, thus Alipay and Unionpay were born.
This just isn't true. There's a K visa for young STEM professionals, which is about a year old. It's a bit more flexible for this very narrow group, otherwise you need a Z visa and work permit. You need a job first before the provincial labor authorities will approve a work permit. There's a points system, salary requirements and age cap.
There's no practical path to permanent residence in China. The Chinese "green card" equivalent has been issued to under 15,000 people since 2004. Even under Trump, the US issues about 10x more green cards in a single year than China has in two decades.
The numbers don't lie: in a country of over a billion people, there are well under 1 million foreign workers. There's a massive problem with youth underemployment and unemployment and net migration has been negative for 75+ years.
Comparing visa datasheets and application requirements will not give you the complete picture on immigration. I cant iterate case by case over every western nation here so I will limit my myself to the US since this is HN.
For most H1B immigrants residing in the US on dual intent visas, there is no realistic pathway to PR either, due to country caps and observation that one country supplies a majority of immigrants to the US.
Most H1Bs here spend their full careers in an anxious immigration limbo between USCIS, unreliable employers, power tripping border agents with 3/6 year renewals and periods of restriction on travel. Many who arrived to the US pre-2001 are still yet to recieve their promised green card. That is not practical in any meaning of the word. Immigration and PR into other western nation is an order of magnitude easier.
Many without the fortitude pack up early and return home, the USCIS does not account for them AFAIK.
Most immigrants get the same or better experience under the Z visa with minimal pretense and bullshit. The Chinese govt is kind enough to dictate reasonable terms. You renew every 3/5 years at the local visa office until you reach 60 and head back home. You arent treated like a criminal at airport immigration. The points system used for Z visa not a hurdle for anyone remotely compenent. It does not ask you to learn fluent Chinese, getting paid sufficently, having enough prior experience making grants enough points, its table stakes for most immigrants. If you want to reside in China beyond 60 you can figure out an avenue with immigration consultants, but it rightfully requires justification.
Peering into the future, net legal immigration into the US has passed its inflection point. As DJT admin looks into curtailing OPT, H1B and birthright citizenship I would say US is looking worse today than China in matters of immigration. Compared to just 2 years ago, 2024, nobody coming to US is expecting to stay permanently. That door has long shut. In contrast foreign student enrolement in Chinese universities is trending higher every year. Eventually this may lead to better terms to reside in the country.
There is no doubt that the Trump administration has hurt America's appeal, and that Indians in particular face a pretty tough road ahead.
But you're overstating so many things. China's system is working as designed. The US system has a huge backlog. Those are not the same thing.
And you still don't want to acknowledge a simple fact: a US green card provides a real pathway to citizenship and full rights for your children. China has no similar path for immigrants.
The numbers simply don't lie: despite Trump, the US issues more green cards in a year than China has issued its closest equivalent in 20+. China has had net negative migration for 50+ years. The US population will be modestly higher in 2100 than it is today, while China is going to lose as much as half of its population in the next 75 years.
Source: the UN's 2024 World Population Prospects
Easy or not is hard to argue, but more foreigners live in Taiwan than the whole mainland China.
But living full time in China and competing with Chinese in China as a non Chinese person- that's not something you want to do.
Even countless Chinese in China don't want to do this.
Currently, even if China pulls ahead, it doesn't have to mean things getting worse in the US. Contrary to what the current government seems to believe, growth is not necessarily zero sum. Despite Americans' perception of Europe, they too remain competitive in various domains of research. Similarly with, say, Japan.
For those of us living in America and Europe this truly is shocking and earth shattering. It is the end of the world as we know it.
Most of the populist nonsense ultimately comes down to their delusion that they're being cheated out of the position they deserve as inherently superior people.
But noone is gonna want to hear it.
you can start any time by speaking with strangers, which reduces in anxiety the more you do it