[seanmcdirmid]

Well, unless you include air pollution, then quality of life isn’t better, especially in Beijing.

Also, even if housing forsake prices in Beijing are at New York levels, rents are just at Wichita levels. No foreigner is going to buy into that level of crazy, especially when buying property in china accords them no residency benefits (they will never get hukou, heck, green cards basically don’t exist).

[beisner]

Permanent residency is available for investors and people employed there. You’re right, it’s not unconditional. Property rights, in practice, are generally respected as in western countries, although there are some notable counter examples.

I think pollution in China will likely be a non issue in 10-20 years or so. Pittsburg used to be like Beijing, but as the National economy shifted away from industries causing pollution, it disappeared entirely. China is in the midst of this process.

[seanmcdirmid]

I lived and worked in china for 9 years and never came close to qualifying for a green card. Comparing Beijing today to Pittsburg 50 years ago doesn’t really help the current tech market where skilled people are moving out of Beijing for life quality of life reasons (e.g. they have kids who have developed asthma). You also have to pay talent much more to live in Beijing to offset its pollution problems (and to those who say it isn’t that bad, you haven’t lived through winter yet).

We were told in 2010 that the government would solve China’s pollution problem probably by 2015, 2020 at the latest. Ya, well, that isn’t going to come to pass.