[rfoo]

> the good software engineers in China (the ones who work for Google etc.) get paid just as much as their American counterparts

That's not true. I can provide a data point: a Googler who works in Beijing, 3 years into his career with 2 years at Google[1], get paid roughly 72k USD per year. I don't think this is even comparable to the compensation level in Valley. That said, if you compare with the Japan or Europe (except Switzerland) counterpart, it does seem to be on the same level, so the outlier here is US.

[1] To be fair this does not matter because he is stuck at L3 due to works nullified by internal protests.