[angkec]

This may add more insight: I'm Chinese (mainlander) myself and I'm not rich (student). All my friends are not rich either. Yet almost everyone wants to leave the country.

This is probably due to high real estate prices (around 1M RMB in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai for a decent apartment that can get you a girl to marry you, yet you don't really "own" the property even if you buy it. Technically the state still owns your apartment and you were just paying for "usage fee" because that's how communism/socialism works. In comparison, newly college graduates earns around 6k RMB/mo); broken health care system (probably worse than the U.S, since most of the Chinese family are relying on their only child to provide health care money when they grow older); harsh job market (simply too many people for not so many jobs, so the wage becomes low); and plus, a dim future for all of the lower income families or family without connections.

Yes you can argue that there's so many opportunities in China, but somehow we voted with our feet: everyone who has a means to leave left. Most of the famous Chinese actors are now foreign citizens or at least with a green card alike. For average families, they send their kids overseas for school. That's why you see so many Chinese students overseas, doing boring PhD degrees if they are poor or enroll as an undergrad if their family could afford. For their families, getting their kids to an overseas school is like taking the first step to a much more promising future.

[PakG1]

One of my co-workers here in SZ has a foreign boyfriend, but she doesn't want others to know about it. I asked her why she wanted a foreign boyfriend. She said it was because she didn't believe in the future of this country. This is her way out.

My other co-worker hates it that Chinese girls seem to prefer foreign boyfriends (albeit a stereotype, but who knows how reflective it is of reality?). He deems it particularly difficult because there are so many more men then women in China already.

[hachiya]

The one child policy of China is pure evil. It's a wonder the forced abortions and these effects don't feature more prominently in this discussion.

[tobtoh]

And what do you propose is the alternative? Very easy to take a moral high ground when you don't have to worry about the repercussions of over population and strained resources. As the poster said themselves - too many people in China.

[hachiya]

I don't need to propose an alternative in order to state that the imposed one child policy is evil, along with its forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

Second, you can't prove overpopulation is as serious as the government claims, nor can you prove their "solution" fixes it.

Third, if it is as serious as is claimed, it will affect the world (anthropogenic environmental impact, immigration, etc...), so it's everyone's worry.

[SearchDream]

Agree on almost everyone want to leave, I have about 10+ friends and colleague come to work in Singapore like me.

[donaq]

Ironically, a significant group of Singaporeans want to leave because costs of living here are super high.

[gaza3g]

As a Singaporean, I feel the same way too. High costs of living, overcrowded public transit and mandatory conscription for all citizens.

[cma]

>Technically the state still owns your apartment and you were just paying for "usage fee" because that's how communism/socialism works.

The fee part sounds like something other than communism.

[angkec]

I know! And it's ridiculously high, beats any property tax in U.S. That's probably one of the reason why the Chinese government is so rich.

The propaganda has invented a new saying, calling this the Chinese Socialism, and it tries to credit itself for the economic boom after the 1980s. We the people think that the gov is just trying to collect massive money after they abandoned soviet communism so everyone had a chance to make a better life. The chance is getting slimmer as the gov is getting much more greedy than in the 80s.

[vorg]

As long as the US is somewhere a lot of people from ethnic-based nations want to immigrate to, the US can have many more financial crises and not be severely impacted.

[ced]

Is the situation improving?

[angkec]

No. The worst thing is it's going down: living costs are getting much higher because of inflation while wages are far from catching up, real estate is still in a bubble, and it feels like the gov is getting more and more corrupted, blocking ordinary people from having a decent/good life.