Chinese Scientists Are Leaving the United States::Here’s why that spells bad news for Washington.

  • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    On the one hand I understand, on the other, having worked there, it seems insane.

    It’s like volunteering to go back to prison, work is much harder, society is harder, the government is somewhere between apathetic to cruel and the office politics is unimaginable.

    Also my understanding is that Chinese who go back are never fully trusted again.

    • cyd@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well, they’re definitely not trusted in the US. Many perceive it as a matter of safety for themselves and their families. The perception is that if you’re Chinese, no matter how naturalized, the most innocuous misstep will make the US government come down on you like a ton of bricks.

      And it’s not exactly a wrong perception; news about spurious prosecutions of Chinese and Chinese-American scientists have been circulating very widely in the scientific community. One can easily see how going back to China is viewed as the lesser of two evils.

    • Beliriel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s a them problem now. If they think they have it better in China … lol … let them leave. They can eat bitterness and see how it tastes.
      Also if they start to think critically they will take themselves out. And the spying fiascos China produced over the years doesn’t help.

  • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Oh no, guess we’ll need to find somebody else to pilfer our trade secrets for a hostile government. I hear Iran has a few nuclear physicists eager to get some on-the-job training.

      • Brainsploosh@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There are so many factors in place already, that this seems a natural escalation.

        You have civil discontentment/unrest in China, a power structure having trouble uniting a populace getting accustomed to higher living standards, a splintered and war-taxed US also fighting civil unrest and also with a troubled power structure.

        If any of them were threatened by famine, they’d basically have to go to war to keep the populace under control.

        Also, China has been jockeying to assert their global power and haven’t had a better position in modern times.

        • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Xi pushed away from Deng’s more passive strategy, he went too hard and gave the US to align everyone else defensively, Ukraine was a lucky break for that too.

          This is geopolitical musical chairs and the music has mostly stopped, Xi needed 10 more years to get his navy in the position it needed to be, now he’s caught with 1 broken ally and the rest of his region not looking that friendly. And his economy is collapsing.

          This was a very lucky break for the west all-told, I get Chinese engineers looking back with rose-colored glasses but I suspect they’ll regret that soon, China now isn’t Hu’s China of the early 2010s, things are going to get extremely ugly over the next 5 years. The west will have it rough too, but shouldn’t be nearly as bad, Chinese real estate is… truly incomprehensible.