Can we agree about all of LaNegra's sources being anti-Chinese propaganda sites whose entire content is 100% China bad, China horrible-type anecdotes. I have seen enough of China to know that it is far from an ideal country, but at the same time there are a lot of things that are pretty impressive in that society and nation, notably the degree and pace of improvement. I see China as a slowly maturing larger Singapore,
China has some extreme problems that, when realized, make it difficult to balance the good with the bad the way you can in other places. Most foreign visitors and residents remain unaware of these extreme problems because they are having a good time.
For example, an American friend of mine from Phoenix had been in China for a couple of years when I met him. He'd achieved basic-conversational ability in Mandarin quickly because he was meeting a lot of higher-than-average Chinese girls, so he was having a great time and just focusing on the positives. That's the proper way to China or travel any where.
Around 2013, before Xi had increased the birth allotment to two kids in 2015 (and later to three), he asked me to confirm that the 1-child policy was a myth. His first reason was that he had heard from Christians that the 1-child policy also resulted in
forced abortions, which he had not seen with his own eyes. His second reason was that the school where he and I were teaching had a lot of students from the Chaozhou-Shantou-Shanwei, northeastern part of Guangdong, which was perhaps the largest metropolitan area with the greatest disdain for Beijing's authority, including the 1 child policy. We both had many students from there who had three or more siblings.
I explained to him how unruly that area was and gave him
a couple of examples, but it wasn't enough to move the needle for him, so I showed him a
n article in english from 2010 where the police there kidnapped the family members, mostly parents, of thousands of married people who'd already had children and told them if they wanted to see grandpa & grandma again to go to the local hospital immediately and get their tubes tied and/or vas deferens snipped because they had a 10,000 person sterilization quota that month. He couldn't believe his eyes or ears, but he was exceptional and demanded to search the web for himself. He found the article I'd showed him,
along with others, and realized he'd been wrong for years about the 1 child policy and also dismissed the reports of forced abortions, so I showed him
one that made the papers in english, too.
Another time he repeated the myth that China is safer than the USA because he felt he could get drunk and stumble home at 2 AM without fear of harm, so I asked him a few questions:
Have you been pickpocketed or stolen from in China? Yes, many times.
Did that ever happen in the USA?
No.
How about when you were traveling in Europe? No.
Have you been mugged in China? Oh, well yes, but the thief came back and let me buy all my stuff back for only 600 RMB.
Ever been mugged in the USA? (he grew up in Phoenix)
No.
Do you know anyone who's been mugged in the USA? No.
He had rationalized all of the above into the belief that China was safer because he was having a great time and never really stopped and examined his own opinions.
One of the extreme problems that most foreigners do not think about is child kidnapping, which is rampant in China. But after you have children in China, which he did after marrying a lovely girl from Sichuan, he began to worry. This is something serpentza says is why he could never live in China again.
Serpentza and Laowhy86 are high-performers and did well in China. Serpentza married a girl from Hong Kong, then divorced, so he later married a doctor from Guangdong before they relocated to the USA. Can't recall if they have kids, but Laowhy86 married a upper middle class girl from Macau and they had at least two children before they relocated back to the USA. Over the years, they've had a lot more good things to say about China than bad, but I've always found their China reports to be accurate.
