Comments on: Another expat leaves Beijing

By: Mike Goldthorpe

Mike Goldthorpe — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 03:41:10 +0000

“Especially Thailand attracts people who just want to chill out. China is just not that sort of place.”
Oh, I don’t know. That’s why I’m going this January to China. Chillin’ with the in laws And for once, I shall be chilling in more ways than one – looking forward to a Shanghai winter. Tired of sweating faster than I can rehydrate with weak beer!

Anyway, isn’t Hainan meant to be the new “to go” spot for chillin on the beach with a brew or two?

By: jixiang

jixiang — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 03:06:35 +0000

@FOARP:

I don’t find the fact that places like Thailand have ahigher proportion of expats to locals significant for the following reasons:

1)China’s huge population means that it is hard for the proportion of foreigners to locals to climb significantly, no matter how many foreigners move to Beijing or Shanghai

2) Countries like Thailand or Indonesia are attractive because of the warm weather and relaxing atmosphere, a bit like the Carribean. Especially Thailand attracts people who just want to chill out. China is just not that sort of place.

By: Shuang

Shuang — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:23:09 +0000

Well, almost all Chinese want to leave this country as soon as they can, from the rich to the poor. why expats want to live in it? I mean, it is an attractive place to travel, to experience, but definitely you don’t want to be trapped there forever.

By: Wukailong

Wukailong — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:34:52 +0000

We don’t really know, but would also expect culture and just the general ability to get used to an environment (in terms of familiarity to previous experience) to play a role in this process. Looking at the latest census of the PRC, we see that there are significant populations from South Korea and Taiwan – 120750 and 170283, respectively:

http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/newsandcomingevents/t20110429_402722638.htm

I find it interesting to compare China to South Korea and Japan (I know a lot of people here don’t like comparisons, but here it’s just to find potential similarities – nothing to do with the CCP, I swear). Japan has 2.5 million foreign residents and South Korea over 800000. Certainly not small numbers, but much lower than developed countries in the West. I would attribute this to the higher threshold these countries put up for permanent residence and citizenship.

By: FOARP

FOARP — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 10:06:47 +0000

PS – I don’t have time to run the numbers properly, but as an interesting factlet:

Mongolia – 656 American citizens in a population of 2,754,685 (2010 census) means that American citizens make up 0.024% of the population.

Mainland China – 71,493 America citizens in a population of 1,339,724,852 (Sixth National Census conducted in 2010) means that American citizens make up 0.0053% of the population.

That is, Mongolia attracts just under five times more American citizens as a percentage of its population than mainland China does. Consider this the next time you read an article on expats flocking to/away from China.

By: FOARP

FOARP — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:33:45 +0000

@Richard – When you consider just how few expats do stay long-term, churn cannot be the reason for this. If I told you about a someone who had moved to Germany for work, married a German, had children with them, learned the German language, you would find nothing strange in them deciding to stay in Germany after their contract finished. Yet, in China, the above scenario plays itself out again and again, but in the end people don’t stay – they move their family out of the country despite in many cases having bothered to learn the language and adapt to local culture (something I find to be only weakly related to deciding to stay long-term or not).

Just pinning it on China’s relative poverty is also somewhat dissatisfactory as an explanation. Data is hard to come by, but if you look at sunny Thailand, you can see what at least appears to be a larger population of long-term expats proportional to the total population there despite periodic turmoil and a per capita income roughly the same as China’s. The same phenomenon can be seen in the Phillipines, India, and Indonesia.

Instead, churn keeps the China expat population lower because China has some additional factors which discourage long-term stays. At a guess:

1) The impending sense, justified or not, that things are going to go tits-up at some point.

2) The dictatorship.

By: Readthrough

Readthrough — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:03:29 +0000

“Nobody in China smiles anymore …” Oh no, we saw broad smiles on the face of many delegates to the 18th Big, when they went to or left the Great Hall of the People, especially when they saw foreign cameramen.

By: Other Richard

Other Richard — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 06:59:48 +0000

I’m pretty tired of the pollution/materialism/corruption/traffic/scary food + consumer products/general lack of civility/increasing costs here. I’ve been in and out of China since 2005 and continuously here since 2008, but I’m actively looking for opportunities back home.

I’m fortunate in that I get to travel frequently to Southeast Asia where I’m reminded that just because a country is developing doesn’t mean it needs to be so grim and miserable.

Nobody in China smiles anymore and I never see the sun. It’s really becoming an unpleasant place.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 19:25:01 +0000

The two examples I cited, Charlie and Mark, did not move because of job opportunities or family reasons. (Mark hasn’t left yet, for the record.) So I don’t see them as products of churn. Of course, churn is why many if not most expats leave. But as I said, in my informal poll my expat friends who are becoming disillusioned with China say their chief complaints are pollution and censorship, to the point they’ve considered leaving. As I said, this is highly unscientific and may not be very meaningful.

By: Chinese Medical News

Chinese Medical News — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 19:11:15 +0000

Is this really a sudden spate of high profile westerners being driven out of China by intolerable conditions? Or is it just (hate this word) ‘churn’? Could it just be the First Generation China Bloggers/Writers moving on? Many westerners came to China and started blogging/writing about it in the late 90s/early 2000s … might this be just a case of people moving on for family/career reasons? China may be an interesting place to hang out for young graduates/English teachers/entrepreneurs but doesn’t offer good or stable long term career prospects for westerners. It’s also a very difficult place to live if you have kids – unless you are on a generous expat salary that will pay for an international school.