Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-tech/chinese-capital-dangles-carrots-to-lure-foreign-talent-to-its-silicon-valley-idUSKCN1GB0UF?utm_campaign=Newsletter%20-%20Mi5M%20-%20Q3%202017&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=60968683&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9b3puY2RUNq_9NrSirNfW0yD0nl0n9e8sLY6Zv03GUVQ52KSZTr3MVF9f0JwoMdrpx4qKli8LPyzYWuUvV9pitrOX8vA&_hsmi=60968683

by SirLJ • 8 years ago

50 103 8 years ago

reuters.com

joncrane• 8 years ago

This is an interesting one. Is this related in any way to the "token white guy" types of jobs which are apparently available in China?

seanmcdirmid23• 8 years ago

No. White monkey jobs are mostly over. Maybe you can find one in some remote tier 88 city, but not in Shenzhen.

dtornabene4• 8 years ago

this is crazy, I had no idea these even were a thing. It sounds like a Coen Brothers plot.

antr2• 8 years ago

US-biased headline. This is what US-tech firms have been doing for years, dangling carrots on foreign talent. The same reason why the US VC-lobby has been up in arms on anything and everything work visas related. China is the new USA.

seanmcdirmid23• 8 years ago

Why is it a US biased article? China has been doing this for years also, just not very well. I still think they aren’t doing very well in this area, especially since they make immigration or at least permanent residence so impossible, but other issues related to child education costs and environment make it difficult to live and work in china long term.

duncanawoods3• 8 years ago

The language is pretty poor - "bait" "lure" etc. They might as well have written ITS A TRAP.

As I read it, I felt enough spin to not fully trust the point about maids at the end. Was it cherry picked item from a whole slew of legal relaxations for its shame value or is it really an isolated, important and notable act presented dispassionately? I can't tell.

Molaxx• 8 years ago

Huh? In what way is it biased? I'm sure that if China wants talent to come, then they should be happy about this free publicity.

Nokinside• 8 years ago

The difference is that US lures people to move and eventually become citizens. China want's people to work there, transfer the technology and go away.

It's basically impossible to naturalize as Chinese citizen even if you marry a local and live there for decades. Japanese are strict in immigration but they take ten times more immigrants than China. Only about 1000 people get Chinese passport per year.

t1o52• 8 years ago

If a 10 year wait time for greencards and restricting the H4 spouses of those skilled visa workers to work legally is not a carrot, then yes US is doing a great job attracting and retaining talents.

I went behind the carrot for 3 years and then immigrated to Canada. My spouse has dignity now and she is a full time employee just like me earning a very good salary. In US, she lost all her confidence,dignity and was depressed because she was "not allowed" to work though she was a post graduate degree holder.

Any skilled workers who care about their H4 spouses should do the same.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/01/28/green...

http://h4-visa-a-curse.blogspot.ca/p/home.html

https://qz.com/797831/the-h4-visa-and-the-desperation-of-ind...

Double_a_92• 8 years ago

Only about 1000 people get Chinese passport per year.

How did those people earn it? Or is it just lottery based?

gruez2• 8 years ago

Only about 1000 people get Chinese passport per year.

i suspect that's a combination of han biased policy (as mentioned in a sibling comment), and the fact that nobody wants a chinese passport. china doesn't allow dual citizenships[1], so for a chinese with "western" citzenship, getting a chinese passport is a downgrade, unless you really sure that you want to stay in china.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationality_law_of_the_People%...

antr2• 8 years ago

I agree with your comment, but it still is dangling carrots. Some soft, some hard.

gigatexal2• 8 years ago

Would you rather China, now on its way to being led by a dictator no different than a Mugabe-like figure in Africa, gain this talent to be used to bolster state run entitities — you know they’ll use any foreign tech developed on Chinese soil for government purposes — or let a relatively less corrupt, much freer government like the USA bring this talent over to build industry in the states where people are much more free, and you’re not indirectly helping the next chairman Mao?

And to say something so bold as “China is the new USA” is to link the US to things like unending autocratic control, corruption, etc., the list could go on. So no. I disagree. If China wanted to be the new US it would start where the US started and being in the poor, tired, cold etc.,

adventured5• 8 years ago

While I agree with your overall point... this:

If China wanted to be the new US it would start where the US started and being [bring?] in the poor, tired, cold etc.,

China just had a billion of those people, 15-20 years ago. They still have a quarter of a billion people living on less than $3 per day. Maybe they'll get to what you're referring to eventually, assuming their economic expansion survives the shift back to a strong-man dictatorship.

dtornabene4• 8 years ago

I'm not exactly a fan of Xi, but theres some serious racial overtones in that little screed my friend. China has been an autocratic state for decades, Xi didn't reinvent the wheel here, and, also, while Mugabe sucked, his perception in the west was more than a little colored by racism. This is an excellent discussion, by a renowned South Asian intellectual who was driven out of Africa by no less than Idi Amin.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n23/mahmood-mamdani/lessons-of-zim...

jeffreyrogers• 8 years ago

Except in the US you can actually integrate into society and be treated as an American[0], that's not true of China.

[0]: I know there's still racism and discrimination, but if we're comparing to China let's at least compare the two countries on the same scale.

adventured5• 8 years ago

Consider for example what Asian Americans have accomplished in a relatively short amount of time in the US (most Asian immigration has occured in the last 40-50 years). Highest education levels, lowest unemployment rate, lowest crime & murder rates, highest incomes, highest household wealth levels, longest life expectancies (of any demographic in the US).

In how many large countries has something like that ever taken place (quite peacefully at that)? It's an exceptional testament to the ability of immigrants to contribute to the US, become integral to its success and be accepted.

walshemj3• 8 years ago

Not really its brining in cheap complaint entry level employees who are desperate for a job.

wakkaflokka• 8 years ago

Other than the visa-related benefits, what type of monetary benefits do foreigners get for moving to China?

seanmcdirmid23• 8 years ago

Pay is pretty good (about 70% of Seattle) while living costs are low. I was able to save about 30-40% of my take home over almost 10 years.

kbwt• 8 years ago

So China pays much better than Western Europe? Is this actually true?

dcldcl• 8 years ago

I've spoken to tech workers from Beijing and my impression from them is the cost to purchase homes was on par (if not higher) than SV (and Seattle).

Is rent that much cheaper?

Slansitartop• 8 years ago

while living costs are low.

Are you sure? From what I've seen, Shanghai real estate is comparably expensive to SF.

lostmsu2• 8 years ago

Maybe, once Wikipedia and Gmail are available full scale.

seanmcdirmid23• 8 years ago

Wikipedia isn’t blocked in china yet as far as I know. Internet censorship is a big deal for foreigners working in China, especially since playing the cat and mouse VPN game is so tiring.

gruez2• 8 years ago

wikipedia + https isn't blocked? so there's literally nothing preventing people from visiting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1... ?

coupdejarnac2• 8 years ago

Wikipedia started being blocked when I lived in Beijing in 2005. I'd be surprised if it isn't still blocked.

ttflee• 8 years ago

Wikipedia (Chinese) is blocked, but you could circumvent by adding a few lines of DNS records for zh.wikipedia.org into your /etc/hosts. Sites for other languages are fine for a few years.

itissid• 8 years ago

I wonder if one takes away someone's internet is he/she to consider themselves "poor"? I would certainly think so of myself.

bsaul6• 8 years ago

Honestly, the blocking doesn't make any kind of sense. You can literally create a vpn from within china itself on any cloud provider and surf on anything you want, in less than 10 minutes using softwares like algovpn.

It's now a moment of truth for internet in china : either they start blocking vpns for real (although good luck doing that without collateral damage to the economy, because that would mean shutting down a ton of services), or they just open it.

My bet is that they'll open it. They have services on the same quality as US ones, some even more advanced like wechat , they're already 1 billion user strong, i'm pretty sure they'll benefit tremendously from opening the gates.

lostmsu2• 8 years ago

It's a matter of principle. Also, unacceptable if you can be prosecuted for posting stuff.

dageshi2• 8 years ago

The overwhelming number 1 priority of the Chinese Communist party is to remain in power and remain in control. Everything comes second place to that. Economically it would make sense to do what you say, but to do so would be an unacceptable loss of control over the ability to monitor and curtail communication in China, so they won't do it.

Additionally, they do certainly have the ability to detect and shutdown VPN's based on traffic analysis, for the most part they don't do this most of the time but during specific sensitive political events they can and will.

pertymcpert• 8 years ago

VPNs are now unreliable, they're using ML to detect traffic patterns that look like VPNs.

kurthr3• 8 years ago

That you can (or have in the past) used a VPN does not mean that it is legal (or feasible now even with ExpressVPN). See this link for travelers below. Other than commercial "private" company VPNs which are themselves regulated in China using a VPN can lead to various forms of punishment and may not work as well as you would hope. It really depends on how you connect (e.g. mobile or wired), where you connect from (Beijing or Urumqi), and what you are viewing (english email or chinese video).

https://www.travelchinacheaper.com/is-it-legal-to-use-a-vpn-...

goatsi• 8 years ago

The goal isn't to block things 100%, it's to make it enough of a hassle to use them that the Chinese population turns to domestic alternatives.

pentae• 8 years ago

The Beijing municipality has said it will even consider allowing foreign professionals to bring in their own foreign maids, currently illegal in Beijing.

Well shit, sign me up.

seanmcdirmid23• 8 years ago

This was actually a big issue for one of my friends. They wanted a Filipino maid for communication reasons and were even able to manage it for a few years (before 2010 or so). But then China cracked down on the practice and they had to go with a chinese one eventually.

ny2244111• 8 years ago

You get a foreign maid, and you get a foreign maid. Everyone gets a foreign maid!

walshemj3• 8 years ago

Yes I cant see that being a thing for 99% of the potential western candidates unless they are targeting the ME and India

mtgx• 8 years ago

Oh yes, carrots, with a side of dictatorship. Sounds quite tempting.

intrasight• 8 years ago

Unless they make exceptions for the Great Firewall, this carrot won't be so enticing.

dannylandau• 8 years ago

There are 37M college students in China and around the world. Why do they need foreigners to come over?

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/08/content_243650...

mrarjen2• 8 years ago

Likely because they are still in college, and China would rather want the leaders in their fields to work for them instead, and also teach the newly graduated to take it from there?

yorwba• 8 years ago

Also, literally every student I've met in China wants to go to the US. Undergraduates want to do their Master's there, Master's students want to do their PhD, I guess PhD students want to become professors at a US university.

ausjke• 8 years ago

No.1 SMOG SMOG SMOG

No.2 No google available

Bring ten foreign maids won't fix that. I'll just pass.

bsaul6• 8 years ago

About the smog, i'm in shanghai right now, and i can tell you that the air is far less polluted than Paris, France. It's actually quite weird, because i thought the exact same thing as you regarding smog, i thought i would have to wear a mask for the duration of my trip. I was amazed at the number of electrical vehicle here (not a single motorcycle running on gas).

Note that it may be due to the chinese new year holidays (although it's been over for two weeks now), or to the price of real estate that rose to such a level that nobody can live downtown anymore... I'm not sure the reason, but i was really really surprised.

seanmcdirmid23• 8 years ago

The city should be almost deserted during CNY. But right now at the moment of this post, Shanghai is worse than Paris:

https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/ (95)

http://aqicn.org/city/paris/ (66)

devy• 8 years ago

Chinese New Year holiday week does indeed bring down traffics on the road just like what Thanksgiving night does on America's road. However, China's transportation electrification has been going on for at least half a decade, as this Deutsch Bank white paper indicated in 2012[1]. Anecdotally, I think the electrification transition started as far back as a decade ago (disclaimer: I visit China annually since 2007).

[1] https://www.db.com/cr/en/docs/China_GreenCars_080712.pdf

dbomhof• 8 years ago

Ha! - In the article that smoggy image was worth a 1000 clear breaths on this side of the pond.

craftyguy• 8 years ago

I guess you've never been to LA on a hot, windless summer day.

kryptiskt• 8 years ago

Not for me, I like being able to say "I disagree" on social media.

baybal25• 8 years ago

Anybody want a mini-AMA? Worked with Chinese for bigger part of my career and did two long term on-site consulting contracts. I lived in both Shanghai and Shenzhen.

wafflesraccoon• 8 years ago

Would you do it again? I hear mostly good things about living in China once you get past the culture shock.

baybal25• 8 years ago

If there will be a good offer? Yes, without any doubt.

Getting a good offer is what makes the biggest difference.

There are good jobs on the table, and they are ok for your first take on Chinese job market. $3k to $4k net income is what you can get as a developer in an in demand niche with 4~5 years experience.

For me, after 6 years, just "simply good jobs" are not enough. They have to be really great. Something like with a clear road to above $4k $5k net income salaries, or $40 per hour or more short term contracts.

Getting such offers is totally possible after few years there making connections and proving yourself.

About quality of life and livability. I had zero complaints for last few years. Best districts of major cities in China score more on livability for me than most of Europe and America. See, the difference there is you can have great life with just mid-to-high ordinary job there. An equal lifestyle option in fancy parts of SoCal and London is virtually impossible without above 2nd percentile salary and good perks.

orangehour2• 8 years ago

How hard would it be to find a position in China if I don't speak Chinese? Are there certain places I should look for information on this? Job websites?

baybal25• 8 years ago

This will limit you to 1 in 3 jobs open to foreigners. Which is still very good. See, the main value of a foreign specialist is that he is foreign and supposedly have rare expertise. Second to that, you will most likely to be hired with an idea in mind that you can liaise with overseas customers/specialists/authorities and etc even if your job does not implicitly require that.

Best option is to actively solicit contacts and network a lot. Foreign professionals are a closely knit club here. Industry events are the best if you know nobody here.

Look for job offers in English, job boards of companies with a record hiring foreigners, foreign companies that are new in China, super senior level positions, jobs with PhD. level expertise level, jobs requiring people skills in English "product managers/ field application engineers/ sales or solution engineers"

Websites: 51job, zhaopin, ChinaHR. Look for English language keywords. A post in English almost certainly assumes the company keeps hiring a foreigner an option.

landryraccoon• 8 years ago

I think it’ll work if the carrots are big enough. People from the west have no issue working in Dubai if the check is big enough.

cromwellian2• 8 years ago

IMHO they need to offer an officially sanctioned legal VPN for those with such Visas. It is too annoying as a technical worker doing research to reside in an environment where access to information is unpredictable.

Chinese capital dangles carrots to lure foreign talent to its Silicon Valley

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