• partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    I’d like to believe that, anecdotally I’ve seen a number of engineers head back because they felt they could leverage their skills where they were the one-eyed in the land of the blind.

    I agree with you. I don’t think those engineers are wrong that they will likely do well as the CCP has a big push to develop domestic research married to its strong domestic manufacturing.

    You really should want to leave though, Xi is not subtle in his desire to control all aspects of Chinese life.

    This is the part that confuses me about those engineers actions. Jack Ma was one of those engineers at one point. If you’re too successful, bad things happen to you. So what does that mean for the engineers that are going back? Do they perhaps see themselves reaching upper middle class status, then stopping career growth? Do they not see that even being rich in China doesn’t give you the right to express your opinion?

    • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      You nailed it, but the engineers are very much at a “reign in hell vs serve in heaven” point right now because the CCP is promising everything.

      But also, most of those engineers aren’t the good ones, they often don’t value the freedoms we have here, they just want a safe and comfortable lifestyle for themselves and their kids, which seems reasonable right now.

      I think there’s a … “hive safety reflex” if that makes sense? They feel safer in China than in the west right now, especially as the world is de-globalizing, and they fear being left in a potentially hostile land, which is one of the narratives the CCP is using to counter fears of its own tyranny.