Chinese Workers Abandon Silicon Valley for Riches Back Home

I am a Norwegian in Silicon Valley that have spent most of my career with Chinese colleagues, both in academia and industry, and my anecdata seem to indicate that my highly talented China-born colleagues are sadly leaving because;

- China has great opportunities for riches

- Getting a US VISA is hard and painful when you come from a populous country like China or India

- My China-born colleagues seem to in general be more conservative, and Silicon Valley has become violently intolerant of anyone that holds an opinion different than the predominant view

Only the first reason is somewhat objective, while the two others cause stress in their daily life as their ability to provide can at any time be removed due to what is perceived as arbitrary reasons. Everything being equal, many of them have told me they would prefer the less crowded Silicon Valley.

> My China-born colleagues seem to in general be more conservative, and Silicon Valley has become violently intolerant of anyone that holds an opinion different than the predominant view

What exactly does this mean? Are they evangelical baptists, libertarians, reactionaries, nationalist, homophobic, misogynist, racist, anti-atheist, pro family-values, pro corporation, skeptical of global warming, pro fossil fuel energy, war hawks, or something else altogether? It's really quite difficult to interpret your statement as anything meaningful without clarification, and there are ten thousand different ways to be "conservative".

And to be clear, "conservative" is anything but a dirty word or something I'm trying to critique here--just a context-sensitive one. It could be a pejorative or a value.

Otherwise it doesn't add much to the conversation--it is itself a reactionary statement.

I'll try to take a stab at this. I'm Chinese-American and I feel the Chinese folks who come to the US to study or to work have very different mindsets.

I have a friend who is dating a lot in NYC and he told me he notice most of his Chinese-American friends are liberal as in we fight for freedom of expression and social justice. Whereas the girls he met who are newly from China are conservative and support Trump because they are pro-business and more money-driven.

Based on his observation and my own experience I would agree. Most new Chinese visitors or immigrants don't value social rights and freedom of speech. And to be a bit critical, I feel they are so used to having the government or authority telling them what to do that they are comfortable with authoritarian rules and don't understand the importance of having independent thoughts and diversity.

I don't think they value social rights that much less than we do (although it seems local Chinese people seem to tolerate government power more than we do). People who come over from China, especially to work in Silicon Valley, tend to be the more open-minded of the bunch, and people I've talked to from China have told me that they're aware of those "problems" but don't view them too negatively as it's just the cost of running an efficient country.

They do, however, feel very disillusioned with a lot of the current progressive environment. It's less to do with not agreeing with those values, and more to do with disapproval with how we in the West express our dissatisfaction - we're quick to take to the streets, protest on social media, and believe anything our echo chambers tell us, hence where the Chinese insult "white left" comes from, referring to people who are overly emotional and sensitive about things.

China and Asia, in general, has a very conservative "keep it to yourself, fix it yourself" attitude when it comes to problems, which can be very toxic. But this current NA attitude of blaming others and expecting the world to change to accommodate you is incredibly frustrating to the coworkers I talked to, and with the current political environment magnifying this problem to incredible levels some of those same coworkers felt that if they didn't participate in these politics (gender, race, religion, etc) then it would reflect negatively on them, but their opinions differed enough (ie only 2 genders) that they would be crucified if they said anything. It wasn't surprising to hear from some of them that they considered going back to China sometimes.