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.

With the risk of being down-voted, I would like to ask does "fight for freedom of expression and social rights" really has to be the polar opposite of "pro-business and more money-driven"? To me, those are answers/attitudes towards two potentially orthogonal questions. To put it another way, is a "pro-business and more money-driven" a good predictor on a person's opinion on "freedom of expression and social rights" and vise-versa? Since there are so many potentially orthogonal questions to ask, it seems to me it tells more about those who ask those questions (which questions are more important to them), than those who answered.

Eh, so I would like to add I lean towards social democracy. And I admit I have a bias view. When I think of pro-business, I think of corporations valuing profit over people, of government valuing control over personal freedom, and of people who assume money can solve all their problems.