Sounds impressive in relative terms but not quite so in absolute terms, because PCB is dirty cheap so 100% is just $10-$20.

> it's not unreasonable to expect them to deliver higher and more consistent quality than home fabs.

Actually it is the opposite, OshPark quality is consistently higher than JLC for years. Chinese manufacturers can do Apple products but also Temu craps, so don't get your hopes high. The only reasonable expectation is being cheap reduces quality.

As long as you are invited and keep your mouth shut about ccp, China does not care about papers. One famous example is an athlete, when questioned about nationality after winning an Olympic gold medal for China, publicly claimed that I am Chinese when I am in China, and American when I am in the US.

I don't think OP is doing this, just stating the obvious. The invitation implies $$$ but not naturalization.

> If you want to live in a country, you might want to actually be a citizen of that country. Does that need explaining?

Yeah might, so it is big question depending on the situation, and even bigger once you got more passports or permanent residence. For example people intentionally avoid US permanent residence or citizenship for global taxation.

> Are you seriously suggesting that people can literally just not engage at all with the society they live in?

All the time, especially the US expats in China. They tend to live in nice communities for foreigners in a few tier-1 cities, they go to western style international hospitals and their kids goes to fancy international schools. Basically employers have everything prepared nicely for them, hence the contrast of China between foreigners and citizens.

In terms of racism in China or east Asia as a whole, there is practically no problem for white ppl, small problem for indians, big problem for blacks.

In the reverse direction in the US there are Chinese/Latino spending their lives in their own ethnic community without speaking English at all, it is not that uncommon, just invisible.

Not sure about India but delivery in China has everything to do with loopholes.

No health care and social security for most, and for the few who have the company artificially fake income for tax evasion.

Working conditions are the usual 12~14 hours a day with 2~4 days off a month.

The electric bike they are riding are dangerously over-limits and categorizes as motorcycles, which are actually banned in most big cities. Of the few that allow it, Shanghai for example, you need to pay ~$70k for registration alone.

In the US the situation is better but not free from problems, for example the first job for a lot of the illegal immigrants who can not speak English is package sorting with similar working schedule, but at least it pays good enough.

> ACH, most bank does not allow send to stranger, and it takes 1~3 days for settlement among those which allow.

> Wire, expensive ~$30 per transaction.

> Paypal/Venmo/CashApp, Schrödinger's fraud trigger you never know it's gonna work or not. Plus they report to IRS so more paperwork during tax season.

> A lot of banks report every transaction of your checking account to credit bureaus.

So stable coin is my preferred way, and luckily among my circle it is widely accepted. Any amount is instant with a few cents fee at most.

This system in action is best demonstrated during the lock-down period of COVID, when any random dude who contracted the virus would immediately have their personal life for the previous week/month published nationwide to the hour, and those who have overlap will immediately get a 14 day lock-down at home.

I have not seen surveillance done with such ease and breath elsewhere. And local PD already have access to such info, and there are scandals where police sell such info for profit.

There is really no reason to be resentful because it is a voluntary choice, and foreign students are worse off in every aspect to start with. Leaving friends & family behind, travel often involves long-haul flights, different culture to blend in, not eligible for NSF grants and national lab jobs, etc.

Situation is really similar to H1B workers discussed here a while ago. The options for Americans are plenty while for foreigners very scarce, and with the recent change it is getting even more so without giving Americans a bigger incentive, so it is really a lose-lose outcome.

They are actually importing Chinese workers to their Brazil factory, leading to the slave labor expose by Brazilian authorities [0]. They have the same trouble recruiting in Thailand, where workers have functioning unions and enjoy modern working rights, instead of 19th-early 20th century Industrial Revolution type stuff.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Brazil_working_conditions_...

They probably have gotten their PR or in the process, but naturalization requires five years after that, so there must be some still not citizen yet.

> developer forums in China

Care to share a few such forums or websites, genuinely curious as someone who reads basic Chinese.

A decade ago, I knew there were CSDN, jvjin (may not be the correct pinyin) where people talked about tech. Nowadays they have just become SEO farms like the rest of the internet.

Actually there are very few Chinese forums left, because it is a huge hustle to run one, and the same rule applies to the comment section of any personal blogs.

Right now pretty much the only one left with a bit discussion is v2ex, but it's blocked by gfw and kinda becoming a ranting corner for programmers. Some also recommend nodeseek and a couple other new sites, where you can find shady stuff but not tech stuff. Then you have tech blogs of big corps, or personal ones, but still not many quality tech posts. There are also some on WeChat but it's kinda cumbersome to use so I stopped.

I personally will not buy any Chinese EV until they fix stuff like this.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Brazil_working_conditions_...

Unless Americans does not want this type of job, which actually validates your cynical interpretation of OP's comment. Meanwhile a lot of illegal immigrants are happily driving for Uber and plenty more will be if they can do it legally.