Such BS about privacy payoff. Do you know what your banks and venmo know about you? Your chip in your phone or credit card, allows companies to target ads in real time. That's the reality in the US but conveniently ignored because China has to be bastion of privacy violation. In reality China has privacy laws comparable to the European GDPR.

AliPay and wechat are fenomal. It's like in the western world, 1000 apps rolled into one. Paying, ordering food, ordering DiDi, trains, flights, insurance, sports, tickets all in the one app. Plus you can add mini apps within so when you go to a restaurant you can scan the QR code or just put your phone on the NFC tag, and the menu pops up so you can order and pay directly.

China is much better in regards to infrastructure like high speed trains, social security, health care, green energy but again because of the western propaganda this is ignored. Are there tradeoffs? Yes of course.

But from someone who lived and worked in the US for 2 years and now lives in China for over 7 years, I can 100% claim my life is much better here than in the US. And definitely much, much more affordable which is what the article is about.

Paying for everything with Visa/MasterCard is better? I feel like a lot of people's issues with "privacy" around China are correct. But for some reason are ok with the same exact things in the US/West.

In the West we share literally all of the privacy concerns you mentioned above but instead of them being clearly outlined and regulated by our government; they are instead entirely controlled by private companies that use and sell the information for profit.

I guess it's the illusion of privacy, or really the abstraction of it being violated, that makes people in the west feel like China is somehow doing something different. They aren't, they are just upfront about their tracking and data collection.

In China they have CCTV. In the US we have Ring. Like, people literally put Ring cameras INSIDE there house willingly. It blows my mind. And the idea that in the US that it's "decentralized" or "not available to the government" is a lie.

I guess my point is. You're not wrong about the payment processing or the privacy concerns in China. But, you live with the same exact thing in the west every single day. Arguably worse because your data is being controlled by a CEO for profit and they're selling that to anyone and everyone. On top of being given to your government.

Also tap water may not be drinkable but thats more of a nuisance since you can filter/boil it.

When I visited the U.S. the tap water there wasn't really drinkable. People said it was fine, but my friend bought bottled water, which I paid for during my stay because the tap stuff smelled evil. Tried the tap water at a restaurant and I physically couldn't swallow it. Supposedly Massachusetts has pretty good water, too.

China is not a magical land where everything is perfect and futuristic. It's a big country with a lot of people in many, many big cities that operates on totally different cultural systems.

I like this take. You often hear places hyped up in media because that garners clicks, but everywhere has its pros and cons. Living in Sweden, I've heard absolutely bananas claims about my country. I'm comfortable here, but not everyone will be, and it's certainly not the utopia some people believe it to be.

China has some good things going for it. I'm not a fan of the lack of privacy there, but simultaneously Europe is taking a leaf out of that playbook. They seem to have decent healthcare, and the infrastructure is seeing some major work that a lot of places here in Europe sorely needs.

The working culture in China is off-putting to me, though I feel similarly for a lot of other places here in Europe as well. Germany for example has a really rough work culture, which always makes it funny when American immigrants sing its praises.

The world is complex.

Yeah. Anywhere would basically be like this if you have enough money to retire luxuriously in that country. And anywhere you do that, poorer people will be making that lifestyle possible with their labor.

While I don't doubt that the average urban Chinese person has a higher standard of living than the average urban US citizen, saying that moving to a poorer country where you are rich by comparison is "the american dream" is pretty wild when you're just taking advantage of economic disparities caused by capitalism.

It's irresponsible to move somewhere permanently when you don't plan on really trying to integrate & instead just want to live cheaply as an expat.

Where did you end up at if you don’t mind me asking? What was your process?