[Suits]

(12-05-2013 11:39 PM)SHANbangs Wrote:  

(12-05-2013 10:22 PM)BadWolf Wrote:  

BTW Chinese who escape China are all rich... there isn't a single POOR Chinese who manages to pass the border. You have to have at least a very expensive house, car and around 100,000 in the bank to be granted a TOURIST visa, if you are a Chinese person. So any Chinese you see walking around the 1st world are ELITE. More than likely, your Chinese friend comes from money so whether his business tale is true or not, doesn't matter.

This is only the case right now, right?

I mean, there are plenty of Chinese engineers who have been working in the U.S. for a good 20 years or so. Like the parents of most Asian American kids...

I see his point, but I have to agree with SHANbangs. I've seen plenty of exceptions to his rule emigrate from China, past and present.

[clever alias]

currenrly rules are 50,000 in the bank, a house, and a job abive a certain income.
anyone outside china is either wealthy or comes from wealth

[Suits]

(12-05-2013 11:51 PM)clever alias Wrote:  

currenrly rules are 50,000 in the bank, a house, and a job abive a certain income.
anyone outside china is either wealthy or comes from wealth

That may be the case for a tourist visa to the USA, but between the entire Western world, plenty of Chinese who don't have much money do get chances abroad.

I'm not sure on the details of student visas, but I HAVE seen Chinese move to Canada based on special employment or education initiative. Had a girlfriend in the US whose family in no way had money, but her dad got into the US based on a temporary teaching position for PhDs and managed to get green cards for the whole family. I know that they did not have a house in China.

So, its safe to assume that most Chinese in the West were born with a silver chopstick in their mouth, I wouldn't assume that it is 100% the case.

[clever alias]

"That being said, there have got to be relatively few fools who are fluent second language speakers of Chinese."
theres no shortage of fools who think they are fluent.

"I personally agree with your points. That being said, you could make money as a business person in China without needing to form such relationships. If you take my advice and develop the skill I recommend having, you won't need to partner up with Chinese to run an effective money making operation out of China"
this is depends more ob what you wanna do. lits of sectors are simply closed off to WFOE

[Pepini]

"If you are wondering why aliens haven't landed yet to share their vast technologies? Its cause of China. We would become to them what China has become to the rest of the world. Hideously greedy little techno goblins, exploiting every planet, creature and star system and leaving nothing for anyone else."

LOLOLOLLLL

[Suits]

(12-06-2013 01:48 AM)clever alias Wrote:  

"That being said, there have got to be relatively few fools who are fluent second language speakers of Chinese."
theres no shortage of fools who think they are fluent.

"I personally agree with your points. That being said, you could make money as a business person in China without needing to form such relationships. If you take my advice and develop the skill I recommend having, you won't need to partner up with Chinese to run an effective money making operation out of China"
this is depends more ob what you wanna do. lits of sectors are simply closed off to WFOE

You're absolutely right. My advice to anyone interested in a China based career to be discerning about what precisely to pursue. If a guy is starting off young, he should intentionally seek education in a direction that doesn't target an industry that he will need Chinese assistance in.

I'll probably go into more detail in a future data-sheet, but for the moment I'll just make a few quick points about what this means:

You can start a WFOE in many consulting fields without needing on-going assistance from a well-connected Chinese local. You might need some connections to make the legal registration of your business come together in a timely manner, but for your on-going business activities, there may be no need. If you stay small scale, then it's much less likely that you'll have assholes showing up at your door looking for their cut.

Possibilities include:
Export - If you're just buying, you don't need to have a business established in Asia. They ship it, you receive it. You can visit on Business visas to inspect product and facilities, but you don't need a China based operation to do this. Plenty of business people go without.

Selling advice to business people, either Chinese or non-Chinese. Lots of possibilities here.

Running a non-Chinese based translation/interpretation service. Don't need to have a Chinese legal business base for Chinese companies to email you documents in Canada for translation.



So, no, I don't recommend doing business with Chinese people if you can avoid it. But just because you become educated on China, doesn't mean your career opportunities will demand that you do so. Plenty of options available that won't mean this if you plan carefully.

[Feisbook Control]

(12-05-2013 10:22 PM)BadWolf Wrote:  

BTW Chinese who escape China are all rich... there isn't a single POOR Chinese who manages to pass the border. You have to have at least a very expensive house, car and around 100,000 in the bank to be granted a TOURIST visa, if you are a Chinese person. So any Chinese you see walking around the 1st world are ELITE. More than likely, your Chinese friend comes from money so whether his business tale is true or not, doesn't matter.

His friend is from Taiwan. Different country. You don't need to be rich to leave Taiwan. There are tons of 20-somethings doing working holidays and backpacking in Australia (and I think other countries) now.

[paninaro]

(12-05-2013 11:59 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(12-05-2013 11:51 PM)clever alias Wrote:  

currenrly rules are 50,000 in the bank, a house, and a job abive a certain income.
anyone outside china is either wealthy or comes from wealth

That may be the case for a tourist visa to the USA, but between the entire Western world, plenty of Chinese who don't have much money do get chances abroad.

I'm not sure on the details of student visas, but I HAVE seen Chinese move to Canada based on special employment or education initiative. Had a girlfriend in the US whose family in no way had money, but her dad got into the US based on a temporary teaching position for PhDs and managed to get green cards for the whole family. I know that they did not have a house in China.

So, its safe to assume that most Chinese in the West were born with a silver chopstick in their mouth, I wouldn't assume that it is 100% the case.

There's definitely diversity. From this article:

"About 1.2 million mainland Chinese visited the United States last year, according to Chinese government statistics cited by China Daily. The number is expected to reach 2 million by 2015.

The main purpose of Chinese visits to the United States in 2001, according to the Commerce Department, were for business (30 percent of the total), vacation (27 percent), visiting relatives (24 percent) and study (3 percent)."

The one visa that's popular with the really rich Chinese is the EB-5, where you have to invest $500k-1million in a US company, and that company has to create a few American jobs, and in turn you get a green card. There are now various investment vehicles set up in the US just for the rich Chinese to take advantage of this. That said, EB-5's are capped at 10,000 per year, so it's still a tiny amount compared to the 1.2 million visas issued to Chinese last year.

[Feisbook Control]

(12-08-2013 11:31 AM)paninaro Wrote:  

The one visa that's popular with the really rich Chinese is the EB-5, where you have to invest $500k-1million in a US company, and that company has to create a few American jobs, and in turn you get a green card. There are now various investment vehicles set up in the US just for the rich Chinese to take advantage of this. That said, EB-5's are capped at 10,000 per year, so it's still a tiny amount compared to the 1.2 million visas issued to Chinese last year.

I assume that has to be directly invested into a company, not through owning publicly traded stocks. Is that correct?

[paninaro]

(12-09-2013 12:31 AM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  

(12-08-2013 11:31 AM)paninaro Wrote:  

The one visa that's popular with the really rich Chinese is the EB-5, where you have to invest $500k-1million in a US company, and that company has to create a few American jobs, and in turn you get a green card. There are now various investment vehicles set up in the US just for the rich Chinese to take advantage of this. That said, EB-5's are capped at 10,000 per year, so it's still a tiny amount compared to the 1.2 million visas issued to Chinese last year.

I assume that has to be directly invested into a company, not through owning publicly traded stocks. Is that correct?

Correct. It's basically like private equity investment to qualify for the EB-5.

[Pepini]

Today I was talking to a western who lived in China for 8 years and was complaining to him that chinese go around and around and around to end up in same place. He explained me that chinese have a circular thought.

I´ve googled it and this is what I found out:

(…) For the Chinese, quite a lot of concepts have a circular nature. One clear example is time: the same things happen again and again. History is circular and not lineal like in the West. The best example is the history of China which can be summarized as the continuous succession of the following four stages: “arrival of a new dynasty”, “dynasty at its height”, “decline of the dynasty”, “China in chaos” and start back again. Note that this circular pattern cannot be easily applied to the history of western civilizations.

Another clear example is human relations understood as a continuous exchange of favors or services among people. In China, the idea of doing something for somebody else in exchange of nothing is less common than in the West. The reason is that the favor is circular and it has to come back to the person who did it. For example, at work in China, if a colleague or business partner helps you in something, he understands that he is developing an important link with you and that he will have the right to ask for a favor back in the future. The favor has to come back to him because it is circular. (…)

They go round and round to end up in the same place.

[Pepini]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3axAVFj-lo

[Feisbook Control]

(12-09-2013 05:19 PM)Pepini Wrote:  

(…) For the Chinese, quite a lot of concepts have a circular nature. One clear example is time: the same things happen again and again. History is circular and not lineal like in the West. The best example is the history of China which can be summarized as the continuous succession of the following four stages: “arrival of a new dynasty”, “dynasty at its height”, “decline of the dynasty”, “China in chaos” and start back again. Note that this circular pattern cannot be easily applied to the history of western civilizations.

You are broadly correct, though note The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole, which was supposedly indicative of the zeitgeist.

[amuseBouche]

Do you guys think pollution in china is a deal breaker? I'm considering making it part of my next trip out east but none of the cities look great. aqicn.org

[paninaro]

(12-11-2013 12:48 AM)amuseBouche Wrote:  

Do you guys think pollution in china is a deal breaker? I'm considering making it part of my next trip out east but none of the cities look great. aqicn.org

As a tourist, no. You'll only be there a few weeks at most. Just get used to black snot and your lungs feeling a bit weird. I'm not a smoker, but I imagine it feels similar to that.

To live there, you can get an air filter for your house to make things more bearable, and also realize certain times of year are more polluted than others.

[Suits]

(12-11-2013 12:48 AM)amuseBouche Wrote:  

Do you guys think pollution in china is a deal breaker? I'm considering making it part of my next trip out east but none of the cities look great. aqicn.org

I've spent three years in two of the most polluted cities in China and I've barely even noticed it. Sure, the smog in Beijing is obvious, but I've never noticed it affecting my health or observed any physical differences, like black snot.

I'm sure that there is a long term risk, but I'm not going to quibble over a few extra years of life, since anything past 80 probably sucks anyway.

[BadWolf]

Suits you've lived in Shijianzhuang?

I was offered a job up there and when I moved with my wife we had just landed and I thought maybe something in the plane was on fire. Then we got out into the airport and I saw smoke all around, I was sort of looking around to see why no one else had noticed this. Then we got out into the baggage area and there was a haze in the air and the taste of smoke but people were just standing around as normal. When we finally got outside, I called HR and told them I quit and to get my job back, the entire airport area was surrounded in a dense haze of smog. You could hardly see the hotels across the street. We had to stay 3 days in the main city for which we had to wear the 3M masks. It was insane, people were walking around with 0 Protetction like it was a normal day. There was basically grey smoke in the air kind of like a humid fog. After the first night I had breathing problems (asthma) and a really sore throat. By day 3 my wife was having the same issues.

Shijiazhuang is the most polluted city in China. For a bit of comparison, the average US city has a 20 to 30 rating on the pollution index. Hainan (the least polluted ISLAND in China) is 50 followed by the least polluted city Lhasa (tibet) at 80. Guangzhou is around 136. Then Shanghai is about 300, Beijing around 600, Chengdu is at about 1000 and Shijiazhuang is 1200.

I had a friend who I met and worked with in Jiangsu, he moved to Chengdu after he got married to this software engineer who owned a 5 bedroom house in the middle of the city, the family was fairly well to do. Anyway they had a kid and while they said the pollution was pretty terrible they didnt make a big deal out of it. He said that basically all the water, smelled like sh1t and was GREY but that their house looked like a jungle (with all the plants) and he had bought an expensive air purifier. The day came when their kid started to cough hard and they found out that she might be suffering from Asthma. Well he pulled her out and they re-located to Spain that year to live in a 2 bedroom apartment in Valencia. They say just having clean air and clean water is a luxury. I would agree and I'm in the south. I can show you my air filter if you ever come around, its CAKED in black garbage. While we don't get the black snot down here, when I lived up north I used to have do hawk and loogie about every 10 minutes... you'd always have this....snot drip at the back of your throat. The pollution here is no joke. Water in this city is mold green and smells a bit too but nothing like the north, the water there looks like liquid cement.

On the upside, the north has BIG PIZZA - the only buffet pizza place that I've seen in China.

[Alpharius]

I had a totally different experience. I got a really shitacular case of China Cough after about a month there and dealt with it for the next year. Finally it was getting so bad I decided to see a doctor when I got back to the US, as I had seen two doctors in China about it and both of them told me it was normal and that I needed to drink more hot water.

Turns out the pollution gave me a serious case of bronchitis.

[SpecialEd]

The air pollution is really an almost trivial problem compared to the tainted food supply. Americans whine about the FDA being lax. There are no standards in China. Those tomatoes you buy are grown in soil with mercury levels many multiples higher than dangerous. Not quite sure why anyone would want to live there, God knows the Chinese dont....

[Suits]

(12-11-2013 09:48 PM)BadWolf Wrote:  

Shijiazhuang is the most polluted city in China. For a bit of comparison, the average US city has a 20 to 30 rating on the pollution index. Hainan (the least polluted ISLAND in China) is 50 followed by the least polluted city Lhasa (tibet) at 80. Guangzhou is around 136. Then Shanghai is about 300, Beijing around 600, Chengdu is at about 1000 and Shijiazhuang is 1200.

Not sure how you got your numbers.

According to this website, Beijing and Tianjin are the worst offenders.

This list states that out of a small selection of cities, Guangzhou is the worst, followed Shanghai and then Beijing.

This page argues that Shanghai and Guangzhou have some of the best air in China, but Shijiazhuang doesn't even make the top ten list for worst polluted cities.

According to this news story, Shijiazhuang doesn't even make the top 10, where as Beijing and Tianjin do.

I downloaded a very long list of world cities from here and got the following numbers:

(Note: this is a list of some of the cities we've discussed as well as a few random ones thrown in for comparison.

........Average mean PM10......Year
Beijing: 121.........................2009
Shanghai: 81.......................2009
Shijiazhuang: 104.................2009
Tianjin: 101.........................2009
Guangzhou: 79.....................2009
Hong Kong: 50.....................2009
Lhasa: 50............................2009
Chengdu: 111......................2009
Chongqing: 105....................2009
Guiyang: 74.........................2009
Haikou: 38...........................2009
Jinan: 123............................2009
Lanzhou: 150.......................2009
Urumqi: 140.........................2009
Xining: 141..........................2009


I gotta ask, where are you getting your numbers on Shjiazhuang? It clearly has bad air quality, but everything I can find points to Beijing being worse. Further more, there are some with worse reported air pollution levels than Beijing.

Do you got a link to where you came across your data?

Quote:

On the upside, the north has BIG PIZZA - the only buffet pizza place that I've seen in China.

There are two major pizza buffet chains in Beijing. I forget the name of the other one. Sometimes Big Pizza has unlimited beer on tap.

Not great pizza, but for 40RMB or whatever it costs now, that's a pretty cheap breakfast, lunch and dinner if you arrive early, do homework all day and eat dinner about 5PM. Sometimes the kids there with their parents will help you make flash cards to practice your characters with.

[Pepini]

In Beijing I remenber the smog or pollution. You couldn´t see just across the street.

[Alpharius]

http://aqicn.org/city/jinan/

I remember sitting in front of my computer last year looking at this and seeing numbers all over 800. Right now Jinan is at 346. Liaocheng is at 759.

Haikou in Hainan is pretty low, sitting at 34.

[BadWolf]

I think someone is fudging the numbers because as I write this I can smell that smokey burning acrid smell.

One of my good friends has an APP that monitors pollution, he is an obsessive compulsive but he has a kid so I think he's justified. A friend actually has a screenshot of it somewhere, I'll try and find it.

http://www.chengduliving.com/chengdu-pollution-tips/ <-- scroll down a bit, its not this one in particular but I think you'll find that the numbers that we get are quite a bit different than the ones shown on that page. Its almost as if someone doesn't want you to see the real ones... hmm wonder why that would be?

[Alpharius]

You can take the daily air quality from cities in China

and compare them to the US. Note that the US scale ends at 500.

Today the highest in the US is Bakersfield, CA, at 158, meanwhile Jinan, China has a high of 627.

[Chewbacon]

(12-12-2013 02:43 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(12-11-2013 09:48 PM)BadWolf Wrote:  

Shijiazhuang is the most polluted city in China. For a bit of comparison, the average US city has a 20 to 30 rating on the pollution index. Hainan (the least polluted ISLAND in China) is 50 followed by the least polluted city Lhasa (tibet) at 80. Guangzhou is around 136. Then Shanghai is about 300, Beijing around 600, Chengdu is at about 1000 and Shijiazhuang is 1200.

Not sure how you got your numbers.

According to this website, Beijing and Tianjin are the worst offenders.

This list states that out of a small selection of cities, Guangzhou is the worst, followed Shanghai and then Beijing.

This page argues that Shanghai and Guangzhou have some of the best air in China, but Shijiazhuang doesn't even make the top ten list for worst polluted cities.

According to this news story, Shijiazhuang doesn't even make the top 10, where as Beijing and Tianjin do.

I downloaded a very long list of world cities from here and got the following numbers:

(Note: this is a list of some of the cities we've discussed as well as a few random ones thrown in for comparison.

........Average mean PM10......Year
Beijing: 121.........................2009
Shanghai: 81.......................2009
Shijiazhuang: 104.................2009
Tianjin: 101.........................2009
Guangzhou: 79.....................2009
Hong Kong: 50.....................2009
Lhasa: 50............................2009
Chengdu: 111......................2009
Chongqing: 105....................2009
Guiyang: 74.........................2009
Haikou: 38...........................2009
Jinan: 123............................2009
Lanzhou: 150.......................2009
Urumqi: 140.........................2009
Xining: 141..........................2009


I gotta ask, where are you getting your numbers on Shjiazhuang? It clearly has bad air quality, but everything I can find points to Beijing being worse. Further more, there are some with worse reported air pollution levels than Beijing.

Do you got a link to where you came across your data?

Quote:

On the upside, the north has BIG PIZZA - the only buffet pizza place that I've seen in China.

There are two major pizza buffet chains in Beijing. I forget the name of the other one. Sometimes Big Pizza has unlimited beer on tap.

Not great pizza, but for 40RMB or whatever it costs now, that's a pretty cheap breakfast, lunch and dinner if you arrive early, do homework all day and eat dinner about 5PM. Sometimes the kids there with their parents will help you make flash cards to practice your characters with.

pizza buffet? that's a lot of carbs...