I think a lot of opinions coming from first-hand perspective is, if anything, more biased. People get inured to the life they live in and don't have perspective. A lot of people I know who live comfortably in the US that are from places like China or the Soviet Union are still pretty biased in favor of their nationalist propaganda. Not all of them, but some.
On the other hand, there are also a lot of Western expats who were very happy living in China for several years, but are leaving or have left China in the past 2-3 years due to the political changes taking place. China is a much more totalitarian nation today than it was 5 or 10 years ago.
no it's not. most of those people just didn't like china's covid response. things in 2023 are almost back to what they were in 2019 (in regards to western expat life)
I don't think you can give an honest reading of those threads and come away with the conclusion that it's just about COVID. Nearly every comment mentioned reasons other than just COVID.
And even the ones that were about COVID weren't really about COVID, they were about the consequences of the totalitarian response laying bare the lack of social contact and waking them up to what was possible. COVID was the trigger but it could have been anything and they know it now, essentially.
sorry i didnt read those threads. i am a western expat in china and have been for 10+ years, and i'm talking about the people i know and have seen and summarizing discussions with them. many people i know have left since 2020 and this is why
China has always been China. Tibet, Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen, Xinjiang. A lot of expats thought they could bury their head in the sand because they had a chance to make money. Same way George HW Bush did.
