The Mass Exodus of Foreigners from China

what the hell is this it's a it's a traditional white tikki Quaglia nut and what it is what's the significance of all of us it's obviously some kind of native traditional thing because anything that looks like that's always got something to do with some cultural native traditional thing right you know what I think it is what it represents the white man leaving China white hey yeah I guess so that's what we're talking about we're talking about the the exodus of foreigners out of China and as you pointed out we're having a discussion earlier we mean it's never been like this before [Music] [Music] no it's always been on the up-and-up yeah you have seen a very very strong uptake of foreigners from places like the Philippines and places that traditionally were very difficult to get to China you've seen a very strong exodus of Westerners leaving yeah so people that come from Australia or England or America I got a couple of stories you know anecdotal we can go on about should we hit the road yeah dude but in this wheel's think about of the scale what do we name him his name's like Tiki Tom yeah take you to him I like Tiki Tom okay Cheers Tiki tell him see you around have fun by the way guys we'll put the Google Maps link for this area if you ever want to come see Tiki Tom it's actually a gorgeous gorgeous area and there's whitewater rafting and stuff here yeah and camping so yeah but you can say hi to him for us since yeah tell him you saw him on YouTube that's not a great dude this bike we're having some issues with bikes that one's like ready to die anyway mine's kind of fritzen out with the speedo well we did go through a torrential downpour didn't we yeah but I feel like a Japanese scooter should be able to deal with that yeah they want to take pictures of tiki tom yeah have fun kids cheers bye-bye so nice anyway so there's a guy you know a random I'm gonna use him as an example okay he you know he wouldn't mind if I mentioned his name anyway because he's he's been very vocal about this anyway he has been in China for about as long as me okay but he's taken it a step further he has a family so he has a couple kids okay I'd like to say they're three kids but is probably too okay anyway the thing is he's got some kids and he's been quite successful at I'd like to say sort of marketing and stuff he has these events and I've been to his events a number of times okay and they're these cross border summits and basically what it is is he he organizes people that are you know really well-known Amazon sellers and people that are involved in trade and dealing with China and stuff and he talks to factories and things and speaks to the Chinese side and he has these big seminars once a year he caught the cross-border summit in Shenzhen and they'll rent out a very big venue and people come from all over the world to pop over and to talk trade and then the Chinese businessmen will come in and you know it's kind of one of those things thing is he's he's just left China like very recently like a month ago or something and I had a long chat with him because you know we do hang out sometimes and he was just like.he he can't justify staying in China anymore because he's getting so much pushback and it's so difficult to do things basically in the beginning the local government would actually sponsor the venue for for his events right because of course it's promoting cross cross country trade international trade it's good for the Chinese economy right but then they started to pull funding they're not gonna help him with the venue anymore so then he's like okay so he starts to pay for his own venue then they start to make it incredibly difficult for people to get visas and that just puts everybody off and it just makes it so difficult to do things like if you're trying to invite someone in to be a speaker they're not keep like getting paid or anything you know it's and then they have to now go through this lengthy annoying visa process as well right you know it really puts them off so it got to the point where he was considering either moving the event to Hong Kong because then you know one would have to worry about that stuff or just cancelling it all together right and the thing is because of Education for his children is the reason that he's actually moving that looks like government or something anyway anyway that's nice out here a look at those right it was stunning it's stunning so he's basically moved to Thailand I believe okay and that's just because there's more opportunity for his children to get an international education without paying ten billion dollars a month or whatever you know right and it's it's a better better environment for his kids grow up but someone who's so dedicated because his kids are like you know they're not young they're probably like seven or something right right he stuck it out this far and he's had so much invested in China and he's just like well I'm out of here now you know it's it's a very good indicator to what's going on like maybe I've got a couple stories yeah I was gonna say if you want proof for yourself just go on Google or even YouTube and type in why I left China yeah you wouldn't be able to find videos like this before by the way gonna be on you know the rare occasion or whatever but if you see them if you type that now you're gonna see a lot of search results and a lot of them from high-profile people like you just mentioned right yeah there's a guy there's a guy a famous guy actually he was so in love with China an ancient Chinese culture and he learned the language all its kind of stuff and he was he started a local newspaper in a town because he had experience with with media and stuff like that right and at the end you know typical story the locals took everything from him the government banned his visa and he's heartbroken and he has to leave right yeah when you hear things like that you're like maybe China's not the place to be but then you you know he'd go through life everything kind of transpires as usual you go through the usual visa hassle rigmarole and you get the visa and it's kind of like a band-aid and you're like okay this is this year I'll skip through this year and I'm in yeah watch out for those dogs little pup copy yeah anyway yeah use me so you go you'll go on and on and on and everything is hunky-dory and it's totally fine but you start hearing more and more of these stories and you start to get worried sure and then you start to look at the reasons why and why are the foreigners leaving well I'll tell you that who's not leaving okay it's the ESL teachers that get paid you know 10,000 RMB a month and they get their apartment paid for and they don't understand what's going on around them they don't really speak the language they don't integrate with it with society they just go to class they go buy their groceries and they go home and watch movies on their can net flicks or something right yeah the people that are leaving are the people that are actually invested in half things like a life and family like you said yeah and basically what's happening is I have my speculation is that the higher powers that be are trying to make a statement that foreigners are not needed in China anymore right whether that's like damaging to the economy or not it is a statement because when you when you kick out people that are really really invested and have a positive influence on China there's got to be a reason behind that right sure so maybe it's a big fu to the to the Western powers maybe it's an fu to diplomacy and we can do things ourselves I don't know I don't know personally but I do know about three people personally that have decided to leave and the reasons are as follows so a lot of the reason that foreigners are leaving China is because of internet censorship and if you're in China or you need to go to China for business or whatever you're gonna do the only way you're gonna get past this censorship is to use a VPN thankfully Nord VPN a company that we trust and use for our VPN needs sponsor this video if you go to North Vee PN comm slash ATV China you can get a massive discount on a subscription but VPNs are not only just useful for China censorship VPNs can actually protect you protect your sensitive data and kind of keep a safety fence around what you do online so that other people ISPs and all that kind of stuff can't see your traffic so also some very good practical uses are things like like you want to access Netflix from a different country you can actually change your IP to do that you can also go and get cheaper plane tickets by hopping around different countries so thank you to Nord VPN thank you to you guys for supporting us and we hope you enjoyed the show no one school got too expensive for their kids so first they went to a private school mm-hmm and the one private school in Hawaii Jo was it was like 30,000 RMB per semester which okay I mean that's pretty expensive but it's not insane right yeah but the teachers there the foreign teachers there they're trying to provide a Western education right like a fort you get like an American diploma basically the the problem was the majority of kids that were paying the money to go there also needed a Chinese diploma to say they graduated and that school couldn't get the grant from the government because they're an American school so the government stopped giving Chinese Education diplomas basically right so you go to the school and you only your only option is that you have the diploma to go back to an American school okay so it made it completely useless for the kids that we're gonna stay in China the Chinese kids but since they were the biggest moneymaker that's obviously who they're gonna cater to right so they're fighting tooth and nail to get this Chinese diploma thing doesn't work falls through school shuts down now this kid that's forward kid this is this American kid he's got to go to a Chinese school right right right he's got to pay top dollar he's not a citizen and the level of education is staggeringly poor so what's a successful father where the factory is supposed to do he can sell this factory he can leave and move on sure and that's what he did right that's it's kind of heartbreaking for them because they enjoyed living there but it just is stupid there was no point next somebody had to leave because they had a medical issue right so they spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of RMB trying to fix their stomach they had a stomach problem and the reason that they had a stomach problem was that the doctor the Chinese doctor actually yeah did an unnecessary surgery when they went back home they found out you know to check basically check on this they found out that it was totally unnecessary and could have been treated with certain drugs so obviously cut out half of more than half of his stomach and then he ended up getting terminally ill yeah that's not having to go back home then at 3 it was a political situation this person had been not I'm not gonna say caught but had been posting things on social media right not expose days or anything but sharing articles maybe that from the New York Times or one of these and because he was involved in education he he actually the the university called him out on it called him into the office and then he ended up at the PSB and they're questioning him and stuff and they ended up canceling I like I said canceling but they they shortened his visa stay rights right and so basically he's not allowed to come back they they say it's for like a certain amount of years order but he's definitely not allowed to come back and they make examples out of these people right so ever all the other foreign staff at this university were terrified correct and they stopped posting things and stopped talking to people on Facebook and it's just it's a it's a climate of paranoia it's a climate of absolute nonsense and it's people are just getting tired of it yeah what about the third thing that was the third thing okay well you know the other day when I was going for my and we mentioned this in a previous episode but just again it's it's a visa thing as well they're making it very tough when I was going to get my new visa my spousal visa I made a subscriber in the public security bureau actually took a video with him and he submitted his documents at the same time as me and he just contacted me very distraught the other day to say that his visa was denied and they didn't tell him why right and they gave him a ten days stamp in his passport to say you've got ten days to get out should I come sure and try and fly again in your home country right and nobody could give him a reason why and that's the problem there's no transparency right because he he went by the rules he didn't but there's been quite a few cases where visas have been shortened and cancel the tournament yeah yeah that German guy who was but he was stupid he went and did like a kind of a mini documentary about the human rights lawyers in China me more power to it means doing God's work but that was just that's just stupid that's literally saying deport me you know right right I'm surprised he wasn't detained in right I mean a few is smart about it he would have released it a bro yeah that his his visa and his residence permit were actually shortened and he was kicked out right yeah silly guy silly bugger but yeah look this Exodus thing's real and I've got lots of friends that I've known for years and it's not the fly-by-night English teachers or the no no all the travel bloggers who couldn't stick around for like a couple of months and like oh I love trying it so amazing look at the Great Wall blah blah blah you know they leave because they're bored or a date they're going on to greener pastures it's the people that have invested their entire life into China right by buying a house buying a car right you know having children here right getting married here right the people that really are invested in China are the ones that are starting to leave and that's a sign that something is wrong right you know what I mean Brett it's hard to hold on like I said if a bit better opportunity comes along I'm definitely out of there too you know it's just a matter of the same but yeah man it's just like the government's is making it so difficult yeah yeah and it's so hard to apologize for them but it's just getting so bad yeah yeah you can't apologize to them it's it's becoming a more hostile environment for foreigners especially just on the visa front you know right like your average person still gonna treat you well it's still gonna be okay but like the government is kind of actively pushing rhetoric anti-foreigner rhetoric which is just starting to become uncomfortable and all the Communists insignia and stuff are popping up everywhere man it's yeah I don't remember that no it's it's such a breath of fresh air to be here in Taiwan look at what we're riding through right and it's beautiful and I don't see any big signs of XI Jingping on the side of the road saying like twelve thoughts right it's a matter like yeah uphold the values of socialism yes twelve core socialist values you know like socialism with Chinese characteristics and you know all this coming right I also don't see the knocking down churches yeah I mean we've been seeing tons of churches around here and stuff it's nice right yeah so it is what it is foreigners are leaving China on mass we may be joining them everything is good to me the way they go you know right right right but we'd like to just bring this to your guys attention just to let you know that it is a video I wanted to say one last thing actually yes if you read the news it's usually big politics right yeah that's why YouTube is so important and that's why I think that's why the China really doesn't like us and doesn't want to sure talk about this kind of stuff is because yeah you can read the news you could turn the news on and you can read about there's this big sweeping political change or this happened you know the government leader said this and this and this but we're actually talking about something probably 99% chance doesn't affect you at all yeah as an audience but we're pretty much the only people talking about it yeah it's you know like nobody cares in the in Wall Street Journal about one man's story about how foreigners left China right sure but we can tell you that these stories are true they're absolutely true and I'm really I really want to see yeah I wish I could like have a power to like flip ten years in the future and just see the state of China or at least the state of foreigners in China cuz I wonder if there's gonna be any left yeah I mean you have to also realize that history repeats itself man right and we've been living in this situation in China for a very long time where we're feeling pretty safe to be there and everything's cool but you know that China's got a big chip on the shoulder but there's 200 years of humiliation right they do the whole foreign is to blame for like all the troubles that they face right and although we had nothing to do with that you know we're still foreigners and remember the Boxer Rebellion and all that kind of stuff it kinda started in the same way stuff get rid of foreigners and then you know I think we're looking at something like that like a Boxer Rebellion 2.0 just bubbling on the horizon what I really hope not but there's a church an example is it Church that's kind of cool yeah let's hope that I'm just talking absolute nonsense but it just feels that way sometimes maybe I'm just overreacting you know well that's nothing to say you're overreacting when you're slipping in it yeah yes I mean on that lovely positive note so we can at least say we're driving through some absolutely gorgeous beautiful areas here in Taiwan yeah anything you would like to tell us subscribers before we sign off whether you agree with China and that's you know foreigners are to blame for the centuries of humiliation or you think that China needs to deal with this and stop taking it out on people trying to help the country I think you'll agree with the ladder but I do I do know you agree with the fact that this is absolutely stunning beautiful scenery and it is almost serene and like medicine to be riding through this right now but I hope you guys enjoy that medicine and I hope you guys enjoy our ranting and raving because we're not just trying to you know make ourselves feel better we'd like to let you guys know the real situation in China so if you did subscribe and leave a like on this video and let us know down below what you thought absolutely absolutely and whether or not you're the kind of guy who says screw it I'm gonna stick it out anyway and you know stick it out for as long as possible or you're the kind of guy who just kind of up up and runs when you know adversity comes your way we love you all the same and as always you know the drill stay awesome thank you so much guys thanks for watching A to B Chinese because a new episode every single Monday at 1 p.m. est up in the top right corner you can watch a another lao 86 video which comes out every wednesday 1 p.m. EST and down below the law 86 video you can watch Winston and serpens at every single Friday at 1:00 p.m. EST thanks

Channel: ADVChina

Views: 935,934

Rating: 4.7925982 out of 5

Keywords: foreigners in china, chinese people, living in china, being a foreigner in china, life in china, chinese culture, expat in china, adv china, winston sterzel, living in china as a foreigner, moving to china, china (country), talk show, living in china as an american, chinese government, living in china vlog, adv china taiwan, china vlog, laowhy86, serpentza, advchina, leaving china, why i'm leaving china, i'm leaving china, china change, foreigner in china, working in china

Id: HrzJcnK_c-4

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 31 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/brontosauruschuck]

I keep wondering if I should get out of China while the getting is good. Right now I don't have much holding me down here other than a good job and a deep hatred of moving. Taiwan sounds pretty nice.