Quora: How does someone who is Chinese become anti-China?

Reply by David Yin

There was a popular joke on China's social media about 5–6 years ago.

A guy gave up his promising job in China and sold his place in Beijing in the early 1990s for 20–30 grand USD and went to the states and became illegal immigrant there. It made sense back then, most ppl were making less than $60–100 a month in China. So he worked his ass off and saved every penny he could. And since he was illegal he couldn't leave the US the whole time. One day his account reached $1 million which is not too bad in the US. He decided it's time to go home and enjoy life, he is a millionaire now!

After he arrived he decide to buy a place for his retirement. So he went to an realtor's office and saw his old place for sale. Listing price was over 1 million USD. And found out his old colleagues are making over 60k USD a year now and looking forward to 2k USD per month pension. This number is 5–6 years old, today you will need to double the housing price.

This was told as a joke but very much to be true. Many people made that choice.

If you are that person and realise you wasted your whole life, the best part of your life for absolutely nothing, no life, away from family, nothing. How are you going to react on it? Quietly accepting it? Or denial? Everything you see is fake, China is not rising but will collapse soon?

Believing China will crash will give meaning back to the guy’s life. This is just one scenerio. For some people they have to be anti-China to live with the choices they made.