They went to the best universities in China and in the West. They lived middle-class lives in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen and worked for technology companies at the center of China’s tech rivalry with the United States.

Now they are living and working in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia — and just about any developed country.

Chinese — from young people to entrepreneurs — are voting with their feet to escape political oppression, bleak economic prospects and often grueling work cultures. Increasingly, the exodus includes tech professionals and other well-educated middle-class Chinese.

“I left China because I didn’t like the social and political environment,” said Chen Liangshi, 36, who worked on artificial intelligence projects at Baidu and Alibaba, two of China’s biggest tech companies, before leaving the country in early 2020. He made the decision after China abolished the term limit for the presidency in 2018, a move that allowed its top leader, Xi Jinping, to stay in power indefinitely.

“I will not return to China until it becomes democratic,” he said, “and the people can live without fear.” He now works for Meta in London.

  • @Serinus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Not to mention the recent string of hacking groups that have clearly had internal information.

    They accessed an air-gapped system at Microsoft because they knew who to target.

    They stole an expired cert out of a stacktrace that was moved from the air-gapped system to a compromised developer machine. They then were able to use this expired cert as part of an exploit chain.

    • Bleeping Lobster
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      51 year ago

      That whole episode was crazy to read about. Like hollywood-grade hacking skills