>" the US has turned noticeably anti-science, anti-immigrant..."

The US gives grants citizenship to more immigrants each month than the PRC has in its entire history.

Another interesting statistic is the total number of people the PRC has granted permanent residency to ever. It's definitely worth googling.

Useful numbers, but in a discussion about what could happen, ultimately less informative than they seem. The U.S. can drastically reduce the citizenships they award, and China can start awarding permanent residencies or citizenship. That is one aspect of what China capitalizing on this might mean. China has shown itself willing to change to achieve what it wants.

Chinese concepts of race and nationality are hopelessly intertwined and Chinese nationalism has been increasing, not decreasing, over the past generation. In recent times, the very best chance of China becoming open—even in comparison to its neighbors—was in the late 80s... and we all know how that ended. The climate hasn't gotten close to being that tolerant since, and in the past five years, political control has tightened considerably.

Of course it is possible to reverse course and open up, but it would take quite a bit of time to change in the ways you're suggesting.

I would expect that role to be filled more by Hong Kong than by the mainland, and in Hong Kong's case, that's how permanent residency works. If you maintain uninterrupted residency in the HKSAR for a period of 7 years, you get your HKID.

It's also a relatively open place for foreigners, English is commonly spoken (and an official language, so all government documents can be completed in English, and all laws translated). Except when meddled with, it retains a high degree of autonomy from the mainland, and very much follows rule of law under HK basic law. Due to it's unique situation, it's also fairly apolitical.

HK companies also have the advantage of not being taxed on non-HK source revenue and have no trouble doing business with/in the mainland.

Well, for one thing you'll need to learn to speak Chinese, and that'd be much harder than learning English. Also, it's close to impossible to immigrate to China at the moment.

Learning Chinese is not as big as an obstacle as you might think, especially when it's that or find a way to past US immigration and afford school + living in the USA. When I lived in Taiwan, I knew a tremendous amount of south american students that had come for the graduate programs because the schools were on-par with American universities, the cost of living was extremely low, and Taiwan is very open to immigration.

People are talking a lot about China in this thread, but I think Taiwan is the country to watch for. They already have a highly-educated population and are a major player in global high-tech hardware.

And they've got $2 beef noodle ^_^ not an easy place to stay thin.

On the other hand, a train ride to Fulong beach is 1hr and costs 1$, or you can hike Elephant Mountain or one of the millions of other mountains, or you can bike through the mountains, or climb at one of the hundreds of walls, or pay $.50 to get into a gym....

I've never been as fit as when I lived in Taiwan :P

Learning English is not easy, the language is among the hardest to pick up. [1] Much of the language is intuitive and difficult to explain. Grammar and conjugations are particularly irregular (to be: be/being/been/am/are/is/was/were/will be).

Chinese is hard to pick up for sure, tones are not easy to intuit as English speakers are used to discarding that information. Mandarin is easier due to the smaller number of tones. It's also easier in many respects than English as there are no verb conjugations.

[1] https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/learning-english-ha...

Tones are almost the easiest part. The Chinese characters are much more difficult thing to tackle, which a lot of foreign learners skip, but in that way you'll never be able to read anything written in Chinese. The article you referenced mentioned you need to remember 2000-3000 kanji (Which is the Japanese pronunciation for Chinese character), well you need to remember a lot more for Chinese.

You need to deal with almost everything the article claims to make learning English hard, when you learn Chinese. And it's often a lot more harder.

When it comes to grammar, English has much more well defined grammar than Chinese does though it might seem too flexible compared to many other European languages.

In addition, if you actually live in China, you most likely needs to deal with local dialects, which could sound like a entirely different language. That's why there are Mandarin and Catonese. There are a lot more inside China.