China

My big brother has become a big fan of China. He lives in the U.S.

It started after a business trip. He imports a product from China that is made for his company, like so many American companies. He visited to meet with his manufacturer and talk about a new product they were developing.

He was impressed by what he saw. Huge modern cities. Well-run transportation. Clean public spaces. Automation everywhere. Courteous, disciplined, hard-working people providing efficient service. No apparent crime.

He came home to see dirty cities with people living on the street. Infrastructure in disrepair. Rude people, seemingly angry and complaining about everything.

Last week he texted me that the SWAT team had surrounded the residential building next to his. It was on the local news. A man had apparently murdered his girlfriend and was now armed and holed up in his apartment. The police managed to extract him with tear gas.

China, he said, is at least twenty years ahead of the West right now. It's the future.

If that's the case, then why are so many people leaving the country? And why are they still clambering to come to the West?

He said that's a lie. Most people who leave China go back. They are flooding back in the hundreds of thousands.

I doubted it, so to verify, I asked Chat. According to the most recent statistics, China is experiencing negative net migration—that is, outflow vastly outpaces inflow. Recent UN-based estimates put net migration at roughly minus 319,000 in 2024. 2025 statistics seem to indicate that the trend is slowing, but it's still negative in the hundreds of thousands.

Anecdotally, my brother's contention sounded plausible to me because one of my Chinese work colleagues recently moved back after working with our company for eight years. She was being groomed to take over as the Controller, so her decision came as a surprise. But her circumstances seemed unique. Her family owned a successful manufacturing company in China, and her father had recently struggled with serious illness. There was no one else in the family who could help run the business, thanks to China's one-child policy from two decades ago.

Over the years, this colleague and I had many conversations about China, and she was a staunch defender. I always understood her attitude as more an expression of pride in her heritage and culture than an argument about the relative merits of Chinese society and politics.

I have worked with many Chinese colleagues for a long time. They are typically young women who came to Canada to get an education, found work, usually in the accounting department, and stayed. I enjoy talking to them about why they came to Canada and chose to stay, especially considering the weather here.

It always starts with education. That doesn't mean China doesn't have great schools. It's through an education visa that these migrants gain access to potential residency. So they are coming for the quality of life, not just the education.

I've heard several reasons for coming: to get away from an overbearing, demanding family; to get away from congested cities; because Canada has lots of space, lots of clean water, and lots of clean air; for the adventure and sense of personal liberty.

I rarely hear economic reasons, because most of these migrants come from relatively well-off families. If they can afford to come here for an education, it signifies that they already have means.

I never hear about politics. And from that I conclude that either it doesn't play a part in their decision or, more likely to my mind, they are simply conditioned not to talk about politics.

One time, my colleague and I were talking about her use of WeChat, which is China's main social media platform, sometimes likened to their version of Facebook. But WeChat is much more than Facebook. It's not just a way for people to stay in contact with their old high-school chums. It's also a banking system, a mobile payment app, and even provides access to government programs.

I argued that WeChat was more like a government surveillance system and a mechanism for social control than a communications platform. I asked her, "Can you criticize Xi on WeChat?"

She answered, "Why would I want to criticize Xi?"

When I told this story to my pro-China brother, he defended her answer. He said that I had a blind spot because I was indoctrinated to believe that criticizing the government represented an important value. "You don't understand," he said, "because of your conditioning."

I suppose he's right about that. I can't help but think that criticizing the powerful, holding them to account for the power we give them, is important.

"If you understood her point of view, you'd see that she trusts the government to have the public good in mind, because that's the basis of their system. And it's working well. She sees no reason to criticize the government."

"Is it that she sees no reason to criticize because it's working, or because it's futile, and potentially dangerous, to criticize?"

My take-away from my conversation with my brother is concern for the future of democracy.

I'm having more and more conversations with people who have lost confidence in what democracy represents—in terms of freedom, values, prosperity and security. The collapse is primarily happening in the United States, which drags the rest of the world down with it.

And China is the winner. With every American failure, it looks better and better. Even to a person like my brother, who is educated, has a BA in political science, and understands what's at stake.

To me that's the scariest part.