I lived in China for several years and left during COVID. There are lots of things I miss about living there.

The food was great. You could find fresh cooked stuff everywhere and fresh vegetables at the market every day. Getting delivery was cheap, easy and fast.

As a well-paid tech worker, housing was affordable.

There is a sense you are taking part in something important. That's difficult to explain, and it's something Americans in particular probably can't understand because their country is the same but even more so. When you come from a smaller or less powerful country, there is something exciting about becoming part of a society which has great influence internationally. When stuff that's happening locally ends up being major news because your country actually matters to the rest of the world, that's a neat feeling.

The public transport and urban infrastructure was really good, even in low tier cities, although when the COVID restrictions hit all of that changed.

And that's what made me realize that despite the benefits of centralized rule, it also can turn the country into a prison state overnight.

Anyone living in China is familiar with seeing police and other uniformed and armed officials all over the place. Cameras all over the place. Party propaganda all over the place. But it doesn't seem all that sinister when it doesn't get in the way of your own personal life. When you can go to work, and go to the market, and go to the restaurant, and it's just a backdrop. It's only when those agents of oppression mobilize that it really sinks in how messed up it is. When uniformed officials in their tens storm in with clipboards and mancatchers to shut down your favorite restaurant or street vendor because someone important has decided it should no longer be open. When something the party doesn't like is said on a website you read every morning and suddenly that website is no longer available, period. When walls get erected around every neighborhood in the city and all those markets you used to visit in different districts are now behind checkpoints you cannot cross because you don't have the paperwork to visit them.

Things improved after those first few months of COVID, but for me that was the real eye-opener. A lot of local people realized it too, and there was talk of how "now we are all Uyghurs". Of course, as the holder of a foreign passport, I had the privilege to be able to leave when I was fed up with the oppression. Most Chinese do not have that privilege.

There are lots of other bad things about living in China. The blatant corruption, for one. The endless boondoggles and scams and the greedy scumbags who buy into the system and prop it up to enrich themselves.

The classism is shameful for a so-called "communist" country. The way the urban middle class looks down on anyone who comes from the countryside or works low class jobs or didn't get a good education is depressing.

Foreigners are second class citizens and always will be. Threads here ask about why people are called "expats" instead of "immigrants", and the answers are missing the point a bit. In China, as a migrant worker, you have no choice to become an immigrant. You must maintain your job or your visa will be canceled. There is no chance of getting citizenship. There is not even a hope of getting permanent residence. There is a strong undercurrent of racism that the government allows to exist, in so far as it doesn't actively stamp it out like it does other topics they prefer the people do not discuss. At every step of your life there, you will be reminded you are an outsider. When you can't sign up for the same services local people can because you don't have the same ID card, when you are told you can't stay at a hotel because management doesn't want to go to the trouble of registering you with the police daily, when yet another landlord refuses to rent to you despite you having all the money and the paperwork. However, having lived as a foreigner in other countries, I can say that these things aren't unique to China, they are often part of the migrant experience, and a lot of countries should do better.

Of course, in China the bad things are compounded by the authoritarianism, and in the end, that just outweighed everything for me.