If you are living in China, do you have an exit strategy?

Manhattan Contrarian asks,

...Have you read about the surge in American students studying the Chinese language? There actually has been something of a surge. According to the Xinhua news agency in 2017, some 227,086 American students are now studying the Chinese language (compared to 7.36 million studying the top-ranked second language, Spanish). Oh, the number of Chinese students learning English is “over 400 million,” with English a compulsory subject in all elementary and secondary education.

What is it about life in China that might have many of the top people planning their exit strategies? If you don’t know about China’s pervasive and mushrooming “social credit” system, it’s time to start learning. There’s an excellent piece on the subject today from Gordon Chang at the Gatestone Institute, titled “China's 'Digital' Totalitarian Experiment.” In essence, they track everyone all the time, using everything from millions of security cameras to total following of your financial life, and use the results to impose social controls, deciding everything from who can fly to what school your kid might be able to attend.

...Meanwhile, if you think that China’s GDP of about $12 [tr]illion +/- seems impressive, remember that the U.S. GDP (after a recent spurt) now exceeds $19 [tr]illion; and China has about 4 times the population, which means that its GDP per capita is maybe 15% that of the U.S. Which is less than that of, for example, Mexico or Brazil. And that’s if you believe the numbers that China puts out. They have a long way to go, and increasingly they are putting big obstacles in their own way.

UPDATE, September 13: Commenters noted that I had put “billions” for GDP rather than trillions. Now fixed.

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