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My neighbors are Chinese and both are very intelligent working in high skilled fields. One is a biomedical engineering PHD working in research and the other is a math professor at a not-quite-Ivy level university. They blame Chinese culture at the base level for this and the actions of the CCP being a reflection and institutionalization of that same culture. Its similar to what we call "crab bucket" mentality, but not exactly that. According to them you can become wealthy in China, and many do, but after you reach a certain level of success it actually makes your life worse. If you achieve a level of financial success in China of say 1 million USD a year of more all of you immediate family will quit their jobs confident in the fact that you will support them indefinitely. Your parents, especially your mother, will expect their own standard of living to be comparable to yours immediately if not sooner. You'll be expected to at the least "find jobs" for dozens of cousins and other socially important members of your family's Guanxi ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi ). Your success wont be your success, it will be everyone's good fortune. So there is no point in working harder and smarter just to have an objectively worse life by becoming wealthy; your family and patronage network will never stop having their hands out as long as you have something to take.
Their solution was moving to the US and lying about how much they make. They send a few hundred USD a month to their parents, which is more than the parents make and represents the majority of their extended families income. If their parents knew how much they actually made they would demand much, much more. They still have to field relentless demands that they get family members into the US somehow, and they have to explain that the US doesn't work that way and they can't just "put in a word" with immigration or otherwise grease the wheels.
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