Is Crystal funded by the CCP to gaslight you or is she just after attention online?

Hi everyone.This is a draft for my latest podcast which you can listen to by clicking here. I came across this post on Instagram made by a Chinese American influencer called Crystal and the title of her video is 'The Asia your parents escaped from is gone." I really disagreed with what she proposed in her post. But since I know she had crafted that piece for an audience who were going to agree wholeheartedly with everything she said, I'm going to offer my response here instead. Crystal talked about how she feels robbed of a better future in Asia because her parents had moved to America - Asian migrants who were of her parents' generation moved to the West, in search of better opportunities, in hopes of giving their children a brighter future in the West. She then compiles a montage of the most futuristic skyline from Asian cities like Shenzhen, Seoul, Taipei, Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai, claiming that if our parents had just toughed it out for about 10 more years in Asia, they too would have been part of this Asian success story and she even claims that white people who visit China today will be so impressed that they think "this place might even be better than the US.". She also claims that if Asian Americans visited China today, then they would realize that they needn't have left in the first place if they were looking for a brighter future. She talks about visiting relatives back in China who have benefited from China's economic miracle and was jealous of them. Of course, her audience are other Asian people who want to believe that Asia is booming and the West is struggling today. It almost feels like the Chinese government is paying her directly to create content to fuel the narrative that China has overtaken the West and this is the kind of content on social media they need to brainwash people on Instagram. Look, I'm not trying to pick a fight with her or her supporters, such arguments are often ugly and best avoided really, so I am offering my take on the issue here and I have just six points to make. 

1. It doesn't matter where you are, it's your family, your upbringing and your education.

China's economy may have experienced quite a boom in recent decades, but if you want to be a part of that success story, first you have to be born into the right family that can pay for you to have the best education money can buy in China's highly competitive education system. Then you really need to ace your gaokao to get into one of China's top tier universities in order to graduate with a degree that will even give you a fighting chance to apply for a job with one of China's most successful companies like BYD, Xiaomi or Tencent.  And there are only so many graduate jobs every year, so you need your parents to be able to call in a favour or two to bump you to the front of that queue so you can even get that job interview at all. And even if you do get a job in a respectable company, it is no walk in the park as competition is extremely fierce to rise to the top. All I can say is good luck to all Chinese people who are trying to achieve success in such a harshly competitive system. But wait, what if you're from an ordinary working class family? What are your odds in this system then? Well, there's no way I can put it politely - you're fucked. If your Chinese parents are not rich, then you're fucked in China because your parents can't afford to  pay for you to get a decent education, so you no matter how hard you study, you just can't get get the scores you need in the gaokao to even apply for a top university because the playing field is just not level - you are competing against very rich students who have had a completely different quality of education. Thus you're limited to either a lower tier university in China or like many, you don't even go to university at all. You enter the work force and try to look for a job, but realize very quickly that the best, well-paid jobs are reserved for have the right degrees, connections and work experience - working class people like you will never ever be considered. So you take on a low-paying job just to earn some money, then months turn into years, years turn into decades and before you know it, you look in the mirror and you are already old, but you're still stuck in a very poorly paid working class job. China's economic miracle didn't help you at all, like so many working class Chinese people, you're not part of that success story at all. So whilst some people in China may be getting a lot richer, but you're not part of that group.. 

But if it makes you feel any better, I could be telling you the exact same story about a working class American student who realizes that the odds are simply stacked against them. They are never going to perform well enough to get into one of the elite Ivy League universities and even if they do earn a place there, their parents will never be able to afford the tuition. But when these people try to apply for good jobs out there, they realize they're never ever going to be able to compete with the rich kids who have the right degrees from the best universities and their parents have all the right connections to get them the best internships and job interviews. Hence you have yet another generation of working class people stuck in poverty, doing poorly paid jobs just like their parents. So what is the running theme here? The rich elite in both China and America can use their wealth to ensure that their children will have a very bright future but if you're working class, if you're not part of that rich elite, then the odds are stacked against you. Thus if you really want a better future, if you want to have a successful career and earn a lot more money than your parents, what you need is a system that will allow you to attain this kind of social mobility, a system whereby if you're a bright, talented, intelligent student from a very poor family, then there are scholarships and bursary programmes in place to give you even half a chance in this very competitive system. Sure such programmes do exist in both China and America, but good luck proving to them that you're not just average, but you're actually an exceptional genius who has been held back by very difficult circumstances at home and that you're more deserving of help than the next applicant who probably has an equally sad story about poverty, abuse and neglect. So despite the fact that China and America may seem so different on the surface, they do share one common characteristic: the rich will always get richer, whilst the poor stay poor or will keep getting poorer. So if you are born into a poor working class family, you're fucked whether you are in China or America. 

2. There are plenty of poor people in China who didn't succeed and become super rich. 

In Crystal's video, she talked about visiting relatives in China who have captured the opportunities of China's economic boom and are doing so well - I just rolled my eyes and thought, are you related to people working in the upper echelons of the CCP? Let's look at what is happening in China today: simply being in citizen in a country that is experiencing economic growth doesn't mean that this wealth will automatically make its way into your bank account, that money is never distributed equally, there is huge income disparity in China today. Not everyone in China will become rich if they just can't access the better paid professional jobs, many are stuck in lowly skilled jobs, unable to get the education and training they desperately need.. So whilst some in China are very rich today, some are poor and most are somewhere between the two extremes of rich and poor. Let's look at some of the statistics from China today: if we were to talk about a very basic middle class lifestyle whereby your annual income is US$30,000 then that would be the top 10% of China's population today or about 140 million people. But wait, in Crystal's video, she talked about relatives who are a lot more successful than that, who have become super rich, so even if we were to add one more zero to that and make it an annual income of US$300,000 a year, then only about 0.1% of China's population meets that criteria or about 1.4 million people. So Crystal is taking the success stories of the top 0.1% and talking about it as if the other 99.9% of China is enjoying the same level of success in modern China, now that's when the figures just don't add up and she has lost all credibility. If I were to mark this as an economics essay about the state of modern China's wealth distribution, she would get an F instantly on this assignment as she has presented a very misleading and inaccurate picture of the situation in China today. China's propaganda machine would like you to focus on their top 0.1% and come away with the impression that China is extremely rich today and that is exactly what Crystal is doing in this video, but what about the other 99.9%?  What kind of lives do they have in China and more importantly, what are their chances of becoming rich in China today if they don't already have rich and powerful parents? Crystal refuses to even acknowledge that such people exist in China. 

3. The supply and demand problem in China today. 

Let's look at the situation in China today where the economy is growing very strongly, sustaining an average of between 9 to 10% annual growth in the last three decades. So should Chinese people just tough it out and wait for their turn to get rich, at home, in China? No, instead Chinese people have been leaving China in their millions to work abroad - in the West, in the Middle East and also in places like Singapore. Why? Because there is a massive problem in China today: China is very good at educating their students, they have so many great Chinese universities pumping out very highly qualified, highly skilled graduates ready to enter the workforce. But this creates a brand new problem: there just aren't enough graduate level jobs for these highly skilled graduates and whilst there are of course some well-paid professional jobs, there is simply a huge over-supply of graduates in China today. The economy of China simply hasn't innovated fast enough to provide the right kinds of jobs for that many graduates joining the Chinese job market at this rate. So many Chinese graduates face a difficult decision: they have to either settle for a non-graduate working class job which they could have easily done without a degree, which means they have wasted a lot of their time and money getting that degree in the first place, or they could take their degrees and go seek work abroad, in a country where their qualifications can get them a professional job that pays well. It may not be the first choice for many Chinese people, but between settling for a very poorly paid non-graduate working class job and seeking their fortunes by moving abroad, the latter will usually be the more attractive option. There are other countries where they don't have this problem, there isn't an oversupply of highly skilled professionals and they have gaps in their labour markets, so if you're an unemployed young Chinese person with a degree and a lot of skills, then it's not a question of just toughing it out for ten years by doing a lowly paid working class job - you have to pick the path that will allow you to develop your career and that will mean going to work abroad rather than becoming a delivery driver with a degree in engineering. That is the harsh reality for many young people in China today, a basic fact that Crystal has conveniently chosen to sweep under the carpet. 

4. Shenzhen at 5 am, before the sun even rises. 

The rich people in big cities like Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai can enjoy a standard of living on par with the West, but these rich people only represent less ten percent of China's population. Over 90% of the people live in smaller towns and rural areas in the interior of China where the standard of living is painfully low. If you look at the GDP per capita at a province level, the poorest province in China today is Gansu and they have a GDP per capita that is similar to that of Botswana in Africa. That is the harsh reality for a lot of real Chinese people who are not part of the elite top 10% living in the big cities. For your average Chinese working class farmer or factory worker, looking at pictures of the most modern skyscrapers in Beijing might inspire a sense of civic pride, but even that doesn't translate to money in their bank account. I would like to share with you this memory on my last business trip to Shenzhen when I was incredibly jet lagged and I couldn't sleep, so I got up at the crack of dawn to have a walk whilst waiting for the hotel breakfast. It was not even 5 am but already, there were already workers on construction sites starting their day, there were gardeners already hard at work in the city parks and an army of cleaners on the streets and in the office buildings. And there were the security guards who have been up all night, along with the workers who were about to open their food stalls for the breakfast shift. These are all migrant workers from impoverished, rural provinces of China, willing to do backbreaking hard work in Shenzhen because there are just no jobs back home for them. Sure they are toughing it out by being hard at work at 5 am, but how much are they earning in Shenzhen? Let's be clear: these people are paid so little, there's no light at the end of the tunnel for them - they are never going to get rich doing this kind of very poorly paid jobs - they have a painfully bleak future in China. Yet China's economic success for the top elite relies on the bottom 90% working under such harsh conditions for very little money. There is something very wrong with a country when the rich are crazy rich and the poor barely have enough to eat; but what is even more disturbing is when someone like Crystal tries to make you believe through a montage of China's city skylines that the vast majority of Chinese people today are crazy rich Asians.

5. There's another important factor to consider! 

I have to point out another important factor: your intelligence matters, now forgive me if I am stating the obvious but some people are a lot more intelligent than others and if you are more intelligent than most people out there, then you're going to figure out a way to make money and do well in life no matter where you live. But if you're stupid, you're dumb and you're just not that smart, then it doesn't matter where in the world you live, you're never going to access the well paid jobs that will go to the most intelligent people in your society and so you're always going to be poor. This is the genetic lottery that has far less to do with your parents and it is just down to luck. So if you're a stupid person in China, then your options are very limited. You would struggle to move abroad because most countries only offer work permits for skilled labour; you might be able to get construction work on a project in the desert in the Middle East, but that is a brutally hard life in horrifically harsh conditions in the desert for not that much money at all. But if you stay in China, your options are equally grim: you will probably end up as a delivery driver working very long hours for a pathetic amount of money and no amount of 'toughing it out' would lead to a better paid job. So for those who are blessed enough to be born intelligent - it really doesn't matter if they choose to live in one country or another, they have what it takes to find success wherever they are. But if you are unlucky enough to be born stupid, then I'm afraid no amount of "toughing it out" is going to make the slightest bit of difference. Thus Crystal's video is misleading to say the least because for a lot of people who are just not that intelligent, they are already "toughing it out" and there is simply no light at the end of that tunnel for them. Crystal is implying that those who have failed to rise to the top in a system like China's are lazy, that they weren't tough enough to see things through when that is hardly a fair and accurate evaluation of the options that a lot of Chinese people face. The reason why they are still poor is not because they aren't tough enough or that they are lazy, but because they are just not as intelligent as their peers and that's not their fault at all - that's just the genetic lottery. 

6. Actually Chinese people working abroad have done really well for themselves! 

Let me remind you that it is not that the streets of New York or London are paved with gold, but the immigration system in the West would only grant work permits to highly skilled migrants from China. So if you are a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist, then great - you'll have no problem moving to the West. But if you're a working class person without a degree, then no, you are never going to be granted a work permit. The system is set up this way because the governments in the West have two clear objective: firstly, it needs to fill certain gaps in their economies when it comes to certain skilled individuals. A good example of this are doctors as most governments want their hospitals to be well staffed in order to keep waiting lists to a minimum. But at the same time, the governments in the West would want to make sure that their own poorly educated, unskilled working class people have enough jobs, so bringing in a huge amount of cheap foreign labour is only going to upset working class voters and so it is mostly well-educated, highly skilled professionals from China who get to move to places like America to take up well-paid, professional jobs. Thus the filter built into this system has created a situation whereby the Chinese migrants in America are actually doing rather well for themselves, earning quite a lot of money in professional jobs, living rather comfortable lives. So it is not like these Chinese Americans are looking jealousy at how well their counterparts in China are doing much better financially - no, that's not the case at all as Chinese Americans are a lot richer than not just the average person in China but also the average person in America! It is actually really hard to imagine a situation whereby a Chinese American person would genuinely be jealous of someone in China. Sure things in America are far from perfect and America has many problems, but in comparison, China offers just a different set of problems altogether. It is absolutely nothing like the utopia that Crystal is trying to sell you. 

So who is her target audience then?

The question I want to leave you with is this: who is the target audience of this video then? Chinese Americans will probably think she is the mouthpiece of the CPP. But what about Chinese people in China? I'm not convinced either because a real Chinese will be equally cynical about her vision of a China where everyone can get super rich as long as they 'tough it out'. in China. This piece was posted on Instagram and in English, so it is hardly aimed at your average Chinese person behind the great firewall of China since they can't easily access Instagram without a VPN. As a British Chinese person in London, I'm not her target audience as well because I have just recorded this podcast to tell you exactly why I think she is totally wrong. So I dived into the comments section of her post and it was interesting what I found. Firstly, I found a lot of anti-Western rhetoric like "America only got rich from slavery whilst countries like France and the UK exploited their colonies, so the West is evil!" It is a thinly veiled form of racism by these Asian people who really hate white people - oh yeah, racism can work both ways, there are Asian people who can be extremely racist towards white people and some of these Chinese people in the comments section really hate white people. In any case, I call this the strawman argument. No one is denying the facts about slavery or the colonial empire but what has this got to do with what Crystal's argument here about 'toughing it out' in China? It is not related, it doesn't support or prove her point at all. Does Crystal have a captive audience of racist Chinese people who really hate white people? Then why is she posting this in English and not in Mandarin then, as she would be far more likely to get a bigger audience if she had done this video in Mandarin instead of English?  The irony is that she is not actually racist towards white people in this video - she is pro-China but these Asian racists have been looking for some kind of bandwagon to jump on and this was it. Thankfully there are also a lot of Asian people telling her that she has been totally brainwashed and that she is wrong, but these posts are in the minority and they get attacked mostly by these extremely racist Asian people as well. If engagement gets you more attention on these social media platforms, then that was Crystal chose to be provocative. It was a very polarizing video: some used it as an opportunity to spew their extreme racist hatred of white people whilst others were accusing her gaslighting her viewers. But given the poor quality of her argument, I wonder if the CCP would actually invest in someone like that, like surely the CCP could find better social media influencers to spread their message, so it is quite clear that she was just deliberately being offensive to get attention and sadly, it has worked.