A long-running question on Zhihu keeps resurfacing: if the United States has so many problems, why do so many Chinese people still go there? One respondent, writing under the name “Haina Baichuan,” did not take sides. Instead, the answer separates the vague phrase “going to America” into distinct groups, examines each group’s motives, and points out that migration flows in both directions and that the US itself is contradictory. The breakdown is worth summarizing.
Income and education paths drive many ordinary workers
For a good number of ordinary people, the reasons are not grand. Over the past few decades, the US has had more jobs in many high-end industries and at key points in multinational supply chains, and early-career salary ceilings were higher. Especially decades ago, when domestic income levels and industrial maturity were far behind today’s, the gap was obvious — for an individual, it meant a higher-paying job and a different educational path.
The answer stresses that this does not equal endorsing US hegemony; it is driven by economic gain. And the pull is dynamic: over the past decade or so, as high-end jobs and new industries such as new energy, artificial intelligence and biopharma have grown in China, more and more returnees are choosing to come back.
Wealthy groups and the information filter
The second group is the wealthy, whose reasons are more complex: some want asset allocation and risk diversification, and some are drawn to the low-restriction, loose business environment the US advertised in earlier years. But things have changed markedly — overseas tax, security and economic risks have become more prominent, China’s business environment has kept improving, and many people no longer rush to leave.
The third group is people influenced by an information filter. In earlier years, when the internet was less developed, many people received one-way information: clean streets, decent welfare, the life portrayed in films and TV. The other side — the wealth gap, widespread gun ownership, racial tensions, expensive healthcare, survival pressure at the bottom and class rigidity — was hard to see. Only after arriving do people gradually experience these problems.
Migration runs both ways, and America is divided
The answer makes a key point: it is not that “many Chinese people are running to the US.” Over a longer time frame, migration runs both ways — more people went abroad in earlier years, and in recent years large numbers of students have returned after finishing their studies, as have many researchers and engineers who had settled in the US. Migration flows between all major countries; Americans also come to China to settle, work and study. Migration itself is a product of globalization and does not equal taking sides.
At the same time, it is important to see that the US is a place of deep contradictions. It is a nation of immigrants that built itself by absorbing talent from around the world: it pursues hegemony and creates conflicts internationally, while offering good terms to specific groups to attract talent. This logic is itself a means of maintaining competitiveness. Externally, hegemony brings instability; internally, different classes have vastly different experiences — the America seen by a programmer and by a homeless person at the bottom are not the same place at all.
Ordinary people’s choices are mostly self-interested, not sides-taking
One more layer is easily overlooked: people’s choices are often self-interested rather than based on grand judgments about which country is right. When most ordinary people make life choices, they prioritize family, children and income, not international relations.
So the question itself may be pointed in the wrong direction. Treating “going to America” as a stance can obscure the specific income gaps, education paths and asset arrangements behind it; seeing those concrete motives clearly makes it easier to understand why, among the same group of people, some leave, some return, and some do both.
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