Though China’s super-rich increasingly look for geographic mobility, and immigration applications to the United States has jumped over the past two years, has the perception of America changed in the eyes of the masses? After nearly 1.5 million Sina Weibo users debated the hasthag #Is American citizenship no longer desireable? earlier this week, and a Sina News article reported a large number of immigrants to the United States who passed when they became eligible to apply for citizenship, The Atlantic’s Massoud Hayoun asks whether the American grass is really greener in the eyes of the Chinese:
The article offers two possible explanations for the Chinese residents’ decision not to become Americans. First, that some don’t speak good enough English to take the citizenship test, and second, that many Chinese prefer to remain Chinese.
Sina offers the example of a “Ms. Liu,” a Chinese-American living in China who allegedly said that her American citizenship became less advantageous in the past few years, with so much business going to China.
Whether or not Chinese people do still want to come to America, the ones who do are not too well received. One famous CCTV journalist, Yang Lan, was rumored on the thread to have obtained American nationality, which earned her a lot of scathing comments.
For Chinese people, there is often a major stigma for people who do obtain American citizenship.
