Another point about ex-pats is that the non-white ex-pats are often overlooked. Recently, many south- east Asian people have asked me what the hell I am doing living full time in China, when there are much better Asian countries. They are often students from Thailand or Vietnam doing short crash courses in Chinese.

You know what? The chinese are screwing themselves over with this attitude. In a competitive world they will only be left behind as all of the quality people who want to live with dignity and with self respect will only stay further away from that country. It really is a bit comical when you think about it. One would think they as a group should have enough intelligent people to know that in a world of 10 billion folks by 2020 there are a good 8 billion who are not chinese and not White (the race of blatant preference across all careers in china) your crappy ethnocentric chinese attitude will only serve to piss off the good people who hold good will towards you and want to contribute to your society for the better. The moral/spiritual development of china wasn't there to begin with, and their infrastructural development will soon be at its peak. I don't know how they figure to catch up to the world, but I don't care at this point.

China is like that annoying, spoiled brat kid that nobody wants to play with in kindergarden. The isolation and fantasies of how these people think can spell the doom of the whole culture, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.