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Q: Chinese can become American, but Americans are foreigners here. Hypocrisy?
The other day I heard a Chinese-American referring to a friend here as a foreigner. Of course we are foreign origin, but I find it more than slightly hypocritical that a Chinese can go to US and take advantage of all the benefits of a relatively free socieyy, while Americans here are simply "foreigners".
Anyone else consider this madly hypocritical, or is it just one of those differences that is both good and bad in certain ways?
China (the country) is a soverign nation that can decide on rules such as what is needed for citizenship.
Chinese people are an uneducated people that are encouraged by the general narrative of their country to make sure foreigners remain foreign.
If you don't like either, then you just need to change the thinking of 1.3 billion people and start them revolting. Shouldn't be too hard.
sam239:
It doesnt bother me when normal people do it. One thing I do like about China is the peasant like nature of many of its people. When the local jiaozi shop person refers to me as foreign it seems innocent. But when Chinese who fled the country refer to themselves as Aussies or Americans, but to Aussies or Americans living in China as "foreigners" it seems beyond ignorance and in fact downright arrogant.
Scandinavian:
yeah. It is so often when I pass people on the street I will hear the world "Laowei". I simply don't understand the novelty of it, there is thousands of non-Chinese people in my town, in fact 800 in the community I live in (of course a Korean stands less out in the crowd)
People are defined by where they are from rather than who they are. When you are in a taxi with locals, if anyone talks to the driver, first topic is likely what province is the driver from, never anything relevant like "so do you plan to learn to drive anytime soon?"
RRoy:
When i get back home, anytime i see a Chinese tourist I'm going to point and stare, "look, foreigner!". Maybe even take a picture and upload it to facebook. 
I have a friend who is born and raised in Beijing but she is white. Her parents moved here in the 80s and raised her here. But she is still seen as a foreigner by Chinese. She speaks chinese like a local, cooks like a local and for all intents and purposes is Chinese, but she'll never be accepted because she is white. In western countries if you are born there you are automatically accepted as a person from that country by the other citizens regardless of your skin colour. When will this be the case in China? I don't know, maybe never.
Just a different situation. How long has America been established, and how long has CHina been China? America started out as a place where people came from other countries. China doesn't need any more people.
Like it or not anyone whom is outside the Chinese thinking ,you are a Lauwei (forgive if wrong spelling) my friends are Chinese , I cannot speak Chinese but understand some words.
The thing is my friends were talking to each other they all know my first name yet they referred to me as the Lauwei , it went something like this, blah blah blah Lauwei blah blah (as i dont know what they were saying, but picked up on the Lauwei word and I asked my friends !! You know my name why use Lauwei, no answer to the question just laughed.
We are foreigners regardless.
sam239:
Yeah, but that's remarkably uncivilized, east/west, I don't care. If someone that's a "friend" refers to me as a foreigner or white person, they immediately go to the category: "this person does not consider me an actual individual friend, and is instead only doing this because of the face they get from hanging out with a foreign (civilized) person." I have 0 tolerance for it, either we're friends and refer to each other as such, or I'm a "foreigner" being used, and I will always take this into account.
