As fascism is rising in parts of the world, I have begun to wonder how China considers socialists/communists from other countries, as a contingency plan if all else fails.

Communism is barely within the overton window in many western capitalist countries, this can change in the future.

I am from a northern european country, so the country is a social democracy, but slowly becoming more right leaning and economically libertarian.

Edit:I highly doubt I would have any reason to move in the future, but I am kinda curious by nature. I also have it really comfortable, and do not fear any political prosecution.

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    8·
    3 days ago

    Obviously if you have citizenship that’s different. If you’re a citizen you’re not a foreigner. But afaik it can be very difficult to become a Chinese citizen other than through marriage, birth or descent. I’m not an expert on this subject though. You can check this out if you’re interested in the topic: https://lawyerschina.net/chinese-citizenship/

    But if you are not a citizen i’m afraid you won’t really have political participation rights (voting, becoming a party member, holding government office, etc.), even if you have permanent residency, which btw is itself already not easy to get: https://ikkyinchina.com/2025/04/08/china-immigration-policies-permanent-residence/

    Edit: Hong Kong is a notable exception, as the right to vote there is only contingent on permanent residency status.

    China is not unique in this, there are countries that grant non-citizen suffrage to various degrees but also countries that don’t: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizen_suffrage

    It’s quite unfortunate because imo your political participation rights should not be based on citizenship but on residency. Living, working and paying taxes somewhere should entitle you to political representation. And conversely, just because someone technically holds citizenship doesn’t mean this should entitle them to vote in a country’s elections if they don’t actually live or work there.

    Emigrants being allowed to vote in their country of origin’s elections even when they don’t and haven’t lived there for years is a very bad thing if you ask me, it causes a lot of problems. Elections in Moldova and Romania for example are severely fucked because of diaspora voting. And Georgia just a few years ago even got a full on foreign agent as president who was more French than she was Georgian.