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.
They don’t care honestly. It doesn’t come up much in my conversations out here, but when it does it’s usually met with a shrug and then we talk about something else. People here are a lot more apolitical overall than I expected, but I think that is largely a result of living under governance that actually cares about them and invests in society. I think it’s like if things are running smoothly (and they definitely are), what do they have to concern themselves with?
From my limited view on Chinese culture (I visited once and browsed rednote during the tiktok ‘ban’) I don’t think anyone, either socially or professionally, cares about political views to nearly the extent as in the west. If one were to move to China, what would be ultimately regarded is your ability to contribute and your positive influence on your local community. You could do this as a pigheaded capitalist or a principled marxist leninist - I don’t think they’d care, as long as you fit in.
China has had a fairly consistent policy of no intervention since their disasters in Vietnam and Cambodia, and i don’t think that’s going to change. Also afaik china welcomes everyone as long as you can contribute to China, don’t expect to get freebies handed out to you because you’re a “communist”.
Oh, I was not thinking about intervention. I was not thinking about freebies, but they are in general positive to that political view?
i don’t think they care about western communists, nor should they considering the amount of chauvinist communists parties out there.
But is a communist from the west moving to China considered to be someone with a negative or harmful political view? Or is it more in line with the general political view in the country, making a transition easier?
What do you mean about chauvinist communist parties? As in critical of China?
I think that if you are a foreigner living in China they probably don’t want you involving yourself in their politics. Regardless what your politics are. It’s none of your business, it’s theirs. This also is part of the “non-interventionist” mentality.
Even if you gain citizenship, pay taxes, contribute and live there for many years? Then it’s not just their business, then it’s also my business?
Obviously if you have citizenship that’s different. Citizens have full rights. 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.
Things like these: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/American_Communist_Party_(current)
But is a communist from the west moving to China considered to be someone with a negative or harmful political view? Or is it more in line with the general political view in the country, making a transition easier?
i think they hardly care lmao, its not like one person is gonna destabilize china
