In recent times, it has been no real secret that in the eyes of many foreigners living in the country; China has changed a lot and definitely not for the better. Some may be concerned about that state of the Chinese economy; but to be fair, there has been a lot of wishful thinkers calling for China’s sudden collapse for years now. In reality, we may not see a real economic collapse for a few years yet, if indeed one is coming.
What may be a more credible and worrying concern to those people is that the country is becoming increasingly authoritarian; foreigners are being arrested and locked up for the most whimsical of reasons as part of wider diplomatic spats. Over 1 million Uyghurs have apparently been sent to concentration camps. One may wonder which group of people will be the next to be targeted by an increasingly paranoid country that constantly feels like it is one big incident away from mass unrest.
Many a foreigner living and working in that country, regardless of whether they are an English teacher or a businessman employing hundreds of people have reluctantly come to the conclusion that China’s best days are over. They are looking to move elsewhere and will naturally head where greater levels of economic growth or freedom can be enjoyed. Some may feel frustrated, some may feel unsafe and others may just feel that now is the time for a change.
One of China’s most famous vloggers on the ‘Laowhy86’ channel; ‘C-Milk’ can safely be described as being one of those people; he is leaving the Middle Kingdom to take a new direction in life. He recently together with his partner in crime ‘SerpentZa’ announced plans to shift operations away from mainland China on all of their YouTube channels. In the video linked in this post, C-milk briefly discusses the trials and tribulations of successfully selling his house in China, before mentioning future plans for their joint channel ‘AdvChina.’
They will soon start filming in Vietnam; the motivation behind this choice of destination for future videos over the next few weeks being that many of their friends are indeed moving their own companies from China to Vietnam. They plan to compare the two countries and explore the country on their bikes.
This is quite an interesting development; they may not be moving there on a permanent basis as they are taking what they call ‘AdvMedia’ down a more international globetrotting route, but the fact that Vietnam has been given the honour of being their first non-Chinese destination (if you could consider Taiwan to be part of the greater Sinosphere) is quite significant.
Recently, another YouTube channel ‘The Travelling Dukes’ also received a lot of attention after announcing a longer term move from China to Vietnam; it fired up a bit of discussion in online circles both in the country that they have moved to and the one that they have just left behind. Will we see more Vietnam vloggers popping up? No doubt, it is a destination that attracts the type of millennial tourist would just love to document their travels on film. However, there appears to be a lack of channels that solely focus upon life in Vietnam rather than the country featuring as a stop on a longer journey; I hope that this situation will begin to change in the near future.
The increased attention being directed towards Vietnam is something that I and no doubt, many others will be watching closely in the near future. While a not so handsome gentleman like myself will be in no great rush to film themselves, I can definitely say that I shall be writing a few posts about those who have also left China and have chosen to head towards Vietnam.
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