Chinese students; hardly the end of the world

Looking the Gift Dragon in the mouth

When I was eventually shipped off to University I took with me the impression that as a White man, I would be sexually irresistible to women hailing from the Orient. Armed with those legendary OK Cupid charts; Serpentza’s entire back catalogue of ‘wots it REALLY like Dating in China?’ - I signed myself up to as many University Pentecostal and Charismatic student groups as I could find.

Playing the ‘oh, I wasn’t raised religiously, but I’ve been having thoughts’ card (crack cocaine for proselytisers)^[1] I was soon enveloped in a cocoon of tittering nubile eastern women; my very own Imperial Harem. I reclined deeply in to my chair; more of a whale filter feeding than a shark having to hunt.

So went my fantasy. In truth I spent my freshers week in University applying moisturising cream and cherry flavoured carmex to every flaky patch of skin on my body (including the little helmet) on account of the second round of Accutane. I met almost no Chinese women at University; If you study a humanities degree at a good University in Britain you probably won’t either. They live and lead completely separate lives from the UK born students, whose educations they are subsidising.

They don’t take part in the drinking culture, study glorified ‘plumbing’ subjects like Computer Science and Medicine and often live in dedicated international halls (like Unite House) on the periphery of the student areas. Their day to day lives seem, to an outsider, to consist of strutting around the campuses in extremely expensive designer clothes and drinking bubble tea.

As arcane as this behaviour is; it is hardly Radio Genoa material. Shenzhen millionaires want to pay massive fees (upwards of 20k per year) to send their spoilt children to the University of East Anglia so they can have a three year holiday in Norwich after completing the Gaokao; this barely registers on the irritation scale. These people don’t use public services and spend colossal amounts of money on eating out and buying black hooded jumpers with random Asian hieroglyphs on them. These people do not commit crime and they do not work jobs when they are here. Rarely intermarrying, they are not a source of demographic change and they do not vote. That their degrees are not awarded on the basis of merit is not a concern in the slightest; given that native students are already awarded firsts at the second rate British Universities for simply spelling their name correctly.

The use of bogus student visas by subcontinentals to immigrate permanently is another matter (CF.; The Academic Agent) - but the only consideration I can think of (that is not aesthetic) regarding Chinese students is pressure on student housing - but this could easily be solved with the construction of a few thousand Cameronite ‘Unite’ towers (possibly subterranean). By dint of having obscene amounts of disposable income, Chinese students often prevent areas of cities with large student populations becoming ‘Unaaay’-fied, being able to support expensive restaurants (not just footlong subways) and abstaining from house parties which extend in to the late hours (thus chasing out normal families).

The crucial thing to communicate about immigration policy is that no two immigrants are the same. We have made life for Americans and Canadians who want to work in the city and pay lots of tax needlessly difficult because we refuse to recognise this truth (note that Trump does, differentiating between Denmark etc and ‘shithole countries’, instead of calling for closed borders). We impose absurd visa and ‘NHS charges’ on net contributors which illegal migrants from MENAPT countries are not made to pay.

The problem with getting in to a hysterical fuss about rich Chinese kids is that it reframes the immigration sceptical argument away from facing hard truths about fiscal burdens and crime, and makes it one of listless prejudice. The number of people who feel perturbed by timid wealthy Chinese kids buying bubble tea in town centres is very slim. This will not capture the imagination of the Urban, educated youth; who have gone to University alongside such people, and will regard them at most with a vey mild suspicion.

We, and when I use that term I refer to progressively minded people, are in serious danger of losing control of the narrative around immigration scepticism to dark post liberals who believe that the Tories are failing because they brought back the Bankers Bonuses, and that we need to pay more blimming tax to keep those immigrants out. That the ‘Singapore on Thames’ Model is a busted flush.

This came to light particularly during the big Social Housing push - where the original vision of a glistening Gails paradise was corrupted by those who believe in ‘the Great Realignment’; who want to kick out “radical Hamas leaders” in order to free up space for Windrush heroes - thus diluting the original radical embrace of the inequality principle. These individuals still believe that they can win by turning the Left’s arguments against them (‘The Left are the Real Racists’), often being ex leftists themselves. Such individuals must be gatekept ruthlessly or their bags of concrete will drown us.