It seemed well researched. You should go see China.
Discussion
I'd like to and I may.
I'd be interested to know in what ways they practice communism still, even just at a high level.
Its power and narrative. The communist ideals are just propaganda - and I'm pretty sure its always been that way. There's a hammer and sickle sign on most roads and all government buildings, and police can be everywhere all at once when something is happening. To balance that, every police I've talked to in China was very nice - not the aggressive dangerous people the US uses for police - and I am saying that after being extorted on one occasion and having to talk to 5 police that cane to my work to ask me why Trump was starting a trade war. Even after that, they're still nicer people and less threatening than American cops.
Oh, I was explaining communism... Power and narrative. Any narrative will do, as the mainstream media here proves... People don't think critically enough for it to matter. What matters is that there's a narrative at all. Narrative excuses power. Communism is two things - the narrative that westerners talk about ; and the real thing, which is power. Like Mao said, "power grows out of the barrel of a gun." All that reorganization of production - the narrative made it easier, but it was only ever about power. For example, taking farmland from wealthy families put those families out of power and built up state power. And that's all it is, and in the end its the only thing that matters. They retain the right and ability and narrative control to do it again anytime they want. And they do, for no reason other than to keep the power.
The US is the same. Our government maintains an illusion of freedom, and I appreciate having that even if I think the illusion is wearing thin, but they can and do do anything they want. A business in the US can be shut down any time, and is actually very likely to be shut down if its something like a bank - that's too close to how power works here. We also have put so much regulation over everything, that if you want to start a business, the best strategy is to be connected politically so that exceptions can be made for you. That's power.
Anyways, I'm an anarcho capitalist, meaning basically I think power should be as decentralized as possible.
all this talk about china is making me think a lot about mongolia... mongolia is one of my preferred locations, the high and dry and distant from the sea is unparalleled on the planet, and i briefly looked into immigration and language and both seem to be pretty easy
over the next 4 months i'm going to make a firm decision about this, but it's just reminding me that there is a lot of good things to say about the region in general, perhaps i would be actually better to go with somewhere in china with similar altitude, a lot of the west looks quite good too