I can either:
- Not visit China
Cons: Not being able to revisit places I’ve been to that I always wanted to go.
Pros: Being safe from an authoritarian government that’s increasingly regressing back to totalitarianism
- Visit China
Pros: I can visit places I always wanted to revisit
Cons: Being arrested in China, placed on exit ban, tortured, or executed. And if I somehow leave unharmed, upon returning to the US, I could be accused of being a communist spy due to rising US-China tensions, possibly spending time in prison because of a second red scare.
Potential consequences are not worth it.
Tourism is not worth being tortured.
Do you not understand US-China tensions? Both countries fear each other, and someone who’ve lived in the US for practically their entire life suddenly wants to visit China? That’d definitely raise some alarms about a potential spy. Maybe nothing happens, maybe they falsely assume I’m a spy.
Same thing when I return to the US, those border agents are gonna ask me why I went to my China during these times of high tensions.
There are risks from both countries. Whereas if China was democratic and US-friendly, none of these would be an issue.
Do you know how many people in the US were falsely arrested? That’s in a democratic country. Think about those odds if it were an authoritarian one.
Just being Canadian is enough if the CCP is playing games.