I am from Hong Kong and I have a huge group of Chinese friends from the sinosphere.

It is extremely stressful to live over there, even compared to the cost of living right now.

Particularly in tech industry, compared to there, workers are highly respected (it is very nuanced but all in all not many parents support their children to work in tech), highly paid (generally 2x to 3x of HK, even more compared to Taiwan), and the upward mobility is very high here. I am in management right now. My French is terrible but conversational and people don't shit on it.

There is also very good work life balance. People in this sub absolutely hate 9-5 working hours. In Hong Kong, the normal official hours are 9am-6pm, 5 days, some still need to work half day on Saturaday. It is just official. Basically all workspaces require free overtime and if you work in accounting it is very normal to work from 9am to 2am during peak season that lasts 4 months, before you become partner. In Mainland China, there is something called 996, 9am to 9pm, 6 days.

After you get off work, over there, you need to line up everywhere. Consider everywhere you want to go is Costco during Saturday afternoon. Have a Tesla and want to take advantage of a fast charger? Wait 3 hours and if you forgot to drive away your car in 1.5 hours get prepared to scrutinized on Facebook.

And Canada has something called freedom of speech.