While I yield to no one in the "living in America rocks for non-economic reasons too" category, I think a larger factor is that emigrating to the US pretty much quadruples your standard of living after a few years of work, and the US will only give you permission to emigrate if a) you're seeking a degree or b) you happen to find the love of your life, she is American, you get married, and you put up with a lot of BS from the immigration authorities.
There are not that many single American women in Shandong, but there are a lot of people who don't think studying for four years is that bad of a price to pay to see their incomes quintuple.
I mean, most of the employed programmers on HN make, what, $80 ~ $100k? Imagine there was a country where programmers routinely made $500k for writing routine CRUD apps. Fancy a spin there for a few years? That is roughly the scale of the economic opportunity gap (though it will, inevitably, close).
So you're specifically speaking of China, then? Lots of students from the developed world come to the US for schooling, as well, and see virtually no change in their lifestyle.
"emigrating to the US pretty much quadruples your standard of living after a few years of work" ... to which I counter that right now a good Chinese CS graduate from a major university can have a way better quality of life back in Shanghai than in the US. That is, if you're into the whole join-a-big-company-and-get-a-career-and-family thing, which most Chinese I know seem to be into.
There are not that many single American women in Shandong, but there are a lot of people who don't think studying for four years is that bad of a price to pay to see their incomes quintuple.
I mean, most of the employed programmers on HN make, what, $80 ~ $100k? Imagine there was a country where programmers routinely made $500k for writing routine CRUD apps. Fancy a spin there for a few years? That is roughly the scale of the economic opportunity gap (though it will, inevitably, close).