Two years ago, I was an immigrant in the country I grew up in. Now, I am an expat in the country I was born in. After moving from London to Beijing in 2016, I started to understand the difference.
In the England I grew up in, having your foreignness pointed out was to be shamed — or at the very least, challenged to explain yourself (“How come your English is so good?”). But in China, being a foreigner from a western country is an automatic status boost. The Mandarin phrase for “foreign style”, which literally means “the feel of the ocean”, has evolved to mean “fashionable”. Or as one Beijing tuk-tuk driver put it, overhearing me talking on the phone in English: “Wow! You must be really refined!”
We write nowadays of Chinese nationalism increasing, but most Chinese citizens one meets in the flesh, rather than in cyber space, still approach foreigners with welcoming appreciation. There is lingering colonialist, or perhaps capitalist, admiration for white foreigners from developed countries.