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But - is that making your life easier?

Lmao. The Maoist argumentation is wrong because it deliberately misses the forest for the trees in a facile "but what have the Romans done for me?" style of argumentation that Chinese online rhetoric often have this rather peculiarly unique characteristic of framing as if they're the first people in history to try such a sophistic stunt. China has objectively in all parameters gone through the greatest collective mass poverty alleviation campaign in human history. The Economist, RAND, The Atlantic all have articles where they admit this with gritted teeth yet you can't even say the same about Chinese Maoist/Ultra/Libs, which is interesting. I've lately come to understand this style of Socratic-aping Chinese rhetorical style much better after discovering Chinese Maoist forums like v2.redchinacn.org, which has incidentally gone off the deep end with Kirk apologia recently.

In any case, the anti-immigration sentiment is simply a continuation of the same movement from 2020, where online backlash quashed the Chinese permanent residency reform project. Similarly, this K visa initiative is essentially a second attempt that follows in the footsteps of that 2020 draft proposal which aimed at: "China would formally expand the pool of immigrants that could qualify for P.R. to a still select but larger group of high-income or highly educated long-term migrants." K visa would be the 0.5 version, where the goal is merely to get visa holders rather than broach the subject of permanent residency.

There's a decent article in Routledge's Journal of Contemporary China analyzing that episode though it has the typical "they have nationalists, we have patriots" sort of academic orientalism. The author notes the typical emotionally-overwrought sort of nakedly manipulative discourse that is profuse on the Chinese internet being used: "As a Han Chinese, I am crying softly,"; "I am here! 1.4 billion compatriots are here! As a Chinese, if it is necessary, there will be action on May 4!"

Beyond that kind of nonsense, the actual substantive objections that the author summarizes are the same ones being reused five years later against this K visa initiative.

The draft regulations to many seemed to fit in a tradition of the state privileging foreign nationals, at a time when domestic employment and residential conditions for many Chinese citizens are considered far from adequate. Attracting larger numbers of immigrants to aid China’s development, also sounds inappropriate to some, given China’s recent history of government-enforced family planning. Some suggest revising the regulations to eliminate any loopholes for so-called ‘low-quality’ migrants and to include guarantees that P.R. holders would not be privileged over local Chinese.

Part of the contradiction is that these foreign workers are predominantly drawn to major urban locations like Shanghai known both for their Chinese liberal population and their deluded "I am a global citizen" type of multinational suit wearing capitalists. Both groups ideologically would favor foreign workers of select demographics and this creates the sort of imagery of privilege that provokes this sort of backlash, though it should be said that the Chinese online vocal minority commentariat often has this sort of self-orientalizing narcissism that assumes all other 1.4 billion people in their country are a hive mind that secretly share their personal political opinion, if only but for the dastardly Weibo censors preventing their posts' true updoot numbers from coming to light, as seen by the cited "I am here! 1.4 billion compatriots are here!" style of comments.

Another one of the issues is the typical catch-22 associated with most socialist governments, which is that they are overly sensitive of their Western-propaganda maligned depiction as "repressive authoritarian regimes" which makes them excessively petrified by accusations of "authoritarianism" through alleged governmental overreach, rendering them particularly indecisive and obsequious in instances when they ought to be standing their ground and demonstrating some faith in their governing mandate and legitimacy. This makes socialist governments exceptionally vulnerable to groups that are aware of this contradiction and then deliberately take advantage of it. This is how the 2020 PR draft was shut down. This is how the "white paper" Shanghai lib protesters are credited with "ending" Zero Covid, as if they weren't always a minority and the vast majority of people by all accounts silently still tolerated the policy.

In 20th century socialist states, this was how the DDR failed to react to the Berlin Wall breach debacle, totally capitulating to the BRD in spite of most East German citizens preferring a negotiated union rather than the total annexation by the West as it happened in reality. It was also how the CPSU (or what was left of it) tolerated the illegal secession of the Baltics and why the August putschists spinelessly dithered in 1991. Incidentally, the 1989 Tiananmen failed counter-revolution was the only major time a socialist government stood their ground against this sort of issue and that decision is why the People's Republic still exists today.

Overall, it’s actually good for the xenophobia to make itself plain, because that’s the only way it can be ever addressed in the first place. While socialist states have promoted societal internationalist values of tolerance, we saw how easily they were subverted following the fall of those states. Superficial tolerance led to Khrushchev blathering about how the USSR "solved the nationality issue." In the DDR, this gave way to Neo-Nazis and the AfD; in the USSR, this gave way to ethnic pogroms in the 90s and the current disastrous state of the former Soviet world. China has the privilege of those types outing themselves while the socialist state still holds power so it will be interesting to see if they concede once again to the vocal minority on this matter or push ahead forward.