Can we deduce from all this that the USA & Co. has spent billions of dollars and thousands of lives spreading a thing called 'democracy' which it never had and actually doesn't exist - anywhere. Time for a new Dear Leader before the Martians arrive.

The USA doesn't "spread" democracy - it FORCES democracy onto other nations through covert and overt interference in the sovereign reigns of foreign nations - my tax dollars at work.

Democracy must come from within - as potentially in the middle east political storms. But the populace must be at a sufficient cultural level to sustain that kind of responsibility - otherwise corruption prevails and the system eventually collapses - perhaps as it's currently occurring in the USA as we speak. Rampant political corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse. The fringe we experience out here in the wilderness is just the tinge of smoke from a fully involved wildfire - the "tip of the spear", so to speak.

Don't worry the Brits are just as bad! A friend was supposed to be coming for two weeks over Spring festival to UK where I am at the moment. I sent her an invitation complete with a photo of my Brit passport etc. She has been working at a big University for more than 10 years and has plenty of money but the visa office had doubts that not only were we not really friends but had not even met! This is the third time that they have screwed up a visa for people that I have know, all genuine cases. At the same time Britain seems to be full of the dregs of humanity, war criminals, murderers, drug lords, you name it. The world is going mad!

By reading all this messages I feel very lucky because my chinese wife's visa application to stay with me in Europe was successful at the first time. I met her 2 years ago on internet with meetic. I flied to her for visiting China and to see her in live. We decided to get married and at my second trip, a few months later, we were wife and husband at the Kunming municipality. After this we directly went to Guangzhou. In the belgian/luxemburger office of the embassy she aplied for a visa for long stay in the Schengen countries. After showing all the documents requested and being interviewed, she get it quikly and without problems. Something was incredible : they asked her the name of my parents, my dogs and some other details about me, she did not know the answers. But they decide to give her the visa !!! She lives now with me in Luxemburg and have a lux. ID card as family member of a lux. citizen. She can fly to China and come back at any time without difficulties, only by showing her chinese passport and her lux. ID card together to the control officers at the airports.

I am very sorry and feel sad for all the people who are fighting a long time against some big administrative and ridiculous problems. I hope they can find a solution and live happy together.

Thank you for reading this post.

woaiJING you seem to come from a country where the government trusts and respects its citizens' judgement. Where the interview and subsequent judgement of the interviewer overrules the spurious rules that can make life impossible.

The rest of us appear to come from countries where the government distrusts and thinks all its citizens are morons that can't make intelligent decisions. Therefore they have to put onerous and dubious rules in place to ensure they weed out people trying to cheat the system. Guilty to proven innocent is the policy of most western countries immigration systems in respect to Chinese/Asian people. The fear that pervades the Western world when looking at Asia is obvious in their immigration policy. And we were the ones that encouraged globalisation...

Just to be clear - I never said the US State Department is paranoid and doesn't trust it's own citizens (despite TSA, Homeland Security, and lots of other agencies spanking the majority of the populace to screen for a less than micro-fraction of 1% in the interest of global safety - despite a porous border with Mexico allowing over USD 40 BILLION a year in drugs and much maligned, but absolutely mandatory cheap labor in the form of illegal migrants).

My contention is that the state department's mythical ethereal and arbitrary rules as arbitrarily enforced at our embassies and consulates are insane. One cannot use logic or reason with insanity. There is no way to combat or rectify this kind of insanity, until the government itself realizes it is insane and decides to self-rectify the situation - a historically rare if not extinct event.

Either that - or we're the insane ones...depends on your perspective I suppose.

@woalJING - I'm looking into the requirements for Belgium citizenship.

While true laotou, the system is insane for US embassies in China, the system here is one that is designed. The result is that it is insane, that is not the cause.

A government that designs an insane system for its entry requirements almost certainly understands what it has done and has done so for one reason. It doesn't want people to enter.

Then you must ask "Why do they not want people to enter?". That one is easy to answer: Fear. Fear that the people will rort the system. Fear that its own citizens that sponsor those that want to come aren't smart enough to know when their Chinese friends are genuine or not. Fear that its citizens are being paid off by the Chinese person even after they have proved their relationship beyond any measure of doubt.

The problem here is that there is no difference in regard to visa success between a normal Chinese citizen with no links to anyone in America and a high level academic, invited to America, with their American friends having been interviewed by consulate officials. I guarantee if you tried the same thing with people coming from New Zealand to the US, the visa success would be considerably different for each party (and in fact it was for my friend going from NZ to the US who got a rubber stamped 3 month stay as she was doing a study with MIT as opposed to my friend who had 2 interviews and got declined once for a 2 month tourist visa... both had similar educations and age and would have been assets to the US if they did overstay!).

Do you really think the US State department isn't paranoid??? You must be joking... and paranoia is the basis of the creation of Homeland Security - whose initial jobs should have been done by the FBI/police/coastguard etc. The one thing these other agencies don't do enough of however is spying on US citizens. And now they have immigration & natualization under their mandate... paranoia anyone?

..

"The rest of us appear to come from countries where the government distrusts and thinks all its citizens are morons that can't make intelligent decisions."

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This has to be the understatement to end all understatements. Clearly there are a lot of capable, intelligent candidates for government and presidency of the USA. But both the USA and the entire western world (sadly he becomes the de facto leader of the so called 'West') ends up with people like Bush - TWICE!! Seems vested interests in the USA don't want people to make intelligent decisions.

Could it be the population also demands a fully signed-up schizophrenic to become congressman, senator or president. Such individuals are then putty in the hands of vested interests lower down the food chain, and in key departments of state. For starters, why do voters in the USA DEMAND that leaders either are, or must pretend to be religious fanatics? And then they MUST support the arms industry, the Israeli lobby, the gun lobby and all the other powerful single interest fanatics. Even if the US government officials themselves believe these malicious self-serving groups should all be put firmly back in their box and allow common-sense to prevail the system simply doesn't allow them to do it and so they are left free to poison any rational debate and corrupt the entire broken system.

@blobbles:
"The rest of us appear to come from countries where the government distrusts and thinks all its citizens are morons that can't make intelligent decisions."

—————————————
This has to be the understatement to end all understatements. Clearly there are a lot of capable, intelligent candidates for government and presidency of the USA. But both the USA and the entire western world (sadly he becomes the de facto leader of the so called 'West') ends up with people like Bush - TWICE!! Seems vested interests in the USA don't want people to make intelligent decisions.

Could it be the population also demands a fully signed-up schizophrenic to become congressman, senator or president. Such individuals are then putty in the hands of vested interests lower down the food chain, and in key departments of state. For starters, why do voters in the USA DEMAND that leaders either are, or must pretend to be religious fanatics?

Then they MUST support the arms industry, the Israeli lobby, the gun lobby and all the other powerful single interest fanatics. Even if US government officials themselves believe these malicious self-serving groups should all be put firmly back in their box and allow common-sense to prevail the system simply doesn't allow them to do it. There is no scope for rational debate and decision making. The system is broken and corrupt. It's been poisoned by irrational self interest.