Even if I get a doctorate in plant/soil science, the prospects for doing anything positive with it in the US are limited. A handful of state/federal land management agencies that are selling off the remains of our ecosystems, corporate farms, or exploitative academia. Meanwhile I've liked a lot of what China has been doing environmentally in recent years and working toward a genuine public mission would be much better than making some schmuck rich in Qanon hell.
A few days ago someone on Hexbear mentioned that they studied abroad in China after going through their university's Confucius Institute. I've seen the sign for one at the local university I'm attending, but had no idea what it was. Today I went to research their classes and learned that it was recently shut down because this shithole is withholding federal funding from universities that have one.
Otherwise I have no in-roads to the local Chinese-American community and Mandarin is a very intimidating language. The fact that the Confucius Institute is specifically geared toward student cultural exchange makes it especially appealing for that. Does anyone know if they still have state-level presences or if it's now just the national office? If they're on ice, is there a good alternative I should look into?
China used to hand out lots of scholarships to foreigners. Now nobody can enter the country except those with resident permits.
If you want a life in China you're just going to have to learn Chinese. It's a tough, intimidating language and there are no shortcuts. Expect to spend thousands of hours studying over years. See here: http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
The problem with graduating with a degree from a Chinese university is it's pretty worthless anywhere but China. And even then, there is a ranking system for universities and you'll be judged based on how good yours was. China itself is not for a lot of people. Many westerners can't stand it. It takes a special kind of weirdo to hack it, and even if you do, you're still going to get called "sexpat" and worse by people jealous that you successfully escaped. You could live in Beijing or Shanghai, but then you're pretty much living in a developed country and might as well be back home.
What you propose can be done. But you'd have to give up everything you've ever known and embrace an alien culture. Are you going to like it? Who knows.
Luckily I've always been nomadic and living between cultures, so being a fish out of water is something I normally thrive under without any particular attachment to the places I've lived. Even a socially conservative, very foreign place like living in Japan was an easy adjustment minus the language but I could at least get around and be polite. It's a shame immigration has dried up though. Using the degree abroad would be nice but there aren't many places abroad that I have much confidence in. Whatever rightful xenophobia I'd face over there, in five years I'll be facing Freikorps nerds here anyway. It's not a degree you get rich off of so my material prospects in either country are probably about the same.
Immigration? There is no immigration to China. A work permit is temporary. The only ones allowed to immigrate are overseas Chinese.