The next decade or so is going to be very interesting. Western democracies have now overly partisan political system where most of the effort is spent in just cancelling out each other. Whatever remains is typically taken away by lobbyist that only help to further inflate shareholder value, which large majority of population isn’t. On the other hand authoritarian governments are able to move swiftly and decisively on issues and infrastructure. For example, government simply can deny cars with odd numbered license plates to drive on Mondays to reduce traffic and pollution. They are obviously rampant with corruption and bad decisions like creating ghost towns but marginal leftover value that remains seem to be still big enough for actual public works than in highly polarized democracy. I am not favoring one over another but long term consequences of this marginal efficiency could be highly compounding.
China has a lot of retail politics, it's just in the context of a single-party system.
They're able to do a lot of things quickly, but principal–agent problems remain and there is a ton of corruption. Local party cadres are under a ton of pressure and frequently use overly large carrots and sticks to get stuff done.
This isn't very efficient.
You don't need to be super efficient when you're a developing country, but China is solidly middle-income. The things you need to do to go from 0 to 1 will eventually hurt you, and from their slowing GDP growth it's clear that it's already doing that.
> China has a lot of retail politics, it's just in the context of a single-party system.
I'll tell you a communist joke:
"Any party member has a primal fear of an election with more than one candidate"
Why? "Because it means that one of choices is wrong"
I my opinion, that is only nominally a joke, and the joke tells a lot about CPCs internal arrangement: pick a wrong side even once, an you are a toast, and you are better off supporting status-quo
These issues need discussion in a neutral venue. China is not a model of anything but given the intense debate in the US about the systemic corruption of the lobbying system pointing fingers at others as if corruption is somehow unique to 'other countries' seems cognitive dissonance. Political corruption is the single biggest source of corruption in most countries which is done officially in the US. Just because you make something 'legal' doesn't suddenly make it any less corrupt.
The 2008 banking crisis revealed massive levels of fraud, collusion and corruption in the banking system and the bailouts with 'too big to fail' betray something even more deep seated and systemic. There is a huge problem of revolving doors across industries with regulators getting hired by the companies they were regulating and politicians getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches. There is a well documented history of corruption in banking, real estate, pharma, energy and multiple other sectors and we have even seen this entering education.
Most commentators know about the widespread corruption in their countries but there is weird dissonance and finger pointing making any kind of informed discussion impossible.
Yeah I agree. Adding to that, there's a sort of nationalistic competition driving the bias as well. The united states was top dog in terms of GDP, the trend towards china unseating that throne in the coming years drives a lot of this dissonance.
What in your opinion is a neutral venue? I like the technical expertise here but opinions are definitely not neutral.
The bias on this forum is largely American european or western. How do I know this? Language. You'd obviously get a different flavor of bias on a chinese forum. Can you imagine yourself claiming your own country to be more corrupt than another? If not then how can you imagine a prideful chinese person doing the same? Bias colors every corner of this forum just like it would color a chinese forum.
I would say I am less biased on this topic than the average person on HN. How can I say that though when bias can color my judgement on my own bias? How can anyone say such a thing due to this recursive fact?
I believe the method around this problem is not to use your own judgement to judge bias in your own judgement but to look at external factors surrounding your circumstance and use probabilistic causative connections between those external factors and possible bias to determine a persons' overall level of bias. For example, an African living in the congo will have less bias on a China vs. America debate than a chinese person, an icelander will be less biased than a new yorker for the same debate. The external factor in the previous examples is race and location.
So for me I come from a more different background. I am chinese and american. I hold no nationalistic pride for either country and I could see my self living in either country if need be. It's apples and oranges to me, literally. Racially though, I'm chinese so from circumstance my bias would be equal to an chinese born american but less than an american born white guy or an asian born mongoloid. Overall I'm probably more biased than the african.
In short, I am less biased than most people on this forum because of my background. So a neutral venue would be like people who talk about this stuff but are mostly from like singapore.
I agree. The corruption in china is more explicit. While the corruption in the US goes through more official channels. It's harder to perceive in the united states. I would argue the net effect is similar though: The more money you have the more influence you have.
When someone says "the scale and magnitude is completely different," they aren't referring to "explicit."
I know plenty of people from China who have talked about the crazy levels of corruption there. Some are related to those in power, and they've said it very much goes through 'official channels.'
That's what I mean. From another angle, the corruption is the same it's just more visible in China. People in general know about the corruption in China. How obvious is the corruption in america? Not obvious at all it's sort of ephermal.
You know about his corruption. You are able to say bad things about a man who reportedly had a "kill squad" online, without ending up "missing" or being"re-educated", and you think the levels of corruption are the same in China and the US?
... seriously?
/Edit: America isn't perfect, I'll give whoever that. But the defeatist equivalence shit has to stop. We are working on it. We won't stop working on it. We can always do better. Pick up a shovel and help, rather than "lol we're as bad as {place} because {thing}."
People don’t seem to understand this difference you highlight. They could try going to China and saying the same things publicly.... _then_ they’d realize how different the two places are.
Freedom of speech is a little overrated. You don't have freedom of speech in the real world anyway. You watch what you say because what you say can affect your environment and you. It's not injustice that you can't talk publicly about how horrible your boss is, it's common sense.
China is just an extension of this from what you normally do to tip toe around your boss to the government. Yes it's bad, yes it's a negative. And Yes it's at a whole different level than America.
However, Does it prevent you from living a happy life in China? Does it prevent you from becoming rich and powerful? Does it prevent you from talking shit about the government with your friends? Does it prevent you from pursuing the equivalent of the American Dream in China? No it doesn't. China has problems just as America does but to think that you're living under total oppression is an exaggeration at best.
Take a look at this:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2236746/Road-built-...
An elderly couple refuses to move and the government bends to their will. Would an evil despotic controlling government allow this to happen? Would you imagine this kind of behavior being allowed in North Korea? Yes there is no talking shit about the big boss in China, but you need to open your eyes, it's nowhere near as bad as you think. This is not stalinist russia.
Definitely if your job and your intentions are against the will of the government you're gonna have a hard time. But for most people they'll be fine.
However the topic at hand is corruption. Not freedoms. If you were talking about freedoms, than yes, America is more free. My argument is China and the United States are equally corrupt.
> it's nowhere near as bad as you think
> However, Does it prevent you from living a happy life in China? Does it prevent you from becoming rich and powerful? Does it prevent you from talking shit about the government with your friends? Does it prevent you from pursuing the equivalent of the American Dream in China? No it doesn't.
> This is not stalinist russia
This is an extremely naive and ridiculous belief. Depending upon your definition of "happy life", if that involves having to suck up and follow orders given by the government, then sure go ahead. But don't pretend as if China and every other socialist/communist country will let average joes be happy. They have re-education camps for people who don't follow, camps for certain religions, a social credit system blocking millions from traveling/renting and what not.
Not fighting back when things are starting to get worse is exactly how things exaggerate to the point of no return. I would recommend you watch a documentary on how Stalin came to power and how things got worse. Look at Venezuela now vs 20 years ago and you have proof.
I lived in China. I lived in China and the United States. I know the reality. Naivety is the person who watches documentaries and experiences the world second hand.
I'm assuming you haven't been to China otherwise you wouldn't be saying these things.
I won't disclose my location here on HN but I have lived in 2 countries (one western and other asian) and I know the contrast. Simple things like porn being banned is enough to prove my point. I have had several AirBnb guests at my place from China who describe the system. But their description came across as "frog in the well".
You cannot claim the following are anywhere close to how things are in US. Or will you claim these are all fake propaganda being spread by western countries? It's almost ironic that defending China's practices yet China doesn't even allow Google and most social media sites in the country without a VPN. If this stuff happens in US, media would be having a field day:
Then why isn't Dick Cheney arrested? It's known in a vague sense, not in a more definitive sense like it's known in China. In China it's like we all know.
In the US things like Dark Money and bribery and lobbying and monopolies are all a sort of an ephermal fact rather than a fact of life like it is in China.
My argument is underneath all that the US and China are the same in terms of the volume of corruption.
The US isn't in the same league. We have independent and trustworthy federal police (the fbi). They are under attack by the president but they are more trustworthy than I ever realized in general. I don't see political investigations of opponents of the govt, like happens commonly in China. I don't see endemic corruption.
^ I totally agree with your take, but I think it's worth noting that we really could lose these things. I'm hopeful the current administration is an aberration and we'll return to some degree of normalcy in the future, regardless of which party is in power. But if we don't, institutions like the FBI will eventually erode as well.
It was really the last remnant of the British Empire according to historians. Some of the Hong Kong population (younger especially) wants to be an independent state, but China wants to integrate it, and is slowly sapping it of its famous liberal policies and freedoms.
> that only help to further inflate shareholder value, which large majority of population isn’t.
This is incorrect, at least in the US. A majority of Americans are shareholders (Somewhere between 51%[0] and 55%[1]), since if you have a 401k or IRA, you are a shareholder.
Sure, but that's different than the claim that increasing shareholder value isn't in the interest of most Americans due to the fact that most Americans aren't shareholders (which is false).
[EDIT] I mean the claim that most Americans aren't shareholders is objectively false, thus claiming that increasing shareholder value isn't in the interests of most Americans because of this is objectively false. How valuable increasing shareholder value is to most Americans is not objectively false, as it depends on your opinion on the consequences of some people benefiting more than others.
Via the defined benefit pension promises, all taxpayers are invested in keeping asset prices climbing otherwise they will get wrecked by even higher taxes.
Every year, property taxes, vehicle registration fees, business taxes, professional licensing fees, and myriad other government fees keep going up. It's all taxes as far as an individual is concerned.
Except most of the pension bombs are in the state and local governments, which rely primarily on regressive taxation (sales taxes, property taxes, fees, etc.).
At the time, only the wealthy owned land. Today in the US, 2/3 of people own their homes. Meanwhile, rich people have less of their assets tied up in real property. Someone worth $100,000 probably has most of that in their house. Someone worth $10,000,000 likely will have only a fraction of that in their house, and the rest in financial assets not subject to property taxes.
For Chinese in Shanghai, unlike US, in fact, 90% of families in the country own their home, giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world.
No. Only half of the Americans have access to 401K. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, only 32% of Americans are saving for retirement in a 401(k). I would estimate much smaller percentage to have meaningful level of savings in 401K (> 10K).
> Western democracies have now overly partisan political system where most of the effort is spent in just cancelling out each other.
it is true that without democracy, governments can make a lot more changes a lot more quickly and easily. I prefer the government have to work hard to achieve the will of the people
Who says we have democracy in the west? The votes of USA’s congress often wildly deviate from public opinion and it seems hard to get anything done without lobbying dollars.
I wonder if we're all blinding heading into another "taxation without representation" debacle (aka revolution)?
I mean, yeah - we technically have "representation" - but you'd have to be blind and willfully ignorant to believe that's really the truth.
Unless "we" is a corporation or business interest, of course. Somehow, these fictional things have got more voice than actual people with voices. At some point in the future, if GAI actually occurs, they will have real voices - and then what?
Right now, the claim is "but they are composed of people" - but in reality, even that is a fiction; the majority of the people in most businesses - even small businesses - have no real say in anything about the business or how it operates, or it's politics (or political leanings). People can threaten or actually "walk out" or whatnot, but if the business is large enough, they'll just find themselves out of work and replaced (probably not entirely legal, but the actual litigation of it after the fact can be dragged out for years). So again - just another fiction we tell ourselves for some reason.
I'm not sure why we lie to ourselves so much about these things; probably because most people have no stomach for what real change would entail; the sacrifice, the blood, the pain - real pain. Terrible pain.
But...if something isn't done...it's going to happen anyway. It always does, as anyone familiar with history knows.
> Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Polls of registered voters consistently show that a staggering majority believe that their own Congressperson deserves to be reelected: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx. We're kind of in uncharted waters during the Trump Era, but in many years we're talking about a 2:1 or even 3:1 polling margin in support of the incumbent Congressperson. By similar margins, people say they're own Congressman is not corrupt.
Saying that Congressional voting doesn't track public opinion and therefore the US isn't democratic is suspect for two reasons. First, it ignores the fact that the subjects of opinion polls are different than voters. Votes track older, more conservative, wealthier, and more rural than the public overall. Second, it ignores the fact that people don't vote for policies, they vote for leaders. People trust their leaders to make the right decisions, and consistently reward them for those decisions by reelecting them, even when those decisions don't necessarily map onto opinion polls.
Do you mean the Congress doesn’t submit to populism? They generally follow the guidelines laid out by the constitution. Maybe you mean some are subsumed by special interests.
"I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they'll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they'll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate, it's the sand of the coliseum. He'll bring them death - and they will love him for it."
The idea that there's a dichotomy between "the people" and "corporations" is specious. Almost everyone is employed at a corporation. People buy food, clothes, entertainment, etc., from corporations. A vote for corporations is a vote for things "the people" need or enjoy--iPhones, movies, cars, lifesaving drugs, etc.
Corporations operate to fulfill their mandate to shareholders, which is to make a profit. Employees, suppliers, real estate, customers, even executives are just mechanisms to achieve that end goal. There's no real sense of justice beyond not getting shut down.
People, on the other hand, live in the real world, and need protection from forces that wish to obliterate what they need to seek happiness. This is the primary function of government, ideally, to create the markets within which corporations and people can get along and operate to their goals with relative safety.
Yes, we need corporations. But we are not corporations.
> There's no real sense of justice beyond not getting shut down.
Corporations have no greater or lesser sense of justice than people, because corporations are just groups of people acting in concert. (A fact that I'm reminded of every time I see a long line of cars with a single occupant in the HOV lane.)
Groups of people behave differently than individuals. Corporations are constructed with the entire purpose of something that an individual wouldn't or couldn't do. It is the job of a board member to ensure that. A person in a company making a moral decision involving the company's behavior isn't acting from a sense of personal morality because it isn't happening to them. The consequences aren't generally on them, other than losing their job. Yes, companies can be amoral, but not for the same reasons that people can be amoral.
a better description would be "acting under contract" to produce returns for 99% wealthy shareholders at any cost whatsoever to the environment, to the economy, to other corporations, or to under-represented members of society.
The people weren't offered a choice, "you can have inexpensive goods and go on unemployment, OR you an keep your jobs but with a 10% markup on electronics" (btw there was massive collusion by Samsung and Sony with subsequent settlement for price fixing in flat-panel TVs).
Moving jobs overseas is evading the "free market" by literally moving the labor market somewhere else. The corporation captures the benefit, the old workers are unemployed, the new workers do not benefit from the social benefits of the nation to which the corporation pays it taxes, and the shareholders get an extra $1.00EPS on their dividend sheet (that they pay very litle tax on because their rates are lower than wage tax). It's an all-around scam.
In my view, people were offered a very clear choice: Made in China or made in the USA, and they very consistently and unambiguously made their choice at every given opportunity with their wallets.
Probably not the same people, mind you. People are inherently selfish. It's likely that those whose livelihoods depend on manufacturing realize the importance of buying domestic. But for everyone else, it's all about the wallet. Your sentence could be rephrased as: "I can have my inexpensive goods with a 10% markdown. You can go on unemployment."
If people were not so selfish in their spending habits the more socially conscientious corporations would be the dominant ones, but clearly that is not the case today.
This is so wrong at so many levels. First, people don’t “vote” for corporations. You trade goods and service in exchange of money and it is not same as giving consent to be governed or policies. Furthermore, corporations are in essence dictatorship by CEO or board of directors or shareholders. They are not required to align with will of people outside of products. Quite opposite they are required to increase the shareholder value if it is legally allowed although it may not be morally good thing for society in longer term.
> Western democracies have now overly partisan political system where most of the effort is spent in just cancelling out each other.
The USA was always like this. It was considered a feature, not a bug. A government that makes decisions quickly and executes them smoothly was thought of as very dangerous.
> Whatever remains is typically taken away by lobbyist that only help to further inflate shareholder value, which large majority of population isn’t.
> Western democracies have now overly partisan political system where most of the effort is spent in just cancelling out each other.
I would suggest almost the opposite. I think the West suffers from having too much similar politics. Overall the developments have been largely the same, roughly following the UK and the US. Very few countries stand out, especially not as a result of recent policies. And if they do it isn't a positive thing.
There's another bigger weakness for authoritarian governments: it limits innovation. I'm not saying that innovation is impossible in an authoritarian environment. I'm just saying it's much harder to achieve in one. Limits over which ideas everyone is able to share has a cost. Worrying about whether an idea will get you fined, jailed, or worse drains your creativity. The better the government is able to implement censorship, the worse the situation gets.
> Whatever remains is typically taken away by lobbyist that only help to further inflate shareholder value
I honestly love this. The mechanisms of consensus have never been so unguarded while entrenched interests are guarding polar fringes of every party. This is great, for me.
> On the other hand authoritarian governments are able to move swiftly and decisively on issues and infrastructure. For example, government simply can deny cars with odd numbered license plates to drive on Mondays to reduce traffic and pollution.
How is that only available to authoritarian governments? Athens (GR) has had an even/odd number plates policy since the 1980s...
It's obviously true that the decision making process is easier in authoritarian regimes, but that's no excuse for the west simply not developing fast enough anymore. No big infrastructure projects (no matter how long decisions would take, nobody even tries), no real visions for Europe's future (Trump has one for the USA, as simple as it may seem, at least it exists). Laissez-faire attitude on unqualified and illegal mass migration (i.e. "come and take our stuff!"). We're so stuck that we won't even notice if one day China decides to wipe us off the face of the earth in order to replace us with a functioning society.
> How is that only available to authoritarian governments? Athens (GR) has had an even/odd number plates policy since the 1980s...
Similar policy in Paris, which I don't think anyone could argue falls in the authoritative side of the spectrum. I do think that the poor examples don't take away the overall point they're making though.
I was referring to his idea of bringing back manufacturing and jobs in general, his space policy and other such initiatives in the spirit of the 1960s and 1970s.
Except they never went away. Manufacturing is highly automated and specialized. If a highschool dropout could do it then eventually a simple robot will be able to do it. Politicians, executives, and union leaders should be taken to task for letting education and drop training fall so far behind.
Until our space program gets out of politics it will continue to be a political football, some politicians will deem it too expensive, others will treat it as a jobs program with no objective. Look at his current cabinet? Do you think any of them will stick around for the next decade to shepherd a successful space program. I don't think any of them have the political capital to finish whatever he may start.
Is this article a joke? Shanghai is the opposite of a well-planned city that evolved in a positive direction.
> Shanghai has provided one of the world’s largest and most rapidly growing urban populations with a quality of life and a breadth of infrastructure unmatched by any other megalopolis. It has done so in less than three decades.
Quality of life is absolutely awful in Shanghai, where is the blue sky? where is the clean air? Traffic jams happen all the time.
And apart from the subway system that is indeed extensive, having lived in Shanghai in 2003 and then having come back in 2009, I would argue that Shanghai was a much better place back then in term of quality of life. Less pollution, less cars, more bicycles, more of those lane houses that encouraged a stronger sense of community between residents. It was a lovely city back then.
Of course, with money, things have improved, but I'd argue that Shanghai would have been better off with much better planned development. As it is, I don't think random thoughtless urban development would have created anything much worse than what it is now.
I guess everything should be put in a context and evaluated relatively. How does it compare with other cities quadrupled in 2 or 3 decades? Yes blue sky, yes bycicle, yes sense of community. Those are available for tiny towns elsewhere in comparison. But how does Shanghai's planning work comparing to New Dheli? Mexico city? Other mega-cities?
Well having also lived in Tokyo which is a city that quadrupled in 2 to 3 decades, at least one city managed to retain all of those characteristics. Seoul also worked out rather well.
> Quality of life is absolutely awful in Shanghai, where is the blue sky? where is the clean air? Traffic jams happen all the time
Two of the three points that you've mentioned are in regards to air pollution, as of recently China is actively working on reducing air pollution with definitive timelines [0]. As a side note, during the high growth era of the US (and presumably other currently developed countries), US cities had significantly higher air pollution than what is observed today [1].
Obviously the argument to be made here is not that Shanghai checks off all boxes for a "perfect" city today, but that it is as the author of the article suggests as the capital of the "future", primarily due to the continued high growth at the rate mentioned in the article.
More interesting than the actual article are the comments that follow it, which appear to follow the same line that appears on Hacker News with respect to China based articles. They're incredibly polarized which speaks to an ongoing unease in the West with respect to China's growth. A certain large percentage being extremely vocal of their criticism of China, some being laudatory and very few striking a middle ground. Had the article been about Mumbai, Lagos or Karachi I'm doubtful such reactions would have been elicited.
I spent first half of my life in Asia, and second half in the West so I am very much under influenced by cultures on both sides. I've always tried my best to view these issues as objectively as possible and without any biases.
China of the past has always accepted that they were inferior, but they were always willing to learn which was why most people accused them of copying from others. However, human knowledge and innovations have always been about replicating what others have already done, and then adding your own tweaks to it. Nobody could go from 50 to 100 without climbing up through every step, and China was willing to climb those steps at all costs. They have studied Western society extremely well over the years. China were able to extract all the best elements from the West, removed the not-so-good ingredients, and then applied those filtered results back to the country.
On the opposite side, it's understandable why most people are criticizing China because psychologically it's very difficult to accept an inferior opponent who was only considered as "copier" not long ago could now in fact be as good, or possibly even better in the future. It's not easy considering they have been leading by a wide margin for such a long time.
The danger here is while China has quietly concentrated all their effort to adapt the best formulas from the West, people on the other side continue to ignore an inevitable reality. Instead of investigating China to see why they have done so well and to obtain some of their knowledge in return, many are still refusing these facts and trying their best to hold onto old ideas that just badly need updates. If not careful, we have seen this scenario played out time and time again in business (Kodak, Myspace, Blackberry, etc...).
Despite what others may want us to believe, majority of today world are still operating based on zero-sum game. Italy has seen its real GDP in decline and is the first G7 country to endorse China's "Belt and Road" initiative. In their own view, China of today no longer believes they're an inferior opponent.
It's about time people should forget about the past and start looking more into the future. Our world is changing very fast and failing to do that may quickly leave people behind before they even realize it.
The end of my MBA program was a trip to China, with a week spent in Shanghai. a portion of our trip was meeting with the then CEO of China IBM and he toured us through the most ambitious project I'd ever heard: the Chinese Government hired IBM to create a nationwide western medical infrastructure - they needed everything from the health science courses in high school, university majors, nursing and medical universities, and hospitals and pharmacies by the thousand. This was a giant jaw dropping ambitious effort, and from what we could see the entire effort was being executed with the latest organizational and educational models known at the time from the west. I thought it was like taking the entirety of the Harvard Review and attempting a mass implementation of all that thinking in a real world project. After the trip was over, I remember thinking that such forward thinking investment was going to make China unbeatable within my lifetime. Looks like that is becoming true already, 14 years later.
This is the dangerous allure of an authoritarian state and China has been here before -- many times. Replace "western medical infrastructure" with "a massive wall to keep the barbarians to the north out" or "a massive canal to connect the two rivers" and you'll get the same effect. Authoritarian states, which China really basically pioneered during the Qin dynasty, can accomplish great things when its powers are wielded correctly. The problem is that when the people or person in charge is incompetent, crazy, and/or lazy then the whole thing just goes to hell. The often tried and just as often unsuccessful solution is to have good court officials and properly educating the heir-apparent but the cycle of dynasties and the catastrophe that follow their overthrows suggests that it is not a good long term solution. In fact, these violent overthrows often erases many of the accomplishments of the peaceful periods. This is sort of the problem democracy solves: accountability allows the leader(s) to be changed in a non-violent way. The problem with democracies is that it is almost by definition very average in progress. It is slow and steady but the overall trend is positive. It takes a very long term view to appreciate the steadiness of progress in democracies. The US is on track to overtake the majority of Chinese dynasties in term of longevity.
Authoritarianism is good when its good, and really bad when its bad.
Democracy is good when its good, and okay when its bad.
Democratic system are never the fastest way of getting something done, but seems to be the most consistently less-bad system for outcomes. The state that can build an entire medical infrastructure from scratch is also the same one that can build vast concentration camp systems far out in the provinces.
This is an important point. I agree. China will fail - and fail badly - in my lifetime - again. Authoritarianism failed them badly during the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.
"These policies led to social and economic disaster, but these failures were hidden by widespread exaggeration and deceitful reports. In short order, large resources were diverted to use on expensive new industrial operations, which, in turn, failed to produce much, and deprived the agricultural sector of urgently needed resources. An important result was a drastic decline in food output, which caused millions of deaths in the Great Chinese Famine."
I’m not so sure. Plenty of authoritarian countries have done quite well (and even transitioned to more democratic systems peacefully) in Asia like South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.
I think the cause and effect are flipped: if they succeed they will want democracy, if they fail to escape the middle income trap they will never reach high enough on the hierarchy of needs to demand political voice.
This has always been my opinion, you can only go so far with a strong man driven - authoritarian regime, eventually it will implode. China was very poor not too long ago, people subsisting on next to nothing. People are not questioning anything, because they are only now entering the middle -class workforce. When these folks move to the next level in the rung, they will start questioning and demanding what we in the west consider fundamentals of democracy - free speech, diversity. You can install a cyber wall, block off all western press, but your people are traveling to the west, in fact, Chinese tourists are the biggest contingent to Europe. You cannot prevent the dissemination of ideas, and ideas are more powerful than a nuclear bomb!
The US is strangled by responsibility-avoidance everywhere, public and private sector. Layers and layers of consultants and bureaucrats to make sure no-one ever makes a decision without being able to point a finger elsewhere, repeat recursively for each added layer. No one with the will and authority to call people on this behavior and cut through the BS—the people at the very top are doing it, too, in fact it's most of what they do—so it works, and so it keeps happening, on a larger and larger scale.
I agree with you, @asark
But I would change "..strangled by responsibility avoidance..'
Into US business business are forced into culture of 'plausible deniability'.
If you do not follow that culture, your business, if successful, will be virtually and very quickly devoured by lawyers or partisan politicians seeking their racketeering tax.
Both of those professions essentially became licensed racketeers in the Western world.
I would also build up on your premise, and say that it is not that China is advancing at incredible pace, it is that our own West Europe and US have been slowed down by the above internal nemeses.
Not to belittle your experience, but one of the key issues in an authoritarian state is that nobody is held to account.
So, if you’re a politician or a big businessman, you can say whatever you like. We have a 3 year plan to eradicate X. We will completely redevelop the entire southern sector of the city and everyone will be rich and happy. And we’ll do it in 2 years.
China does a lot and achieves a lot, but for example, each time you read something China related in the news, check how many times it says “China plans to....” or “Government announces plan to.....”
I disagree with why Western commentators struggle to accept China’s ‘success’ - it’s not sour grapes or jealousy as you suggest.
China is breaking all of the established rules that have guided western societies for decades/centuries: Governments work for the people. Authoritarianism doesn’t work. Faking and copying will fail. Hubris leads to a fall.
China’s political model and economic models have worked exceptionally well on a number of levels for 3-4 decades now, but to a lot of people, it still just looks like an authoritarian government forcing present and future generations to make vast sacrifices (health, quality of life, freedoms, rights) for the benefit of the CCP.
You do have a point here. I think it's mostly due to the fact there's very little information about China available on Western media, so people just do not have access to the latest insights. This explains why most of them are still operating based on old beliefs.
Ironically this is probably serving China even better as they were able to keep everything undetected that it often becomes too late by the time people notice what's going on. Huawei is such a perfect example of this.
That just sounds like another way of saying we should be learning from this. Even if the trade offs aren’t worth it for us we shouldn’t be surprised when stuff that “shouldn’t work” does in fact work.
Maybe - the neoliberal dogma of the last 40 years has been that you can’t have economic prosperity without democratic reform and liberal politics. China has shown categorically that this isn’t true.
However, China might still prove the West correct in the long term. The breakneck economic development and oppressive political system has stored up a lot of huge problems, any of which could see the country slump into serious decline or worse.
> China might still prove the West correct in the long term. The breakneck economic development and oppressive political system has stored up a lot of huge problems, any of which could see the country slump into serious decline or worse.
I don't see how China can develop into the next phase of economic development with such an oppressive system. Industry and constrained science can clearly advance under such control. But media, branding, and cultural influence are much more strongly hindered by an oppressive state.
Before China can shift from building products and things into building brands and ideas, they will need to open up their society to compete globally.
You're kind of ignoring the giant elephant in the room - China is a authoritarian regime, and Emperor Xi recently declared himself Emperor for Life. Criticize Emperor Xi and be sent to the gulag. Not to mention the new dystopian Chinese Social Credit System. Did we forget about the millions of deaths resulting from the Cultural Revolution? Is China a country you would choose to live in for the rest of you life? How about your children?
This is the exact opposite of what an 'elephant in the room' is.
Webster:
>Definition of elephant in the room
: an obvious major problem or issue that people avoid discussing or acknowledging
Your comment is not saying anything new that hasn't been repeated ad nauseam already. Your comment is not enlightening anyone about the hitherto unknown great evils of China. Any topic remotely involving China will illicit dozens of responses such as yours with the exact same hysterical, copy-pasted examples. The fact is, people can't seem to stop discussing or acknowledging the problems or issues mentioned - which is fine I guess, but they are certainly not the elephants in the room you describe them to be.
"Elephant in the room" may not have been the best term—but what he was reacting to was that the GP specifically doesn't mention China's authoritarianism.
That is the issue I have with China, not some east vs west superiority complex.
I find your perspective very interesting, because I think most Westerners would really strongly disagree that China "took the best elements from the West".
I think we agree that China took whatever it could to make itself powerful. But if you ask a Western person, is it really the power of our countries that defines greatness?
If I think of any country and what makes it great, I always end up thinking about things that definitely do not exist in China. I think the greatest moments of civilization are found in compassion, humanism, freedom, the fight for liberty, the preservation of peace, philosophy, art, music, poetry, scientific pursuit even against church&state etc.
China doesn't care about these things, at all, or is overtly hostile to them if they compromise efficiency.
China is not the first country to be very efficient while having concentration camps.
People are afraid not because they don't respect China, nor because they think China is inferior.
We are concerned because we think China has NOT taken the best from the Western world. In fact, quite the opposite.
You're right. I should have clarified myself better. Those best elements were mostly applied to building wealth for China and strengthening their economy only. Other aspects related to political ideologies which will always be very different from the West, and I believe those topics should always be avoided on HN.
We have to understand that China has never been able to enjoy such economic power at this level throughout their history, so they have been waiting for this position for such a long time. Their current position may potentially reshape future history of human civilization. When you have the entire country concentrating all their effort on one and only one objective, the rest will have to take a backseat. For example, China didn't have to spend trillion of dollars going to war which was also another reason why they were able to laser focus on just one single goal.
This definitely doesn't mean it would make China the most balanced country overall as everything in life is always a trade off. One may gain in one area but would always lose in another. I'm not saying people should be afraid of China, I'm only saying they should not lock themselves up in the old world, and instead be ready and willing to learn from others because obviously China must have been doing many things right to get here.
I don't believe this is unique in China's history. Their economic power was certainly world class in previous times. They were a manufacturing powerhouse and held monopoly over many goods in a global trade network. Not only that, China had more power projection in the past. They had direct influence in current day Afghanistan and Central Asia until they lost at the battle of Talas River. As well as having tributary states in Japan and Korea. Currently, the US and allies surrounds China in such a way that they don't have the same influence.
So there is no literature, art, music, community, philosophy, traditions in China?
China is far from perfect, but this holier-than-thou attitude is nauseating. It is awful to be a Tibetan or Huygur or even a college boy asking for reform, because China will crush you.
At the same time it was/is awful to be a Guatemalan/Nicaraguan/Iraqi/Cambodian under American treatment so they see you as sub-human and disposable. So except for economic purchasing power difference (which are more or less rapidly decreasing) I dont see any substantial difference between China and USA.
> So there is no literature, art, music, community, philosophy, traditions in China? China is far from perfect, but this holier-than-thou attitude is nauseating.
I stopped reading GP’s post at that point and began composing a similar reply, but quickly realized that the effort would be futile. People such as the GP are set in their views and seemingly content to broadcast pure ignorance.
I'm critical of China because they're an authoritarian regime with an awful human rights record, whose citizens wholly lack free expression and privacy. If China was to improve their record on human rights, I would have no problem with them or their position on the world stage.
America copied a lot of ideas from England during the industrial revolution. From my cursory understanding of things it seems like copying technology is how you get up to speed, before you can start really innovating yourself.
I think a lot of the ideas about how China isn't capable of innovation for cultural reasons is frankly rooted in racism. Not long ago they were a developing country, and they are rapidly, rapidly getting up to speed. If you were raised by subsistence farmers, you can rise above that but it's hard to become a technological prodigy.
But there's a whole generation of Chinese people being raised in a modern, prosperous economy, and I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be capable of the same contributions that Western students will make.
You are correct. I think the reason why is the article puts the 'why' very deeply inside and that reason is central planning. Xi will soon be God-emperor for life and China will continue to enjoy the benefits of an authoritative structure. Not to derail but while this is an article about cities it is disingenuous not to talk about contractors,zoning laws,city council, nimby, etc which the cities you have quoted have had to suffer. Shanghai does not have to face these challenges as one man can just say 'no'.
Absolute dictators always get things done that might be impossible in any kind of democracy or republic. However they only remain dictators for the life as long as things keep working, and often it requires brutal suppression of people in general. One wrong move and an economy that crumbles leaving people angry, confused and poor, and dictator is gone. When you put all your country's eggs in one person's basket, someday it will fail, or possibly the next dictator for life is a moron. Haiti is a great example of this with Papa Doc having had absolute power, and Baby Doc being an absolute moron.
You are quite right, China is certainly not an exception here.
What many in the West don't know is that prior to Xi, the political leadership had little engagement in operating the country during Jiang and Hu.
For most Jiang and Hu eras, senior civil administrators were picked on processional basis, with some not even being party members as such. With Xi, things went upside down on this front.
Living in China allowed me to see just how many nation's official are not in line with Xi. Many can barely hold from doing a "facepalm manoeuvre" when listening to Xi's many gaffes.
It's not a surprise that Xi has initiated a massive campaign to clear out government cadres appointed through civic line of work, and appoint party members instead.
Xi will not succeed, the party simply doesn't have enough professionals to staff the civil government. This may sound like a big stretch with CCP having 80M+ members, but only around 5M members make the real political body of the party, with prime majority of them being either "lazy golden boys" or pension age people.
Hu maybe, but Jiang? I remember him being a lot more hands on than Hu, but it was also a different more centralized era on the boundary.
Jiang was also way more educated than Xi, the former being a product of rushed post cultural revolution education (Xi is less educated than Hu, being the first Chinese President in a while who can’t speak English).
> With all Jiang Zemin's flaws, his best move was to "politically castrate" the party, and distance intra-party affairs from state governance. This is what made the two decades of progress possible: civil servants without little red books instead of brains.
In early nineties, CPC was a buzzing hornet's nest. It was the wisest decision to not to touch it, and let the party "simmer in its own juice," while creating parallel state institutes with complete outsiders.
> It was in Jiang's times when things turned "position in the party !== automatic position in the government." Jiang was waaay to afraid of party members. He saw the party as a dual structure:
> 1. An assembly of oafs, and loosers
> 2. Along with a hornet's nest of Maoists, Hua-ists, Deng-ists, and 20 other "ists," all of whom were a threat to his rule.
although really from the perspective of battling NIMBYs, the benefit (first-order, anyway) of Shanghai is not that one man can say no, it's that only one man has to say "yes"
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
I'm pretty sure you'd get the same sort of comments if someone made a positive article about Lagos. (I'm fair certain it would even happen for similar articles on Mumbai and Karachi. Just maybe not quite as bad as for Lagos.)
It's natural for there to be cultural insecurity during times of realignment. And I think it's fair to say that we are living through a period of realignment, transition, whatever you want to call it.
> The Shanghai metro system, with its 12 lines, is now the most extensive in the world, yet its first line opened only in 1993. Four new lines are under construction and five existing lines are being extended.
Meanwhile, New York is letting their metro system crumble to the ground.
They’re coming to nyc because of perceived economic forces that will hold the city’s housing prices up as a high return investment. With the infrastructure actively failing before our eyes the calculus about the city seems certain to change as its reputation and quality of life plunges. Also the cultural forces celebrating urban spaces that created the beliefs underlying this many decade boom have long ago exhausted themselves, at least in relation to nyc. I have lived here a large portion of my life and feel near certain that the speculative winds are shifting elsewhere.
London was at the point you describe two decades ago with bottlenecks of transport, e.g. Heathrow or Paddington, neither of which seem possible to expand. The housing crash never came, 2008 was just fine and, even with the Brexit pause on all possible decision making, prices just keep going upwards for property.
Never give up faith in capitalism. Even if you would prefer socialism.
Well I for one would prefer a crash because then I would at least consider buying real estate. Without a crash, not happening - renting wins in most European cities right now.
I realise that my original comment was not popular, but capitalism defies logic when it comes to housing markets. It no longer has anything to do with the earning capacity of the common man, in the global cities - New York and London being prime examples - property prices defy gravity. There is just nowhere else for the capital of the 1% to go, so we are stuck. It should have had a reset in 2008 but the banks were bailed out instead.
A lot of people including myself would like a grand reset of the whole capitalist rent seeking enterprise. But our prayers are nothing compared to their capital.
The other thing is that if there is a crash then the 1% can buy even more property and other assets at a bargain price. Whatever happens they win. Only a popular revolution can save us.
Is it just me that finds it bizarre that they call Shanghai "the capital of the future" without any references to global warming and the vulnerability of Shanghai to sea level rise?
Shanghai is already one of the most important cities of the world - today. Predicting the future is something else, although I certainly expect Shanghai to do better than Miami, and probably New York as well.
Interesting article. But "London and New York, the world’s current leading cities, share Shanghai’s foundational geographic logic. Their safe harbours are easily accessible to the world’s trade, and their Thames and Hudson Rivers provided a ready route into a huge hinterland."
Does Thames really lead to a "huge hinterland". Does a small island like the UK even have a huge hinterland?
Also, the hudson doesn't lead to a "huge hinterland" either. The mississippi and missouri rivers does though.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare the yangtze river ( shanghai ) with the hudson or thames rivers.
> Also, the hudson doesn't lead to a "huge hinterland"
What in the world? The Hudson leads to the Erie Canal which leads to the Great Lakes which lead to the largest system of navigable waters on Earth which happens to be right on top of the largest mass of arable land on the planet.
NYC was already the largest US city before the eerie canal was completed. It wasn't the eerie canal that made NYC, the eerie canal was created because NYC was the most important city in the US. Whereas the article's point was that the rivers ( like shanghai ) and its access to the hinterlands is what drove the development of shanghai. The complete opposite is the case for NYC.
Also, do you know which river the the great lakes feed into? The mississippi river which bisects the land with the most arable land on earth. The missouri river also cuts through much of the continental US. The hudson river doesn't. I've lived along the hudson river pretty much all my life, so you can take my word on this.
If you think the thames or the hudson river is anywhere comparable to the yangtze, mississippi or the missouri, I suggest you take another look at what these rivers are. The hudson barely spans a few hundred miles in length. The yangtze, missouri and mississipi span a few thousand miles deep into the hinterlands of china and the US respectively. Compared to the mississipi or the yantze or the missouri, the hudson river is a stream.
In 1825, Clinton also helped break ground for the Ohio & Erie Canal, which was viewed as an extension of the Erie Canal and joined the Hudson with the Mississippi and New York City with New Orleans.
By then, other Eastern Seaboard cities had great harbors, but none had a comparable water tributary to the expanding interior of the United States.
[...]
In 50 years, New York City had grown from 120,000 people to more than a million in 1870. What historians called “a river of gold” flowing into the city’s lap had also proved to be a triumph of a fledgling democracy and capitalism, said James S. Kaplan, president of the Lower Manhattan Historical Association. What was known as the Great Western Canal exported New York’s politics and principles to the rest of the nation.
[...]
The canal affirmed New York’s political ascendancy over Virginia and the rest of the South (four of the first five presidents were Virginians) and its commercial dominance over competing ports not just on the Eastern Seaboard, but all the way to New Orleans.
No wonder that in his “Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation” (2005), Peter L. Bernstein wrote: “A town with an imperial name was about to witness the birth of a project that would turn New York into an imperial state.”
I already knew all of that. Are you saying the NYC didn't exist before the eerie canal was built? Are you saying NYC wasn't the largest and most important city in the US before the eerie canal?
So the eerie canal joined the hudson with the mississippi. The mississippi is 2300 miles long, the hudson river is 300 miles long. So which is the more important river?
I wish you addressed my comment rather than posting a bunch of quotes. But I can see this won't go anywhere. You are entitled to your opinion. I'm sorry I could't change your mind.
The topic of this thread is "what caused major cities to exist". The argument of the article was access to major hinterlands via rivers is why cities like london, nyc and shanghai exist. As you proved to me, the hudson didn't grant access to major hinterlands. It took the creation of the erie canal for access to the great lakes and mississippi.
I'll repeat my point for your edification. NYC was already a major city before the erie canal. As I stated, the erie canal was built because NYC was the most important city in the US. The erie canal didn't cause NYC to become the most important city in the US.
Yes, the hudson river with one of the world's major projects ( the erie canal ) eventually granted access to the hinterlands. But before the erie canal was built, it did not. Yet, NYC existed before the erie canal. Meaning without "access to the hinterlands via the artificially created erie canal", NYC would still exist because it did exist without the erie canal.
Using your logic, NYC shouldn't have even existed before the erie canal because it didn't have access to the "huge hinterlands". But we know NYC existed prior to the erie canal and access to the "huge hinterlands".
New York City exists at its location because nature made it the greatest port facility in the western hemisphere. Great cities emerge where there are transportation breaks: Seaports, rivers, lakeside sites (Chicago), the edge of mountain ranges (Denver). Any place goods need to be loaded and unloaded from long-range vehicles and onto other ones. The Erie Canal gave NYC access to America's hinterland, which floored the accelerator on the city's growth.
But don't take my word for it; here's a foreword written by perhaps the most respected authority on the history of the city of New York:
The way I understand "hinterland" is "the geographical area where goods from the harbour can easily be transported to". This can be over water (river or canals), but also by train or truck.
> [...] welcome to Shanghai 2019. It’s not totally dead though but it has been sanitized.
> Shanghai in the last 4 years has really made a push to be the city where you "come for business, stay at a nice hotel, eat at a few nice restaurants, then go back to wherever [...] you came from".
> Welcome to Shanghai! It’s like the Dallas of China. Honestly, I think that to a westerner, Shanghai is one of the most disappointing cities a person can visit.
I live in Shanghai for 4+ years now, and I agree with the Reddit sub. It's not the "capital of the future" by any standard besides the length of the subway.
When I was in Shanghai some years ago it felt as if it was being given to cars versus public transport which was a huge missed opportunity. I don’t claim however to have seen the whole city only being there for 4 or 5 days as a tourist (and as a native NYC resident I know how misleading this can be). Was this impression correct?
From what I've seen, so many people really wanted a car and many who got one over the last 15 years never looked back at public transit. The economics are sort of balancing out though with tiered license plates. It's over USD $10,000 for a plate that lets you enter the city center, versus virtually free for a suburban plate.
Did you even try the subway network? That's how most people get around in Shanghai and it's top notch and definitely not a missed opportunity. Every large city will need a road network as well as a public transit, the difference is the percentage of people taking each.
Its super hilarious to me that nowhere could they find a picture where the background isn't completely grey from smog & pollution.
If you know how cities feel that look like that, you'll know that you don't want to live there for a second!
All this daily propaganda about city X,Y or Z in China being the next NYC or Paris, and yet, almost nobody who is not Chinese seriously wants to move there. Not for pollution, and not for the dictatorship/fascism of the PRC. At the same time, Chinese with enough money are basically full-on fleeing the country, to the tune of buying passports, capital and housing everywhere that isn't China like we have never seen before.
The sentiment is more of, “this is how modern cities should be planned and built”. I visited Singapore last year and Tokyo last month. Then came back to San Francisco.
It is clear that US cities are way past their prime and I don’t think it can even catch up to those modern places. San Francisco feels like such a crappy place and roads in Bay Area are full of pot holes. Drive on 101 between Mountain View and Sunnyvale and even the lane markings are painted down crooked and no one has bothered to fix it for 6 months now.
I'm from Germany, live in the US and have lived in Shanghai for several months in 2015 and have returned every year since. Definitely had some blue skies.
I would consider living / working in Shanghai. Ever since I spent my 3 months there I have called it New York 2.0.
The Shanghai Tower has one of the tallest observatories, but since there's too much smog, you can take a picture on a green screen so they can put nice backgrounds instead. On the other side, the city is surprisingly clean and well maintained, and the infrastructure is amazing. We can criticize their authoritarian government all we want, but microeconomically it has brought results at a rhythm we occidentals can only dream of.
This also happened to London during industrialization (London Smog), and they were able to clean it up afterwards. The hope is that China can do the same—there's been significant progress in recent years.
I have a lot to say about that, but first is that this follows an almost cliche popular misconception.
People in the West saying that "Chinese model is the future" irk me. What I say to them is that Chinese model is "their future."
It is the West that was much apart from "average world countries" for the most 20th century than any other country being something special.
If Western countries will ever see a "system change" in near future, it is more likely them becoming much more like the rest of the world, not specifically China.
The West spent much of the 19-20th century coasting in the vacuum created by the military takedown of the 2 greatest economic powers in human history, China & India.
Stories about this region of Asia producing "future cities" will increase in frequency as we move through this century and they recover from past invasions.
Counterpoint: technology advances are devaluing co-location. The need for dense metropolises may decline noticeably in the next century. There's a lot of 21st century promises around this that have failed to deliver as quickly as expected, but the long-term trajectory is probably still there.
Imagine this article being written in the 1930s and you know exactly the city they'd be writing about. You should be equally disgusted by the assertion that this totalitarian regime's city is the "city of the future".
I think that's the point. All the things that made early 20th-century New York great are happening in Shanghai now and at a much larger scale. That it's happening in a country under a totalitarian regime is not in line with Western sensibilities, but the assertion itself is reasonable and pretty objective if you've visited Shanghai recently.
It's an amazing city that (in startup terms) still has a growth mindset. New York, London, San Francisco and other Western cities behave like they've grown about as much as they want to.
I hadn’t considered that. It certainly changes my perspective on the comment, but I think my response is still germane; we used to have the political will to build cities (even in liberal democracies) but now we are pretty much in maintenance mode, at least as far as great cities are concerned.
I don't know why you're being downvoted. Once China switched to a market economy they became communist in name only. A totalitarian regime that asserts its dominance over private, market based industry is the textbook definition of fascism.
Re: There has never been urbanization of this scale in the history of the world. All of the world’s great cities are struggling to cope with growth...
Do we really want to stuff most of the population into tiny geographic specks? Work on remote-work infrastructure instead: cheaper high-speed internet and better collaboration tools. Wiki's and discussion groups can be better than meetings if participants follow certain conventions. It's greener too than physically moving people for commutes.
It's also better security. If most commerce is concentrated, then enemies and nut-cases can shut it down easily.
Is there a name for this type of pseudo-sponsored overly-positive “journalism”? Monocle Magazine seemed to pioneer it about a decade ago and sadly it seems to be one solution to the failing journalism business model.
I have been to Shanghai and it’s seriously good, clean and pleasant city. I had say more cleaner than NYC and almost similarly impressive skyline. They had pictures of city taken every 5 year or so somewhere and the speed that this city has evolved is awe-inspiring.
I can add my own anecdote here. I've also been to Shanghai (my company has a major office here). The pollution was absolutely terrible, being outside for longer than 30 minutes gave me a slight cough and made my heart noticeably beat faster. We never saw a clear sky the whole time (two weeks) we were there. When you meet long term residents you note that they all have bad skin and are much shorter than average heights in Western Countries (I'm guessing due to pollution and diet). Local Chinese residents also seem to be constantly spitting or smoking (!!!) as they walk around the streets.
I stayed in a 5* hotel (Westin Bund) and some of my Chinese co-workers warned me to not drink any water from the top in my hotel! (Because they couldn't be sure of its cleanliness!). I was also warned to not shower for too long because I mind end up getting a rash!
Getting around the city involves using the terrible cab system. None of the cabs had AC and just opened their windows, letting in huge amounts of polluted and exhaust-fume filled air, along with the cab driver usually smoking! Also (and this is somewhat expected) the cab drivers never could speak English and so we just had to show them a map/address to get where we wanted.
Central Shanghai is massively congested and overpopulated and I would never in a million years consider having a family there. In fact, our office there has lost numerous people over the years due to health fears for their children. They have ended up moving to perceived cleaner cities like Singapore and Taipei.
So for sure, Shanghai IS big and has stuff to do, but so do plenty of cities. Shanghai has major, major negatives in terms of quality of life and especially if you don't speak Chinese (because almost no one there speaks English). To even consider living there I'd have to be paid 10X and even then I'd probably only stay a year or too. I found being there oppressive and depressing.
>and are much shorter than average heights in Western Countries
Not to dismiss the other stuff you said, but this probably isn't relevant to the pollution. Up until recently, China was pretty poor and even now a large number of people moving to cities come from impoverished rural regions. A lot of it probably comes down to insufficient childhood nutrition. Look at the height difference between 20-something Koreans and the 40+ crowd. There's a huge disparity in height.
Also, Asians in general tend to be a bit shorter than Europeans.
>Shanghai has major, major negatives in terms of quality of life and especially if you don't speak Chinese (because almost no one there speaks English).
And this is always a weird thing to me. It's like saying living in Germany sucks because almost nobody speaks Chinese. It's true, yeah, but that burden is on you, not them. :)
> And this is always a weird thing to me. It's like saying living in Germany sucks because almost nobody speaks Chinese. It's true, yeah, but that burden is on you, not them.
It is not about complaining that people in X don't speak Y, but rather English which, for better or worse has become a de-facto universal second language for people to communicate with. In Germany maybe a bit less but the only people not speaking English in Scandinavia are younger kids. For many Scandinavians it is easier to communicate across borders in English than in their respective languages (which are pretty similar already).
For comparison in Asia, in Taipei it is possible to communicate somewhat passably with many people in English.
You can't really compare Scandinavian countries with less than 10 Millions people with one with 1.4 Billions.
Most people there have no real reason to learn English: their customers are mostly all Chinese, their business partners are mostly all Chinese, they don't travel outside of China, every possible type of content you could want exists in local language...
Even in Western countries like France, Spain or Italy, English is not so widely spoken, even if there is a much larger influx of people from other countries.
China is a massive country. The vast majority of people have no need or desire to leave, so they have no reason to bother learning the language spoken primarily on other continents who they’ll never really interact with.
America neighbors Mexico and has loads of immigrants, but most Americans have made zero effort to learn Spanish despite there being clear and immediate uses everyday. And honestly, if they don’t want to, that shouldn’t be a problem.
> Shanghai has major, major negatives in terms of quality of life and especially if you don't speak Chinese (because almost no one their speaks English).
FYI, Shanghai is the most anglophonic and westernised city in China, other Chines megacities are much worse in that regard.
In fact, the biggest appeal to those moving to the city for its classiness is it giving you that "Western living" life style.
I went to Beijing last year and had the same experience. What really surprised me was going from Beijing to Tokyo, Tokyo was absolutely filthy in comparison to Beijing.
Air quality is still absolutely horrible in China, but the streets are clean, the trains are spotless and incredibly convenient, and even walking around dark alleys after midnight felt safe. My biggest problem is that scammers targeting foreigners are common, but I suppose it beats the more in-your-face or straight up pickpocketing/mugging you'll find in non-East Asian major cities.
The progress of China in terms of infrastructure and economic development really something incredible. I know people who worked there under a decade ago and said it was an absolute wasteland and still have that idea today, but everyone I know who goes there now (myself included) feels like they're getting a glimpse of the future of the rest of the world, for better and worse.
If it weren't for the restrictions on personal liberties, I'd gladly pack my bags and move there longterm.
Woah, what Beijing did you go to? Did you walk in the backstreets at all? A block outside of the forbidden palace and it the streets are filled with trash and unpainted cinder block one story buildings. Even around Wangfujing I'd consider it dirty and the further outside the center you go the worse it gets.
I may a Tokyo apologist but it is by far a cleaner city than Beijing, it's just busier.
I was all around the city and a little out into the countryside for about 5 days. That time did overlap with the major mid-spring holiday in China, so maybe they went all-out with cleaning it up before tourists from other cities poured in.
I did see shoddily constructed and shabby little shacks that line some streets, yeah, but in terms of litter, I saw nothing. Although I did see one guy throw a bottle on the ground and immediately have two police grab him.
Coming home to my city in Japan and I was made incredibly aware of cigarette butts, empty coffee cans, full bottles of piss, and discarded conbini food packaging everywhere. It's definitely not California levels of wasteland here, but it's also not as clean as my time in China.
I find it ironic that out of all cities to give sentiment in China, they took the "sick man of coastal China."
When I lived in Shanghai, the thing I heard the most were locals complaining of city's dysfunction.
Line 2 is a deathtrap in rush hour. There are people who get broken ribs there every month or so.
Historic lilongs are in more disrepair one can imagine. Sevage is a huuuge problem, with some lilongs very close to city centre still dumping it to ditches.
Century old city's servers can't keep up with population density. It's not uncommon to see them overflowing in much of older districts.
Social services are quite poor, even for registered residents.
Shanghai's household registration is harder to get than to immigrate to a more well of country on a professional visa...
I can continue this list for a few a4 pages.
Even with all those troubles, people keep coming to Shanghai for god knows what reason.
A lot of social status connotation is attached to person's place of residence in China, and I think this is the only reason why people keep moving in there.
Reuters has been running a series of articles about China's military this week (top story). I wonder if China is launching a huge PR campaign right now?
I remember they used to (and probably still do) have 'China Daily' - it was available for free on DC Metro.
In fairness, "Opinion", is always "sponsored shilling of [[some] product]". Whether the product be some political idea, some "latest, greatest" consumer doo-hickey, some backup QB after an agonizing loss, or indeed, some city or geographic region.
There really is no "Opinion" piece that is not shilling something.
Photos of Shanghai that show up in western media never seem to show much traffic. Are they staged, or is there really very little traffic there? If so, how does a city of 25 million not have traffic?
My Chinese coworker has told me that this usually only occurs during the massive traffic jams around the spring festival. He said that many Chinese people who live in cities own cars but almost never drive them -- they wanted the car more for status than anything. So when spring festival comes around and the whole country is traveling, many families see it as their chance to finally actually use the car. Additionally, apparently the major highways -- their version of interstates -- are toll roads, but are made free during that week.
So both of these factors, combined simply with the massive volume, is what leads to these apocalyptic traffic jams we've all seen pictures of.
"The China National Highway 110 traffic jam was a recurring massive traffic jam that began to form on August 13, 2010, mostly on China National Highway 110 (G110) and Beijing–Tibet expressway (G6), in Hebei and Inner Mongolia. The traffic jam slowed down thousands of vehicles for more than 100 kilometres (60 mi) and lasted for two weeks. Many drivers were able to move their vehicles only 1 km (0.6 mi) per day, and some drivers reported being stuck in the traffic jam for five days. It is considered to be one of the longest traffic jams by some media." [0]
Nobody seems to be taking into consideration rising sea levels etc. It can't be the capital of the future if it's submerged, can it? Same for London and New York.
From the article: In the centre, at Lujiazui, the city has given up on the street level entirely and created a huge, circular, above-grade walkway accessible by escalator and connecting to all surrounding buildings.
But that's probably not what you meant by "solved".
As a side note, people like to talk about how capitalism has slashed inequality and lifted people out of poverty. However this is misleading. China alone lifted 700 millions people out of poverty.
Between 1960 and 2010, global Gini coefficient for the world goes down if you remove China from the numbers (i.e. everything the IMF and World Bank did only made things worse across the "developing countries").
>As a side note, people like to talk about how capitalism has slashed inequality and lifted people out of poverty. However this is misleading. China alone lifted 700 millions people out of poverty.
Those aren't really contradictory statements though. China lifted 700 million people out of poverty after the government opened up its centrally planned economy in 1978 and started trading with the free market. China calls themselves communist, but they act like a capitalist country in a lot of ways
Yeah, I think the topic is very interesting, and I'm generally in favour of celebrating successful urban planning, but this slathered on the positive adjectives so thick that I'm surprised Xi Jinping isn't on the byline.
Which is a shame, because I do want to know more about this, but it's hard to trust the article.
So for a shiny future, we are supposed to trade away all our rights ? Forget about injustices as long as trains are clean ? We are just all supposed to be productive organic machines working for the glory of our leaders.
