Welcome to Shanghai, the capital of the future
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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.
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
The Chinese government doesn’t believe in rule of law or checks and balances, leaving lots of room for unchecked abuses.
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.
What in your opinion is a neutral venue? I like the technical expertise here but opinions are definitely not neutral.
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 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.'
How corrupt was dick cheney?
... 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}."
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'm assuming you haven't been to China otherwise you wouldn't be saying these things.
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:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-win...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/07/720608802/reporters-notebook-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...
Also, we are not supposed to engage in political debates on HN so I am going to stop here.
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.
Individuals within the FBI that were revealed to have intent to plot against/subvert the President were criticized in tweets.
The FBI is not under attack.
CPI index (corruption perception index) places USA on 22nd place while China is way down on the 89th place.
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.
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.
[0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/211052/stock-ownership-down-amo...
[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.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-peop...
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
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.
The claim is that they are owned by people, and therefore represent their speech, not the employees'.
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.
"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."
where do corporations fit into that ?
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.
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.)
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.
One cannot have both high paying manufacturing jobs and $500, 70" 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.
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.
Isn't this the policy that mainly resulted in increasing the instance of dual car ownership?
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.
This remains a problem.
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.
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.
Have fun with the popular vote.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
[0] https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/10711-C...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/Vintage-EPA-photos-reveal-wh...
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.
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.
"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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
Sure, they'll not make that mistake again - but they'll make others just as egregious. It's what authoritarians do best.
That's ironic given China's vaunted ability to think very long-term (100-year strategy).
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.
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.....”
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.
Time will tell.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That is the issue I have with China, not some east vs west superiority complex.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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).
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18527344
> 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.
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17337985
> 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.
I think this is the key point. We're coming up on the thirtieth anniversary of the crack down:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests
The protests starting 1989-04-15; martial law was declared May 20; tanks rolled in June 4.
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.
Meanwhile, New York is letting their metro system crumble to the ground.
Faith in capitalism.
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.
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.
Although not as at risk as Miami, Shanghai is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/03/miami-shangha...
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2017/nov/0...
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.
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.
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.
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.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/nyregion/history-of-the-e...
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 is your claim that:
> the hudson doesn't lead to a "huge hinterland"
I think it's objectively clear that for any reasonable definitions of "lead" and "huge hinterland", it does.
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:
https://books.google.com/books?id=lVWSpqwqX8AC&lpg=PR15&ots=...
Though fluvial/maritime transport plays a part, it is not the whole story (also see Paris)
> [...] 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.
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.
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 would consider living / working in Shanghai. Ever since I spent my 3 months there I have called it New York 2.0.
I would definitely consider working there again if the opportunity came up. The density is crazy but the subway is great and it's a fantastic city.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They really need to proof read their articles.
Lots of great facts in the article, whether or not you agree with the tone.
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.
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
However, I still really enjoy spending time in China. Local young people there are very nice.
My experience in Shanghai is that the only place you can reliably find people that will talk English to foreigners is Pudong airport.
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.
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.
I may a Tokyo apologist but it is by far a cleaner city than Beijing, it's just busier.
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.
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.
I remember they used to (and probably still do) have 'China Daily' - it was available for free on DC Metro.
There really is no "Opinion" piece that is not shilling something.
Subway usage is very high, the volume going through their Subway is nuts - trains are basically tailing each other every 2-3 minutes at peak.
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]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Highway_110_tra...
Or has that been solved?
But that's probably not what you meant by "solved".
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").
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
Which is a shame, because I do want to know more about this, but it's hard to trust the article.
Fuck this future.
I've lived in Shanghai for 5 years, a few years ago. Had a great time and learned a lot. I wouldn't necessarily describe the place as 'clean' though.
What about good old Europe? Less injustices than in America, and cleaner trains, too.