I think it's useful to hear multiple sides to an argument, and to dismiss one side of an argument with ad hominem attacks, like you just did, only demonstrates how vital it is to hear various sides of a situation.
I don't disagree with this, but it's annoying how much casual western internet users will rely on glorified travel youtubers when there are many veteran China watchers with much more substantial things to say. I.e., Bill Bishop Sinocism (cost $$$) newsletter is widely regarded as one of the best English newsletter on Chinese developments. One would be hard pressed to find a weekly brief this extensive and well thought out for most countries, yet it's available for anyone curious about China. There are also tons of podcasts and articles by established western think tanks and subject matter experts (of various agendas) out there since China has become increasingly topical.
Without commenting on quality of these experts which vary greatly, because China is a big place and confusing, even to it's own technocrats, I find it a little unsettling how much these Youtubers inform discussions on Chinese culture to lay audiences. I know it's unreasonable to expect people to become experts, but these "sources" needs to be contextualized and called out for what they are: slice-of-life clickbait expat travel vlogs.
In the old world a person's word was their bond, not their status in society. As much as you may not like what some people say about China, it doesn't mean it's not true.
I have met many people from many other countries, I've travelled, I have relatives in multiple countries right now, and it's all too easy to see something in the news, or think one person is "respectable" because some random person on the internet says so.
I will take facts over opinions any day of the week.
Then why place so much faith on 2 YouTubers instead of a seasoned China hand who has been around longer, whose work has been recognized by other China hands, who aggregates information from both western and Chinese sources to provide a relatively impartial view of the situation?
My contention isn't an appeal to authority and call to defer to experts, but to point out that there are many experts out there trying to understand and elucidate various parts of China. But lay audiences have consistently decided to fallback on a couple Youtube content creators and appeal to their authority instead. I'd like to see someone nominate 2 non-American youtubers who lived in NYC and Toledo and goes on the occasional road trips as the basis for forming general consensus on US culture and politics. But that's an asinine exercise, yet it's pretty much how a shocking amount of Chinese understanding is derived.
Can a foreigner get a bank account and buy land in China? How hard is it to get a job as an white westerner in China? What kind of jobs are prevalent for foreigners in China?
Look at the videos of people getting hit by cars there and no helps. Why? Because their legal system can end up putting more burden on those that help than those that just leave people to die. Feel free to point me to a video that says this not true, and I can show you a bunch that says it is.
China's policies on the Muslim population being put into re-education centers (remind you of a European country's actions in the early 20th century?) there are videos of these places online of it happening right now, not from clickbait vloggers.
China destroys churches, persecutes it's own people based on many types of religions. It has a social score system that blocks people from travelling.
This doesn't even cover government supported fraud, IP theft, espionage, currency manipulation, etc... The garbage China pulls on the rest of the world is overwhelming.
And you think that a couple vloggers are the cause of this bad press???
No, but they did proceed the recent normal in poor Chinese reporting. I think their first viral video was on Chinese ghost cities 4 years ago? And people have been linking their hot takes ever since. You often see this in conjunction with "lol my Chinese wife / girlfriend / fried / coworker who grew up in China is really nice and smart but when it comes to issues of China they're so brainwashed". But two white expats who lived in China briefly, in situations that are fairly atypical even by expat standards, of course _their_ assessments are accurate reflections of reality.
I don't even know where to start breaking down all your questions. The answer to almost all of them is, it's complicated. There has been an increase in garbage reporting by western MSM since the tradewar. Geopolitical conditions are different now and biased Sinophobic agenda driven pieces are everywhere to the point where a Chinese person familiar with living under censorship is surprised that manufactured consent by a free 5th estate + low information readers is almost indistinguishable from state propaganda. It doesn't help that foreign reporting in Asian bureaus are full of folks with limited regional language and cultural proficiency and sexpats.
>The garbage China pulls on the rest of the world is overwhelming.
This doesn't strike me as the opinion of someone who lauds hearing "multiple sides to an argument".
There are ghost cities in the US, to say there are none in China is ridiculous. You can do quick search and turn up many respected news sources reporting this.
One side of the argument has been heard for decades, we thought China was quaint and had an old quiet society that respected traditions.
The other side we are just now starting to hear (from respected news sources, other governments and yes vloggers), is that China has been hiding it's true nature. And that is the garbage.
Just go look up what is going on in Hong Kong right now. Or go look up how the current leader of China declared himself ruler for life. That is what despot does.
Not so much as dodge facts as, I assume your questions are rhetorical, and it's not worth the effort to elaborate on each.
Re: Ghost Cities
I didn't claim there are none? Though if we are on the topic they are loaded propaganda characterization like "debt trap" to paint a certain image of Chinese (mis)allocations of resources which was used to support unending China inflate GDP, China collapse theories that have failed to manifest. The alternate narrative is that these are under-utilized cities that will slowly become populated as Chinese urbanization continues. Chinese urbanization targets is 50% to 80% in the next 30 years, or 400 million people and 100 million more new residential units. Building new cities ahead of time and populating them on a 15 year phase is literally part of the development strategy [1]. That's not to dismiss the wild speculation that surrounds these development, and that some will take longer than others, but many previously touted ghost cities are reaching targeted capacity. Often after transit infrastructure is finalized.
This kind of alarmist news has happened for decades. I don't know how you're drawing conclusions that reporting on China has focused on quaint Chinese interest stories, or that China somehow managed to conceal it's nature all this time. When the dominant coverage is has been over the scale of Chinese modernization and the sustainability of Chinese development model including ghost cities, previously they might have been filed under human interest. Now they're given more significance post Olympics -> global financial crisis which China percieved as failure of western systems -> China decided to be more assertive -> China 2025 / SSC makes Obama pivot to Asia -> present day trade war / great power competition with US. Non of this is new. It's just being activated opportunistically now.
As for despot / emperor / dictator Xi, this again is a profound naive social media tier hottake. Xi has to play domestic politics and is beholden to the CPC politburo standing committee. Repealing term limits required the consent of standing committee, same with his recent elevation to people's leader at BeiDaiHe this year after failing a year before. His power is not absolute. There's various analysis of his ascent and relative power in the Chinese system, but the one I subscribe to is that Xi was elected internally to shepherd China through a difficult transition (middle income trap / demographic bomb etc / reunification). The CPC is flexible enough to nominate a despot when the situation calls for.
[1] https://pic1.zhimg.com/80/5a158c5bda6b768cdebc6571663c4e84_h...
All tyrants have the same excuse.