Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

lifeisstillgood

>>> Since ... 2016, the population of Shenzhen has grown by over 2 million people, the metro system has added over one hundred kilometers of track, and dozens of new stations have been opened. The city’s taxi and bus fleets were converted from gas to electric. The entirety of Huaqiangbei Road - the center of the electronic market district - has been torn up and replaced with a pedestrian boulevard.

Holy crap. As a Brit we have recently spent 100 billion and twice that time to fail to build a railway between two cities, London still runs almost all petrol bus and taxis and ...

As we have (hopefully) an election coming soon and might see some change I would be interested in why the UK - who about 150 years ago woukd have growth stats very similar to that - has got well, meh.

The usual suspects for such terrible performance are

- much lower starting point. It's easier to setup mobile phone masts than replace the POTS.

- too much regulation (from safety to public consultations that allow NIMBYism to slow things down)

- we are not growing - if the number of people buying mobile phones in year X is twice the number of people who already have a phone, then you can see a different market than if everyone keeps their phone for one extra year. Does something else play out for cities, streets and factories?

- just money coming in. The UK is having serious lack of growth and presumably shenzen is not.

Or is it, that "ooomph" ? a level of belief that tomorrow will be better?

There are a lot of contributing factors:

1. Shenzhen is sort of a tech center of Southern China so it requires good and new infras

2. Local governments are economically and politically encouraged to build infra (Google 土地经济) in general

3. Infra is built faster and cheaper in China so Shenzhen is not an outlier. Usually it starts with some planning to build a line in a remote area (to save buyout costs) -> line gets built -> other infrastructures including super markets, post offices, whatever get built -> apartment buildings get built -> government gets paid back by taxes collected from real estate companies, super markets and other expanded economy entities

4. Some cities actually lost the bets on building new infras and this created a whole range of issues (Google 地方债 and 地方融资平台公司债)

A well-know thing is, rebuilding things was a fairly common (and for some, important) method for the local gov to raise funds.

One instance in our city almost 10 years back, they built a perfectly acceptable 4-lane city road, and then completely rebuilt it again just few years later.

Of course that method is no longer be used as wild as it did under chairman Xi and his uh... successful economic policy which greatly reduced the need of roads. But things are bit different back in 2016.

London's black cabs are now 50% electric and rising https://electrek.co/2023/12/07/half-of-londons-iconic-black-...

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/levc-geely-london-electric-b...

For a while Shenzen had both - but charged a 2 kuai tax if you got in a petrol cab (the electric ones were blue) - now they're all electric

This animation gives you a great idea of how fast it has grown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shenzhen_Metro_evolution....

It's a modern subway (puts NY to shame) - I've been going since ~ 2010, almost every year a new line or two has opened up.

From the beginning you get on the subway in Hong Kong, take a train to the end of the line, exit the subway, go thru customs, walk over a bridge, thru CN customs, and down into the green line subway station in Shenzhen. Now days there's also a high speed train from Hong Kong/Kowloon

Do they still have the arcades (markets) right at the train stop selling all kinds of fake goods? I used to go there and buy all kinds of knock-offs but they were not the best quality.

Also, all my friends in HK said don't stray to far from that mall as it gets dangerous at night (This was around 2002) and I know "dangerous" is relative.

That market is still there, there's a floor of fabric, and floors of tailors, you can get anything made.

I didn't start going until after 2010ish I think it's very safe at night, I've wandered all over, certainly safer that some US cities, there are a lot of cops around

SF spent $1.6 billion and 10 years to make 2.7k line that no one rides

https://sfist.com/2023/03/16/central-subway-ridership-alread...

I love public transportation when it's good (Tokyo, Singapore, HK, Seoul, Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, ...) but I have zero expectations for public transportation to get to "good" levels in any city in the USA except the 3 where it's already just so-so (NYC, Chicago, DC)

As long as it's seen as "the thing poor people who can't afford a car use" it will always be funded and run as such. ... and feel like it. I never feel safe on SF nor NYCs public transit.

As a Sydneysider, I feel offended that you left us out ;-). Or included in the “…”

Ny, chicago are not doing a good job of improving. I look less known cities to leapfrog them in 20 years.

As always, engineers on hacker news have like 2-3 year delay of news out of China. The rest of the world has already moved onto other countries.

1.) "just money coming in"

Outflows of foreign direct investment in China have exceeded inflows for the first time as tensions with the U.S. over semiconductor technology and concerns about increased anti-spying activity heighten risks. FDI came to minus $11.8 billion

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Foreign-investment-in-China-...

Moody’s Cuts China Credit Outlook to Negative on Growing Debt Risks

https://www.wsj.com/finance/moodys-cuts-chinas-credit-outloo...

2.) "the metro system has added over one hundred kilometers of track"

China’s Cities Are Buried in Debt, but They Keep Shoveling It On

China has long pursued growth by public spending, even after the payoff has faded. Cities stuck with the bill are still spending — and cutting essential services.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/business/china-local-fina...

China orders local governments to cut exposure to public-private projects as debt risks rise

https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/china-orders-local-gove...

3.) "we are not growing"

Shenzhen reports decrease in population

The southern boomtown of Shenzhen reported a slight population decrease for 2022 — a first since the city's founding in 1979.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202305/10/WS645b514ba310b605...

> China’s Cities Are Buried in Debt, but They Keep Shoveling It On

Finance is fictional, trains are real. In the anglospheric West, when a spreadsheet and real world disagrees, Beancounters will believe their spreadsheet.

The West has safety regulations that are followed.

If a building collapses or a train crashes in China, they just brick over it and build a new one.

Move fast and break things.

Yes. Also, rules and regulations on expropriation of land, relocation of people etc, with plenty of long appeal processes.

China? "Go away or else".

I don't know where you live, but in France and surrounding countries expropriations are certainly "go away or else". It's very common for the cops to evict people for industrial projects that have been found illegal by tribunals, and it's not unheard of that the mafia itself beats up small owners until they "give up" their land. It's also common for people to get maimed protesting industrial projects (lose an eye, hand, foot due to military grenades), and not unheard of for them to die killed by the State (Vital Michalon, Rémi Fraisse, etc).

In France, most appeals processes you can have when your eviction has been decided can in fact not delay the eviction. You can be evicted before having your appeals hearing. The Grand Paris has already expropriated so many small owners (from popular districts) for the olympic games madness, and it's so common for farmers to be expropriated away from their lands to build crazy useless projects, such as the NDDL airport where residents had to defend themselves with molotov cocktails against more than 500 riot cops trying to destroy their homes back in 2012.

So, maybe it's better where you live but please don't pretend the West is a marvelous land of human rights. I'm of course not saying China is a dream-like State of human bliss and safety ; they're a tyrannical regime crushing their population. I'm just saying if you scratch the surface, it's not wildly different here (although comparatively better in some regards).

That is not at all how the system in China works..

While mainland China's land ownership is more like a series of 99-year leases, those leases are notoriously difficult to break. There are loads of examples of buildings in China being built around a few land holdouts. In fact, it's so common that real estate developers in China call them "nail houses[0]".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holdout_(real_estate)#Nail_hou...

As a westerner myself, i think you have a misguided view of the West that's biased by a higher socio-economic status.

Safety regulations are often not followed in the West. See for example "Greenfell tower", "rue d'Aubagne Marseille" or "East palestine train derailment".

That's so biased, it reads like xenophobia. Have you seen the state of trains, railways, bridges, etc. in the US? China is a much safer place to travel on bridges, rail, etc.

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