Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. If we had efficient large-scale construction solved, we could really put a dent in the cost of living crisis, and reverse the overcrowding of the existing urban centers.
When there is a need, Europe does pretty well. At least relative to the U.S.
For example, Europe built the completely novel floodgates for Venice. It’s been very successful as far as I’m aware when it was heavily doubted before and throughout its development.
On the other hand, the U.S. won’t even contemplate building something similar to protect NYC, despite the fact that Europe has already done it and proven the concept, and that the region this would protect is orders of magnitude more economically valuable than Venice.
Similarly consider high speed rail. Italy completely revolutionized domestic travel by setting up excellent high speed rail over a few years. They did it not by government fiat but intelligent regulations paired with privatization and market rules.
While it’s not China scale, it’s more than sufficient for Italy’s scale.
At the same time the U.S. is completely incapable of creating high speed rail and to the extent it has its done so by redefining it down.
Thailand, the UK, and Tanzania have similar populations, that does not mean they are useful comparisons. What about Sri Lanka and Australia, or Syria and Taiwan?
Chicago to NYC is about the same distance as Beijing to Shanghai (1200 km), and that only takes 4.5 hours in China.
The fact that HSR doesn't make sense between LA and NYC is no excuse for not building it in the large parts of the country where it makes sense.
Actually, I take the intercity bus.
Maybe in parallel you could also: improve the trackways between San Francisco and San Jose, maybe build Sacramento to San Francisco, Sacramento to Stockton (and maybe extend that to San Jose and Fresno, with a San Jose to Santa Cruz stretch goal). Other stretch goals: Sacramento to Redding, Fresno to Bakersfield.
Instead we’re building the Central Valley segment first, in part due to the insistence of the Obama administration when Los Angeles to San Diego would have made way more sense and been up and running and in revenue service sooner.
They did, sort of, but not to HSR, just by electrification.
https://www.caltrain.com/testing
https://www.caltrain.com/?active_tab=route_map_tab¢er=-1...
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/caltrains-switch-to-elec...
https://airqualitynews.com/cars-freight-transport/electrific...
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c01096
https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/04/07/caltrain-ridership-in...
DC - Philly- NYC - Boston
SF - LA - SD
Chicago - Detroit - Toronto
Miami - Orlando - Jacksonville
That's wild! How do you convince people in Latvia or Norway that they should help pay for infrastructure like that in Italy?
If Manhattan wants flood gates, NY will have to build them. At some point, they will probably have to because the cost of insurance will exceed the cost of the bonds needed to build.
In any case, this project seems to me to be no more extraordinary than the redistributive effects of e.g. Medicaid or Pentagon spending, or the construction of Interstates. The Interstates, in the present US political environment, might indeed seem extraordinary; but the question is then not how one convinces people from state A to spend on state B, but how to convince people to make large long-term investments in the first place.
1: https://web.archive.org/web/20130111042126/http://archiviost...
And then at the top level, China views it as a "make work" project to keep industry going.
Perhaps not as ambitious as a barrier spanning the entrance to NY Harbor (comparable to Venice's system), NYC did build extensive storm surge barriers along the East River:
https://www.nyc.gov/site/escr/about/resiliency-and-flood-pro...
https://www.nyc.gov/site/ddc/about/press-releases/2021/pr-10...
There's a reason why Obamacare was so fraught and ultimately led to a political downfall of the democrats: it spit in the face of private and state interests (from their perspective) to undercut what they'd grown to do in the previous 40 years. This good, but ultimately half-hearted measure, is only a fraction of the kind of political willpower needed to transform the federal state into something that can build infrastructure again.
How do you know that?
A lot of new-builds literally rusting, falling apart, collapsing, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu-dreg_project
Of course, many builds are fine too.
Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed.
You are just describing every western European country.
I live in Toronto where we have our share of homelessness and those 3 cities put Toronto to shame with the amount of poverty and homelessness we saw.
Europe is beautiful and does many things better than North America and Asia but hunger and poverty are area's where its just as bad if not worse.
People like ignoring this aspect and even deny it has any effect.
I could go on, but there are plenty of flaws in western Europe
China’s development is impressive because it prioritizes coordination and scale, whereas Europe struggles more with political and organizational fragmentation and lack of initiative.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing > The municipality covers a large geographical area roughly the size of Austria,[14] which includes several disjunct urban areas in addition to Chongqing proper.
I think you’re still speaking about Chongqing. China builds these and closes the wage gap.
Lower socio economic Chinese definitely still fear the rich and worry about being homeless and not getting medical treatment.
The GINI coefficient is higher in the USA than it is in China.
China in recent years has reduced inequality while the US has done absolutely nothing to curb discontent, the same discontent that has led to the election of a fascist leader.
Don’t believe me, look up the data.
After many years of increasing inequality
> the US has done absolutely nothing to curb discontent, the same discontent that has led to the election of a fascist leader.
I cannot imagine possible definition of "fascist" that would include the US and exclude China. China has far more fascist features than any other major country - personality cult, courts compliant with the government, erasure of minority cultures - and actual genocide.
These are unsubstantiated allegations that come directly from the governments you are loyally defending.
They are definitely substantiated when it comes to USA: Trump has a legendary personality cult and recently released trading cards for it. Trump's FBI just arrested a judge for noncompliance. Trump is hosting genocidal mass-murderer Ben-Gvir in the country right now. This is all just this week! Spare us the vague "look over there, China bad" hand-waving.
...the problem is that some people are concerned only with how things are done, this is feudal government, this is pre-industrial economic growth, who does things, how they do it, make sure nothing new is every tried because that is dangerous and might lead to the elite losing control. China (and much of East Asia) succeeded because they are concerned only with outcomes, and this is all that people care about anyway. Unfortunately, the West is now controlled by people who see change as dangerous, and nothing is more dangerous than a country leapfrogging them in development because it proves that their leadership is bankrupt and incompetent.
But us in 3rd world countries have the ability to see both Western and Eastern societies' development and compare it ij a more unbiased way.
Frankly the China bet looks more successful.
In fact, we should be worried about what the success of such a large non-democratic institution means to developing nations seeking their own model. Or what it means to those in power back at home. Your manner of argument doesn't successfully address the incredible success China has achieved, and if anything, it risks calling the basis of your argument -- the importance of democratic institutions -- into question.
The things the West can do to compete are to work harder on education, become an attractive destination for immigration, foster productive innovation, and focus on key industries and supply chains. Right now the US in particular is doing the opposite, and it's damaging America's standing and ability to compete with China. It comes at a time where it's critical to perform.
By all means, China should be the north star incentive to work harder. During the Cold War we used the threat of the Soviets being better than us to do some of the best engineering and science we've ever done. If our response to China is to call them names and hope that their growth stalls, then I think I can predict a very different and very mediocre outcome for the West in the coming century.
This is our opportunity to rise to the occasion again and be better than we were. Let's not be arrogant and dismissive. Let's not fumble.
China has been able to (for a time) sustain this kind of rapid industrialization because of globalization, a model of hyper-inflation and by taking advantage of wage inequality (i.e. paying their workers less) in order to dump goods into other countries’ markets. Take away globalization and China starves in the dark, because the part of their population that is largest, most productive and knows how to even feed itself (China is a heavy net importer of food, especially pork) is also very old. And when those people are too old to work, China is going to rely on the rest of the world to sustain its (rapidly declining) population.
There are a lot of other Asian countries in a similar situation, but China is unique in how bleak the future could be for hundreds of millions of people.
A year ago I would have said “who knows when the scale will tip?” With what’s going on lately it seems that it may have already happened. Whether you agree with the economic policy of this administration or not, the ramifications are astounding. The US is positioned to come out of this the best, at the expense of the rest of the world. This is why China is all of a sudden calling the US bullies. They would never admit weakness, but they are suddenly feeling the heat. If the US took it a step further and decided to stop securing the seas in that part of the world, all hell would break loose.
For instance, do you think Japan and China would just “play nice” with no incentive to? I’m not so sure, and China has no access to the ocean without going through Japan.
China still has an enormous population, and if they convert their society from production to domestic consumption and ride the value-add wave, they'll follow the American growth equation. And with more people to bolster that economy, to boot. You can already see this in their dominance of electronics, drones, EVs, and green tech. They're doing advanced, bleeding edge work in all of the industries that matter.
BYD, DJI, Eufy/Anker (vs iRobot), Lenovo, Alibaba, ... China is a formidable powerhouse in advanced products and value-add. These companies absolutely rival the best of what America and the West have to offer. And if your argument is one of demographics, these companies are staffed with young educated workers from a huge and healthy pipeline of STEM grads.
I think of all the predictions about the future of China - from the incredibly bearish ones like Zeihan's "death of China", to the bullish ones that declare this the "Chinese century" - I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
I don't see how China doesn't become a larger version of Japan or Germany or the US. Despite some demographic and economic headwinds, they've got an incredible head start.
If America aims to compete and remain in the top, it needs to stop doing things that look like Brexit that lead to degrowth and isolation. China isn't magically going to get weaker and provide free opportunity to the United States. On the contrary, it's fantastic peer-level competition that the US should use as motivation to work harder.
China is an incredible growth and innovation story, and a bar that all countries should hold themselves to. It's no time to slouch. Competition fosters the best innovation anyway.
China moved away from the export-led model of growth about ten years ago (the largest exporter of deflation today is Germany and has been for a number of years).
China does have too many people...there is nothing they can do about that and that will limit their living standards for a long time.
China's future is only bleak if you are unaware of their history. They were poorer than every country in Africa bar one a few decades ago, what they have done is still regarded as impossible even after they did it. It is like winning the lottery and then grousing because there is someone else richer than you (which, btw, most people probably would do).
China does not trade with the US intensively anymore. The US doesn't really make anything that anyone needs, and is a big export market but not at the margin anymore...total exports to the US are 3% of GDP. Their economy has been rebalancing for decades (again, proof that their leaders are just smarter...Trump is flailing around in the darkness with tariffs rather than actually being able to design good policy, China started this ten years ago and almost done already, it would make more sense to target the EU).
China has a long coastline, their primary products mainly come through the Malacca strait...again, it is hard to take someone seriously who starts talking about their expertise in geopolitics but doesn't know which trade routes China actually uses.
In fact it’s the rich Chinese who continue to move to Vancouver and London and Irvine to escape China and have a better future.
There's the fact that Chinese companies are basically hoovering up all the talent. In Latin America, Huawei alone eats up entire graduating classes of engineers. Pretty much every 'industry' event in any sector is nearly 100% Chinese. University staff are increasingly forming themselves via Chinese companies, and are thus transmitting that to their students. Chinese scholarships are popping up like mushrooms. Again, Huawei alone has provided more of them in the past year than the US Embassy has done in the past three decades.
People still dream about going to the US, sure. But MAGA is doing their damned best to whittle that lead away.
China is a success for whom? Exploited factory workers, Tibetans and Uyghurs?
China produced one of the greatest economic miracles ever seen in an age when every economic authority said that miracles were impossible. This is still the legacy today where people argue, even after China has thrown up cities housing 20m people in two decades, that isn't real...because it fundamentally overturns basic aspects of the pre-China account of economic growth (which was itself largely based on lies to create support for politicians).
Never forget that economic growth is dangerous to vested interests.
I’m not sure if it’s what you are thinking of, but I don’t think the massive expansion of cities in the Industrial Revolution was caused by incredible inequality (unless you count inequality between urban and rural areas?).
I guess you could be thinking of ‘monuments’ built by the rich and saying they are due to inequality but I would think the analogue to Chongqing would be the constructing of the ‘megacities’ of the past, which is mostly about building lots of residential, industrial, and office space rather than palaces.
it's funny how nobody noticed in time that the side effects of these many experiments destroyed more beauty & opportunities, especially in urban convolution and social convection than they have revealed in data about human nature and civilized networks ... "we happened to become a community and build around the growing desires of our children and our own" is something you only hear on garden plots, even though on the country side everywhere, people are now third and fourth generation heirs.
Meanwhile, in the US, small towns across the country are greying and dying out as wealth and opportunity are increasingly concentrated in urban areas.
the failure of the US project is that it is segregating poor people. vienna doesn't do that. subsidized housing is mixed in. every building has some subsidized apartments among freely financed ones, and also, while you need to qualify by income to get a subsidized apartment, you are allowed to stay even if your income rises.
Well connected, long time residents who have access to flats in the inner city always feel superior to the people who move to the city after them, and have to live on the outskirts, that doesn't say much.
2. only every second U2 goes there
3. disregarding the doubled U2 wait times, it takes 40 minutes to get to Karlsplatz, 46 to Stephansplatz, 47 to the main train station, 53 to Westbahnhof, 54 to Landstrasse -those times get much worse if you don‘t live centrally in Seestadt. And those times are AWFUL for Vienna, anything over 30 minutes is awful.
4. The „See“ is actually a joke
5. if you live there, people won‘t want to visit you as it would take them over an hour to get home (unless you take a taxi or have a car)
6. is generally awful without a car -unless you live and work there, this is a big deal as you don‘t usually need a car in Vienna
as for the concrete desert, what are you asking for? isn't the inner city all asphalt and bricks too? there are parks. but seestadt has green spaces as well. according to the map it has even more than the inner city. but it's all new and it will take some time to feel comfortable and lived in. you have to start somewhere. i mean i get you, nobody wants a concrete desert, nor a concrete dessert for that matter. though the latter might make a good projectile to show your appreciation to the cook.
also how is the "see" a joke? it's water. sure it's not the "alte donau" but from the photos it looks no worse than the donauinsel.
my cousin waited for years to get an apartment in vienna, and they finally got one in the south. from the looks of where they ended up i think seestadt would have been a nicer option.
north east of the danube is the only space where vienna can expand. there is some space to the south of vienna too, but not as much. and probably living in the south would not feel any better.
Because China has their singular government system (one party dictatorship, whatever you want to call it) they can make really quick decisions. In democratic countries there is a lot of hemming and hawing cause you need everyone or a majority to agree with you, in China or North Korea they just snap their fingers and the project has to start within a few weeks or months.
You don't need everyone to agree on things in a democracy. The issue is lack of leadership and unclear power hierarchy (who matters- house, senate, president, state, or courts).
Democracies with clarity function well. Switzerland leans into state rights, and each canton operates with little federal overhead. The Indian president and senate are weak. The power of civil litigation is limited. So, if you win the states and the house, then you can get a lot done. The Indian house has a full majority and is in the middle of a building boom. Hell, the US built the entire interstate system in a democracy.
IMO, the US's problem is disproportional optics. On paper, the House> president > Senate> courts. But media attention is towards courts > president > senate > house. Roe v Wade was the biggest story of last year, but on paper, the House could've made a bipartisan decision that completely overrode the courts. People are most interested in Presidential elections, but the president has little power. So you end up in a lame-duck Obamacare-style compromise or a Trump-style tariff tantrum. People democratically voted for the president. But turns out, that's not the person who holds power. The house is supposed to be all powerful, but can't pass a single bill. That's how you get wonky policies smuggled through the only unlock unblockable bill. (Budget)
Democracies like any system can fail. At least with democracies, the bad outcome is that nothing gets done. In authoritarian, you get famine, genocide, or coups.
Hot take, but the US should get rid of the senate and limit the power of civic litigation. House introduces the bill, President signs it. Courts step in if the bill is illegal. No filibuster, promote simple majorities.
And (almost) everyone has a house.
Except we don't build flats and suburban one-house-fits-all massive construction projects. We mostly do smallscale development times a 1000, in stead of one big one.
We think it results in better cities.
Though, it is true we should build even more.
Your cities are great though, I love the Netherlands.
The Netherlands is 100% rent-controlled.
The 5% increase is because it's tied to inflation, which makes the last few years an anomaly for rent increases.
But yes we do need to build a lot more. I was just pointing out that saying "the West doesn't build anymore" isn't true, we just can't keep up with massive increases in population due to migration.
How come the Netherlands has the most pronounced housing shortage for university students compared to other countries ? Is it because everyone is AirBnb'ing their first and second homes out to tourists?
It's so bad that international students are forced to decline university and graduate school offers. I know because I am in that boat.
https://nltimes.nl/2025/04/22/housing-shortage-netherlands-r...
https://www.goinconnect.com/success-stories/the-student-hous...
Out of a total of ~8 million homes:
- 4.6 million are owned by the people who live in them.
- 2.3 million are owned by social housing corporations. You have to join a waitlist for these, you can't outbid someone.
And then lastly:
- 1 million houses are "free rentals". But this means they are open to anyone, they are still rent-controlled.
You, together with all other international people, as well as many Dutch people who can't buy and also aren't eligible for social housing are playing musical chairs with only ~13% of the total housing in our country.
The Netherlands went from 16.9 to 18.1 today, a 1.2m difference or 7.1% growth. Good by nobody-builds-anything regulatory paralysis standards. Standstill by Chongqing standards.
It's more accurate to say PRC/CCP understood it's _impossible_ to build enough housing in Tier1 cities where everyone wants to be, the supply/demand curve will never make sense outside of micro/small countries where everyone can fit in a handful of cities. Can't fit 1 billion people in Beijing/Shanghai/Guahzhou/Shenzhen etc, need 30/40/50 cities that are almost as enticing.
What PRC is constructing "fast enough" pace are entirely new cities / developing shitholes into T2/T3 alternatives to shift demand away from T1/T2s. IMO that's the real lesson west needs to learn but can't due to lack of hukou / internal migration controls - spreading out desirable urban areas because talent / productive centres tends to agglomerate ala zipf's law, which Chinese development patterns does not follow. IIRC 10-15 years ago, there were ongoing academic debate about PRC's urban density (or lack of due due to sunlight planning laws), and how PRC could be more competitive if it doubled density in T1 cities, but central gov said no, better build more desirable, low CoL cities (especially inland / poorer regions) where _most_ of population can distribute vs hammer T1 further into unsustainability.
Chinese citizens do not see stocks as a stable investment, so housing becomes the main type of investment. Housing domicile rules (Hukou system) give special rights to homeowners which incentivizes housing purchase instead of renting.
As a result, housing prices are proportionally higher in China than in the US. There is a gold-like intangibility to it.
If China also had NIMBYs alongside this system, their houses would've easily risen to the most expensive in the world.
Just from top of my head as I left Shanghai 10 years ago, a typical condo in Shanghai could cost over 5 million yuan (urban but definitely not core city), while a salary of 300k pre-tax is considered as a good salary.
On the other side, housing is affordable for locals -- locals usually got very generous compensation from the demolition of their original home.
This would exclude ex-pats.
I doubt this is something that can or will be reversed gradually. The consolidation of oligarchic power has been building up over many decades and only shows signs of acceleration.
In order for the power structures responsible for this to be overturned something pretty cataclysmic will need to happen - losing a large scale war, economic collapse, etc. (e.g. like in post WW2 Japan where America dismantled and disenfranchised the Japanese oligarchy).
Granted, we were fine with that with the first cold war, maybe we'll find the appetite again.
But granted maybe most of them have less than half of a brain once they need to sacrifice the pies.
It does not look very comfortable to me. Lots of huge residential tower blocks, one that has a metro line running THROUGH it, a bookshop with shelves that are not reachable.
All those in a curated set of pictures!
Home prices are completely out of reach for most people in UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia (coming soon to a country near you!). You're overpaying to live like a 1920's postman: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tGPHcteG9dY
Create artificial scarcity (by zoning, monopolies, regulatory capture), buy assets (never have to improve any assets because there is no competition, no functional market of competitors producing better housing), extract wealth forever by maximizing rents and asset prices.
It's more complex than that. We need to build more housing, and there are various reasons why that isn't happening. Many of them are well-intentioned and even good (high safety standards dramatically increase the cost of new buildings).
Many environment protections are farcical. (SJ earthworm fiasco). Many building regulations are intentionally difficult with little added safety (2 fire exits). Avenues for litigation and local activism increase delays and costs. Widespread demarcation of cities as historic (despite being run of the mill post war builds) makes redevelopment impossible.
I don't particularly care about intentions. I'm sure Mao thought he was doing the right thing by shooting down sparrows.
The outcomes matter, and the outcomes mean supply crunch, cost inflation and massive weather transfer to home owners (old and rich) from home buyers (middle class and young).
On the 'high' standards: It is all wooden sticks and drywall, completed by 2 minimum wage unskilled labor with a nailgun. None of the homes in US withstand anything, insurance keeps going up. If standards are high, why is insurance going up significantly?
The (always-credulous) Guardian seems to go based on photogenic shopping centers/bars and raw square footage:
“A flat in Chongqing costs a seventh of what it would cost in Beijing or Shanghai and is twice as big.”
Presumably your criteria might be more subtle?
And don’t forget the bigger picture. Businesses are jobs. When a country makes it so hostile for business that most can’t even operate there, that’s wages and tax revenue lost.
The above is how Poland ends up with average apartments 8x the average wage.
I don’t even want to get into the issues with prioritizing cars above people. That’s a whole other topic outside of this.
The air pollution was absolutely horrific, for whole I was there I wasn't able to see the sun at all due to air or lack of it.
"Green" trees were just... grey, covered with all the dust.
And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair :)
The food was great, though.
Please explain
In the US, especially with renewed appetite for "America First" and bringing back good paying jobs for American laborers, there should be a lot more building of infrastructure and housing units around our country... Why can China do this and we can't even when the government has won a mandate from people to empower domestic labor (for everyone who says China can only do this because of wealth inequality)?
Pet peeve but this article is confusing Chongqing's entire land area with the city of Chongqing and associated urban areas (only 6% of Chongqing's total land area).
The issue is 直辖市 is translated as "direct-administered city" but should be treated as a "Direct-administered municipality" or "Direct-administered state".
Much of Chongqing (the 直辖市 not the city) was formed due to a reorganization of Sichuan in 1997.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CityPorn/comments/8kqwnf/chongqing_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities#List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity#List_of_megacities
which disagree with this (and each other) on which city is largest.
As far as I can tell, Tokyo is at the top of the list because because they seem to be using the estimates for the entire region. Other estimates for Tokyo's population - even on Wikipedia - are less than half the number listed there.
My personal favorite was Beijing. Honestly, it felt like stepping into another world, with a vibe unlike anywhere else I have been, even compared to Shanghai or other East Asian cities like Tokyo. The people were incredibly warm and friendly, the street food was outstanding, the environment felt almost otherworldly, and the historical sites were phenomenal. Getting lost in the hutongs felt like its own adventure, the punk culture was alive and thriving, and the art district was the best I have experienced (even coming from New York City). If you skate, it's a paradise with spots everywhere you turn. Public transportation and taxis were also super affordable, clean, and efficient.
Shanghai was cool too, but it felt much more familiar. At its core, it reminded me of Manhattan, just more intense. The people there also gave off a similar vibe to New Yorkers. If you are into electronics, it's a great place to explore, although I hear Shenzhen is really the true hub for that.
Baotou felt a lot more desolate but also very peaceful. I spent most of my time there on a farm and hiking around the Gobi Desert though.
One thing to be aware of is the air quality in Beijing and Shanghai. On bad days, you would come back with black snot. I was a smoker at the time, which did not help, but even non-smokers experienced it. There always seemed to be random particles or even feathers floating in the air lol.
As someone who skates, I found the police and security surprisingly relaxed. They would usually let you skate for a while before politely asking you to move along. The only unsettling thing I witnessed was a group of officers with SMGs escorting someone out of Tsinghua University.
The saddest thing I saw was the desperate poverty on the outskirts of Beijing. There were large piles of trash, open sewage, and pollution. At one point, a concerned local pulled over and told us to turn around because of violent protests between farmers and the government up ahead. The outskirts of Shanghai showed similar poverty, though without the protests.
That said, aside from the outskirts and days of bad air quality, all three cities were incredibly clean, especially compared to New York.
This was all about 15 years ago, so I imagine a lot has changed since then.
Still, I would absolutely recommend going. If you can, spend time in places that feel unfamiliar, especially Beijing. It's an experience you will never forget.
Here's a link to the original: https://www.zdf.de/video/dokus/megacitys-wenn-es-nacht-wird-...
And it’s also crazy the spice levels they’re used to. It’s the only place in China I’ve seen 微微辣 (“very very little spicy”). And it was still incredibly spicy!
It's an incredible city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangdong%E2%80%93Hong_Kong%E2...
For candid Chinese dissidence there are a couple of tolerated zones on wechat, like an American Embassy’s wechat page. Its not protected, people just use it that way sometimes. And you just have to learn some of the slang.
There are in person clashes sometimes. The municipal level isn’t as quick to seem every little action as an affront to the territorial unity of China, which is against the Chinese constitution.
The social safety nets are very expansive and work decent for the population. Housing, healthcare, busy work for income.
then the farmers pool their money and build multistory apartment buildings not far from the area where their village was so they are not being chased away and left helpless.
Not paradise then.
I was actually surprised by how clear the skies are now. Good to see they're working hard to stop air pollution.
The sheer spice level of the food is a challenge though, even other Chinese think that Chongqing level spiciness is nuts.
Absolutely hellish.
You are sometimes not even tolerated.
And because of that your time in that country will be always limited. If China was to become like BKK or other SEA countries ....
That's another story.
I am totally interested in the USA mainly due to them being so very welcoming to foreigners and migrants
The common thread throughout these videos is how much safer it feels to be black in China vs. America, and more generally how welcoming and friendly China is to foreigners (in stark contrast to the expectations that were set for them by non-Chinese people repeating comments like the parent comment here)
That's not to say that they are completely wrong or lying. China is safer than the US in almost every way, for everyone. But racism manifests differently there. I was in the country through the entire Covid pandemic. Ask the African community in Guangzhou how they were treated.
This is the case in most western countries now, especially if you post anything related to Palestine. Besides the US, the situation in France, Germany and the UK is quite concerning these days.
As an immigrant to the US I now have to fear being abducted on the street by ICE "officers" who present no identification and conceal their identities, being arbitrarily detailed and tortured at airports[1], being held incommunicado without due process, and being shipped off to CECOT for the rest of my life.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/germany-inve...
Just in case we meet again in another comment thread, I wasn't suggesting this; I was hoping that quoting a specific part of your comment would communicate that I was replying directly to that part without questioning the veracity of the rest of your comment
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/27/key-findi...