Hacker News Reader

Comment by thrownaway2424 | Hacker News Reader

If a "leading city" is one with no schools, no parks, no services, and no culture, where you wait in line for an hour for the bus, I'll go ahead and choose a trailing city, thanks.

NJ-NY commutes are naturally self-limiting. They reach some kind of equilibrium of pain and then people start moving away. The Chinese government moves people around by fiat, so they don't necessarily benefit from the same forces.

View on HN

> The Chinese government moves people around by fiat

If you'd read the article, you'd know that rather than "moving people around", the CPC has in fact been trying to keep people out via a residency permit system. They've failed, as the lure of jobs and lifestyle draws people to the large cities. This article is actually about them reacting to the very real market forces and embracing the influx of people, rather than trying to stop it.

I swear, many commenters on HN haven't updated their knowledge about china for 30 years. "Moves people around by fiat" indeed.

China relocated 1.24 million people for the Three Gorges Dam. [1]

Farmers are still routinely moved off their land to make way for urban construction and nearly always miss out on the profits from the rise in value of said land.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam#Relocation_of...

I have no idea what the next commenters point is, people are often moved around for big projects. Or do you imagine that they just let people drown when building the hoover damn, or London subway?

Large numbers of people were not relocated to build the Hoover Damn. Maybe you're not familiar with that region, it was not a population center of any consequence.

The US has vastly different laws and practices than China when it comes to forcing people to move. Relocating a million people in this day and age, would simply never happen. Even the correctly maligned practice of using eminent domain for corporate benefit is exceedingly rare (even though it gets a lot of press). In fact, the US has the exact opposite problem - the inability to expand cities like San Francisco because the people won't allow it.

Beijing is any thing but a city with "no schools, no parks, no services, and no culture"...

It's a city with thousands years of history, capital of 5+ ancient Chinese dynasties, top 2 leading China universities, Hollywood of China, ...

How ignorant could a person be to make a comment like above?

That's only true for a part of Beijing and an even far smaller part of Jing-Jin-Ji. Both of these things can be true.

> capital of 5+ ancient Chinese dynasties

I know ther's Qing, Ming, and Yuan (Dadu). Not sure about any others.

I haven't been to Beijing but I'm guessing they do have these things. If they have a subway bigger than NYC, with 9 million daily riders, then not everyone is waiting for a bus. The NYT finds the worst then writes a story about it.

No, they are waiting in security lines to get into the station. My wife goes through it every day, I just won't even bother.

Sean, when I visited in 2012 I don't remember any security lines, is this new?

I found the Beijing subway to be far nicer than the ones found in major American cities. No surprise since it's much newer.

Security checks (x ray machines for all but the smallest bags) were already in operation in 2012. I don't knew if anyone looks at the images. I have never seen anyone be challenged due to the content of their bag.

They don't really check, they just make you line up. Mind you, this is the busier stations that have huge backups, and some of that is related to capacity issues. But these days security is becoming the bottleneck because they never designed the stations for it.

Is there some actual security threat they're designing against, or is it imitating the west, or a way for a contractor to make money (an even more accurate imitation of the west).

I know there were some issues with Muslim separatists, but they didn't seem to even rise to the level of US terrorism threat. We do airport theater but not bus/subway theater, even in NYC.

They are paranoid about Uighers, ya. Also, it just feels like something china would do even if there was really no good reason for it.

For a domestic flight in China they made me discard a small bottle of children's moltrin. Seems pretty US-imitative to me.

The Chinese TSA is the best one in the world for finding...lighters. Really, second to none. Of course everyone else just allows them.

No, cops setting up shop just inside the subway station and doing spot checks of passengers' bags is not uncommon.

The security lines are not a big bottleneck at most stations in Beijing. There are rush hour peaks at some stations (e.g. wudaokou).

My wife often has a 30-40 minute wait at liangmaoqiao during peak travel time. This is just to get in the station.

God forbid if you ever have to transfer at xizhimen; I never thought it was possible to wait in line so long to take a subway.

Yup. And the bus described was an inter-city bus, not a bus within Beijing. Buses in Beijing are often full, but it's rare for a bus to be so full that some passengers must wait for the next one.

Not rare at all, especially on chang'an jie. Still, not as bad as coming from miyun, I've toured up there a few times and getting the bus back to Beijing always requires at least an hour wait in line...on the weekend (many people probably have the same idea to go out, it is nice up there).

Agreed. Modern big cities are just worker hives. Better to choose a place for quality of life and whatever makes you smile.

> The Chinese government moves people around by fiat

Man, that seems inefficient, fiats can hold like 3 people tops

(bad pun, sorry)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com