alt Hacker NewsI was glued to the window while flying over southern China recently. There is so much infrastructure you can see from the air, even in fairly rural provinces. So many bridges. So many wind turbines. It is visibly a country on the move, a country that believes in itself and its ability to do things. The Chinese Century is increasingly palpable, for better or worse.
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I have two chinese-born coworkers (who spent 20-30 years here in the us) in the same room. When we talk about china's expansion, I am always jealous of the public projects, infrastructure, housing, etc. They always point out the huge unemployment of young people, declining birth rate, and other social ills.
They say they're worried when the building stops. Even more people will be out of jobs. And when the nation ages all they built will be used and maintained by fewer people
I've never been to china so it's interesting perspective from people with family there and go back 2-3 times a year
I traveled to Wuhan twice a year for business for much of the last decade (until the pandemic).
China was a growing country that clearly knew how to build infrastructure. In Wuhan, they built an entire development intended to employ 100,000 engineers (Huawei + our US company's 50). They built a subway system in a decade that's bigger than New York City's. I took the high-speed rail to Beijing and it was superb. They replaced an old, shabby international airport terminal with a new one with the widest concourse I've ever seen. They subsidized regular flights between Wuhan and San Francisco on China Southern airlines. The Hyatt Regency there was one of my favorite hotels I've ever stayed in (cheap and high quality). In a big commerical district, they had the largest screen I've ever seen that had a Blue Screen of Death :-)
Dazzling yet I'm not bullish on China due to its demographics, among many other reasons.
On the move to where? Massive unemployment amongst youth and population collapse is on its way.
You are projecting a fantasy.
A Chinese person who was here in the US as a foreign student once commented to me that he was so surprised that the United States was like the country side. He didn’t realize how rural the country was.
This was at UCLA which is in LA which is the second biggest city in the US.
I'd say it's a country that builds a ton of infrastructure, at the expense of living standards of common people. The money from infra has to come from anywhere, and an all-powerful central government can just redirect the stream from consumer spending into building out infrastructure. Whether Chinese are happy about it, you'd have to ask them.
Whenever the topic of Chinese infrastructure comes up I am reminded of a 2016 Wired documentary about Shenzhen. It was positive portrayal of hacker culture in Shenzhen. But one thing really stood out to me. They had demarcation line separating the city and “urban village”. It looked like lots of poor people lived in the urban village. The guide mentioned that the urban village will be torn down completely in 3 months to expand the city and people had to move. It sounded like gentrification. The host was impressed by the efficiency.
But it made me question how many countries can actually be that “efficiency” because matters of uprooting large swath of population will take years not months and run into significant legal challenges as well.
To be clear use of eminent domain and gentrification happens even in US but I doubt it can be as “efficient” as a technocratic government. It’s not a knock on Chinese government, just something I always wonder.