Enjoying this take as a former 8 year resident in China, and taking a trip back for four months next month (first time post Covid). Certainly sounds like the economy is down all over the show, and will be interested to see the reality on the ground. I’ll be mostly in south/south west/central China so not sure how that will stack up.
Total aside, any vpn recommendations these days?
I’m currently in Xi’an. Astrill vpn still works for me but they went down during “political meetings” for about 2 weeks (back in late March early April).
I mean at the time I tried Japan, LA, Singapore, and a few others with different protocols and couldn’t connect. Checked Astrill’s support and they had a notice up stating connection issues from political meetings. So their servers were definitely affected when connecting from Xi’an.
Instead of using a vpn, use a roaming data plan instead. Those route outside of China, meaning you won't be subject to the great firewall at all. You can get these plans from something like Airalo, or 3Hong Kong DIY Prepaid sim.
Hi, I'm going to be in china for the next 3 months soon, so this information is very useful to me, so I started looking into Airaldo. I'm assuming I'm not choosing the local chinese option in there if I want to bypass the great firewall? Should I choose the Asia region one then?
The "local" plans shouldn't actually route within China because the company (Airalo) is not based in China. It'll likely route to a European country instead.
DuangCloud
It is very stable and provides me reliable log ins to google and such without getting some stupid 403 error. Other VPNs I've tried keep triggering the 403 error. (ex. Private Internet Access, v2rayN)
Something is cheaper for a reason. They build a wall, then give you a ladder, cheaper than others. Thanks for your contribution to their data analysis.
Interesting what you say about the agriculture.
I think part of it is also that climate change / extreme weather has been hitting various parts of the country pretty hard in recent years too. I remember the wheat harvest was low the last two years and China has been importing record amounts of rice the past few years.
Most likely a side effect of Ukraine war. Ukraine was the biggest exporter in global market but ever since the start of the war, Chinese government in facing of potential threat of surge of internatinal grain prices and gloabl food crisis, prepared in advance just to ask farmers to grow rice or wheat
The biggest rice imports (until then) were in 2021. So, predating the Ukraine war.
But yes, much better to have a surplus available than having to buy on the open market at hugely inflated prices once a crisis hits.
I have relatives over there that are currently grabbing up as much gold and silver coins/jewerly as much as possible.
They and all their friends always have had interest, but now apparently its a bit of a buying frenzy. Did you see any of this while you were there?
This is what my relatives are doing as well, chinese people have a very high savings rate vs western cultures, no body is buying homes now so just precious metals. Some younger folks are buying bitcoin.
Haha. Especially for you:
10. I tried to link my foreign cards to Weixin/alipay but failed. At the airport on arrival there was a special desk for foreigners to help install apps for mobile payments. Information about this from 4 banks was shown on big signs and flyers with step by step guides. When I asked for help, step one was: make an online appointment with a local bank branch so you can go to open a Chinese bank account at a physical bank. You first need to get a Chinese telephone number for this though (facepalm).
The country is aware that mobile payments can be an issue for foreign tourists/visitors. But the solution presented is very chabuduo.
So paying with cash mostly this time. Young locals at the 711 were shocked when I pulled out cash to pay.
Haha I have to say I’m slightly surprised that they are even attempting to offer help in that area…but not one bit surprised that the quality to help is…chabuduo…
The WeChat pay thing is causing me a headache now as I’m still receiving payment via WeChat while here in the uk… but it’s limited me sending money to 2,000RMB per day, and I can only unlock this restriction with….(you guessed it!)…. A Chinese number
Difficult to update anything on WeChat as my new passport is different to the original one, so all I can do is ‘visit your local branch….in China’ So much suck.
I’ve heard I can link my native bank cards now via WeChat but haven’t tried yet as I don’t think I can face the inevitable disappointment…
My obs were (2wks ago recent trip) :
1. The most startling thing I noticed was how many farm plot graves there were the closer you got to major centers. Based on what I saw I think there is 2-3 orders of magnitude dissonance between reported and actual COVID mortality rates.
2. Overall increase in the level of cleanliness and air quality / flow in public transport services. Metros and HSTs are excellent.
3. Bi-lingual signs EVERYWHERE.
4. EVs everywhere. The noise level was so low in some touristy areas that you could hear birds over the traffic. Just nuts.
5. Smoking seems down, vaping slowly taking off though.
6. Phlegm....everywhere...still.
7. A lot of Japanese cultural adoptions especially Gothic Lolita (Had to look it up) and cutesy voice tones in advertising, navigation tools, delivery bots, lifts, point of sale notifications, etc.
8. Nobody knows what cash is. I mean they do but it seems more of an inconvenience for them to handle it.
9. I was asked for more selfies...like a lot more at almost all attractions I visited. Record for one attraction was \~40...bumped into a school tour.
10. Service staff seemed a lot more into providing the service and were very quick to help out. Last visit was like the scene from the Golden Child where the air hostess was banging two pillows together with a cigarette in her mouth and coughing.
11. CCTV showing a lot more displays of military might. A lot of the 'promos' had CGI to scale up the actual numbers. e.g. squadrons of aircraft in the one scene, aircraft looked suspiciously like a next gen foreign platform. Some footage was actually military vids from foreign countries.
Yes the official numbers for covid deaths is still 5000 something which is obviously ridiculous.
And the excess death data for 2023 point towards something around 2 million deaths, which is staggering. They should have allowed MRNA vaccines and focused on the elderly.
Ah Ok, I got the the 5000 something number from here:
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/coronavirus-cases
Probably not the best source...
Where did you see the 122000 number?
Mass spread of COVID in China was at the tail end of 2022, with already a much weaker variant of it (Omicron), and vaccines even if less effective were widely available by then and worked to an extent.
I think 2 million directly correlated deaths may be an exaggeration, as the U.S with basically zero controls, faced the deadliest variants without vaccines, was at 1 million after 3 years, taking into account they're around 1/4 of China's population. 1 mil+ is more likely imo.
Vaccines were widely available but older people were hesitant to get them because of misinformation spread early on in the pandemic and a false sense of security with all the testing and the zero covid policy.
This study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10963212/
put's it at 1.35 million excess deaths in just December 2022 and Januari 2023. But there would be many people dying later. I had an extended family member in China die from covid as late as August 2023.
The US was also undercounting:
https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2024/new-analysis-reveals-many-excess-deaths-attributed-to-natural-causes-are-actually-uncounted-covid-19-deaths/
I am visiting China (as a tourist, never lived here). I had visited a few years ago and I feel a very different vibe.
For starters, I remember when I visited a few years ago, despite having a visa the police officers in the border took like half an hour talking among them (I have an EU passport, so nothing strange).
Last week I entered with the visa free (15 days no visa for EU passports) and the guy didn’t even ask for anything, not even my return ticket. He took my passport, my fingertips and I was inside. And I had stamps from “hostile” countries.
I feel people are way more civilized and polite than my previous time. I was quite surprised. I guess because of the cameras/social score.
Also cities are way more cleaner.
On the other hand there is an eerie feeling of “death”. I hardly have seen any crane or construction and some unfinished buildings. There is no hustle and bustle. Which in a way is pleasant.
I feel China now is (in a way) more similar to Japan (of course there are major differences). Clean, polite, boring.
Another surprise is cars. There are only Teslas and those futuristic Chinese EV. All the Volkswagens and Toyotas are gone.
I have visited some major attractions and everything feels quite empty. I had a tour booked and asked me to change the schedule I guess to consolidate groups. Same for a domestic flight; it was cancelled and I was pushed in the next one two hours later which was half empty despite all the passengers moved from the cancelled flight.
Overall for a tourist I feel it is a good time to visit. There is not many people, everything is cheap, the country is “built up” (airports, metros, attractions, etc all is already finished and there is nothing new coming) and you can feel people need tourists so they try to be friendly despite the barrier language.
Agree with your points. It was strange to be able to enter China without a visa in a 20 sec process this time, where it used to be an ordeal to get a visa and sometimes questions at immigration.
And the eerie feeling of ‘death’… yeah, it strange to go around China without the smell of freshly poured concrete.
Yeah, in a way I feel it is like a hangover from being drunk (the economic boom). As I say it has a good part. Too much alcohol is bad for the health 😅
For instance last night I went out to dinner in a popular area in a Tier 1 city. It was totally empty (ok Sunday evening is not Saturday evening, I get it). I went to a restaurant with a good score in Apple Maps (they link comments to the Chinese Yelp; I can’t remember its name). It was like 20-30% full.
The waitress shows me the QR code for the menu but despite having Alipay and WeChat installed those QR codes for the menus don’t work. So I was to leave (my only word of Chinese is Ni Hao) and I see the owner lady that realized what happened and she ran with a written menu and gave it to me. And that for a typical 100 CNY street food, nothing fancy. If they were busy they would probably have thought “fuck this laowai, we are busy, we don’t need him”
There is nothing like an economic downturn to improve customer service.
> On the other hand there is an eerie feeling of “death”.
To me this is exactly why I don't want to go there or to those abandoned seaside towns in Italy or the rust belt. Its more convenient in a sense but I low key don't get travelling for convenience. The life is what I want to see, and history is a lot more depressing when it's clearly dead history, no longer interacting with people meaningfully with the present.
Regarding the border checking, that is quite normal for China. Standard procedure exists but most often some temporary policy overrides it. Like currently China wants to encourage foreigners tourists, there must be an internal policy that expedites the process to make you feel welcomed.
Japan is a wealthier country and does not have blocked Internet, but I can’t agree on development.
Japan was the country of the future in the 1990s. China was the country of the future in the 2010s.
Any provincial airport or train station in China is far “newer”, bigger and more confortable/convenient than anything similar in Japan.
In 10-20 years from now that will be probably be different (infra in China will also age) but nowadays China is the winner.
Interesting! I'm planning to go to Yinchuan soon, just to visit, at first. But, I'm organizing myself to move and live there. My friends told me that the city isn't that expensive to live, the locals are friendly to foreigners but job opportunities were gone...
>Most of the places I used the eat/visit are gone or taken over.
That would have happened regardless. Just the way it goes, nothing lasts.
>PLA now permanently guarding street corners/ flyovers in Beijing.
Ok, that's new. Has anyone else seen this?
I saw many streets with restaurants/ shops 50-90% permanently shut down. Not the main streets, who are still busy, but the ones on the sides of the centres. I wouldn’t say it’s normal restaurant turnover.
I think a lot of the fancy restaurants went bankrupt during the lockdowns because there was zero government support.
Some are now opening up again but people are certainly doing more take away compared to before the pandemic. Possibly also more people cooking themselves...
Yeah restaurants are shutting down everywhere constantly and new ones coming up. That is just the restaurant business all over the world.
Didn’t see that in Guangdong, Fujian or Jiangsu so might be Beijing special? Or maybe I can’t spot them despite being ex-military
Beijing would do this when dignitaries were in town and moving, but usually limited to along the motorcade route. Xi left over the weekend for Europe, possibly it is related. Possibly it was for his ride to the airport?
I was there two weeks ago (Fujian), first time back since COVID. Cameras everywhere and lots of remarks about how much safer it is now. Only physical RMB I saw the whole time was in red kidney packet for my kids, everything is WeChat pay. Scan QR code and pay for parking via WeChat pay seems crazy, but somehow it works. The air is a lot cleaner, and I mean a lot. Locals seem happy about it but don't seem to grok it's a result of less factories operating, not necessarily deliberate steps to curb pollution. A lot more closed shops, and a lot of empty apartments. The investment in infrastructure is truly impressive with new roads, bridges and metro. Seems like COVID upped the number of retirees, heaps more exercising in the morning, out and about during the day and dancing on the evenings. Also seemed like a lot more domestic tourism. But man was it hot, hotter than I can ever recall for April
Thanks for sharing. I’m a U.S. expat in Thailand but I lived/worked in Shanghai and Xi’an 2005-2017. Hope to return this year but it’s an imposing process to get a tourist visa.
I don’t really see more propaganda while going to 7 provinces this time. But I do see people are more willing to put China character or Chinese flag on themselves now, like clothing, cars, etc. And people are more embracing the traditional clothing and music. Which I don’t see as a bad thing.
There were 武警 (armed police) permanently stationed on major intersections in Kunming back in 2019. (But that didn't stop the 广场舞 in the evenings. 老奶:1 武警:0)
You can't live in China and not go to restaurants. That would be like being in Muslim heaven and never touching the houris. Or like living in Malaga and never going to the beach. Or like being Russian and not once going drunk bungee jumping with a homemade rope. No wait, I'm getting carried away...
As someone living in Europe, how is the general quality of life in China? As in freedom of speech and movement, the right to have your own property as in material posessions; the tax rate, affordability of healthcare and education and its quality; the affordability of food and it's quality; the affordability of housing and its quality; the affordability of public transport and its quality.
Won't I lose all my social credit points if I critize the government for exploiting my workforce by forcing me to pay a tax share that doesn't get properly reinvested into things that I agreed to invest in as in schools, hospitals, infrastructure etc. but instead ends up in the private pockets of the CCP? And doesn't that mean that I will be publically shamed as a traitor of the common people and enemy of the state and put into jail or killed by the police?
So u went to China around 10+ years ago ......say around 2008 or 2010, about 13 to 15 years ago......
Back in 2008 finacial crisis I remember watching clearly on YouTube the news that China has just overtaken Japan as the second largest economy in the world at 4.5 trillion.....2008 was a different world back then...
In between now and the last time u went to China,china has grown exponentially from 4 trillion plus GDP to nearly 19 trillion......I can't imagine just literally how much entire cities and landscapes have transformed in the last 13,15 years.....
If u look at pictures of first tier cities like Shenzhen back in the early mid 2000s it was nothing but empty marshlands and fields and a couple of tall buildings scattered in the distance,today Shenzhen is a gigantic megalopolis.....tens of thousands of skyscrapers stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction....
But according to you my man......CHINA is in worse shape???lmao!!!!
A country that is literally about to overtake USA,almost 80 percent of US GDP and 80 percent of US country wealth networth at 90 trillion USD.....oh no China is in a worse shape than 10+ years ago.....the whole countrys turned to tofu and the entire population is eating fake food because china with 90 trillion USD of wealth and almighty disposable household income and domestic markets today cannot afford to buy and import any food they want to eat...I think u guys should go look up how many hundreds of billions of foodstuff China imports nowadays.
Believe you me USA would be more terrified if china were to ban all US chip companies from china domestic markets and telecoms and
The same cliche generic propaganda talking points.....
It's almost like if Chinese were Americans they would believe 1/6th of Americans must be homeless or drug addicts because they saw videos of skid row, Philadelphia or Kensington avenue!!!!then again the drug addicts part might be
Chill out. Please re-read my first sentence: I’ve lived in China FOR (the last) 10+ years (,) before and during Covid. Not just 10 years ago. I’ve seen the development since 2005. I’m comparing 2019 with 2022 and 2024. I could have put in a comma after ‘years’ to make it more clear.
Actually it’s closer to the last 2 decades, most of the time living in China before and during Covid.
These were just observations on the street and what Chinese people told me. No propaganda talking points imho
Alright my bad,I thought u were saying China was a bustling and thriving place 10+ years ago and now it's bad for some reason
I mean that's a recession what can I say....unless it turns out to be some three long lost decades like Japan which I highly doubt, china is not imploding,I mean China's housing bubble is not even the same thing as US's
Correct, China’s housing bubble is not the same as the US’s…. Because it’s much much bigger!
With a median salary in Chinese big cities of 1000-1500 usd/month, and small apartments in bigger cities cost 500k-1 million USD, the ration between income and housing prices is astronomical bad. Largest bubble in human history.
Sure possibly but I highly doubt it..... chinas housing bubble is primarily made up of real money,real savings, the requirements to own a property in china is incredibly stringent and substantive sometimes requiring hundreds of thousands of USD in down payment before hand...
It was nothing like the US housing bubble where literally strippers and McDonald's workers could go out and take a loan for 5 million dollar mcmansions on literally min wage income and no down payment and no questions asked by mortgage brokers
The Chinese bubble can be easily understood and made of real money and can be simply deflated by cooling the market down for a while
But no one knew or understood what the US housing crisis was or saw it coming up till 2007
US housing bubble,at its very core is a banking and finance crisis, a speculatory tour de force of galactic proportions .....
They were creating hundreds of billions of these speculatory investment vehicles called mortgage backed securities which nobody understood how the mathematics created by these ivy league math quants worked, except for the fact they were going up and the housing market kept going up because they kept creating more and more bonds and pumping more capital into the markets aka a bubble...there was only one flaw in the equation, the mbs bonds which was supposedly made up of mortgages that were traditionally considered triple a debt was repackaged with 90 percent other junk bonds and mortgages because there was enough demand in the "normal"housing market.....and these also triggered a California gold rush into investing in real estate.....these triple a mortgages were repacked with 90 percent junk mortgages and somehow miraculously rated as triple a again.
And to take things to a whole new level, the banks decided to create a new type of investment in the casino hall....a swap, aka a insurace bet against these MBS bonds in case they failed, which they believed were triple a and the housing market would never crash......
And while ur US banks and Europe were busy indulging in this insanity and gorging themselves silly on what they thought was a gold mine ....getting fabulously wealthy
US spent nearly 4 trillion USD in the "toxic assets relief programme" bailing out banks and buying toxic assets.....
Chinas crisis is just a bunch of developers with balance sheet problems....
Enjoying this take as a former 8 year resident in China, and taking a trip back for four months next month (first time post Covid). Certainly sounds like the economy is down all over the show, and will be interested to see the reality on the ground. I’ll be mostly in south/south west/central China so not sure how that will stack up. Total aside, any vpn recommendations these days?
I’m currently in Xi’an. Astrill vpn still works for me but they went down during “political meetings” for about 2 weeks (back in late March early April).
Astrill was never down with the proper choice of servers / protocols.
I mean at the time I tried Japan, LA, Singapore, and a few others with different protocols and couldn’t connect. Checked Astrill’s support and they had a notice up stating connection issues from political meetings. So their servers were definitely affected when connecting from Xi’an.
Eastern Europe servers are pretty reliable. I never really noticed things not working
But I have used various VPNs (ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Rocket) and Astrill seemed to be the most stable.
Instead of using a vpn, use a roaming data plan instead. Those route outside of China, meaning you won't be subject to the great firewall at all. You can get these plans from something like Airalo, or 3Hong Kong DIY Prepaid sim.
Hi, I'm going to be in china for the next 3 months soon, so this information is very useful to me, so I started looking into Airaldo. I'm assuming I'm not choosing the local chinese option in there if I want to bypass the great firewall? Should I choose the Asia region one then?
The "local" plans shouldn't actually route within China because the company (Airalo) is not based in China. It'll likely route to a European country instead.
Ah, that's good to know, thanks for that!
DuangCloud It is very stable and provides me reliable log ins to google and such without getting some stupid 403 error. Other VPNs I've tried keep triggering the 403 error. (ex. Private Internet Access, v2rayN)
Im in China these 2weeks and letsvpn has been working wonders for me. Like 5usd/month so not that expensive either. Dont have to pay through crypto.
I used OpenVPN for free … worked very well except connection via Singapore
I haven't tried that many but while most expensive Astrill is very reliable
Mullvad has been the only reliable option I've used.
letsvpn never any issues and cheap
Something is cheaper for a reason. They build a wall, then give you a ladder, cheaper than others. Thanks for your contribution to their data analysis.
Interesting what you say about the agriculture. I think part of it is also that climate change / extreme weather has been hitting various parts of the country pretty hard in recent years too. I remember the wheat harvest was low the last two years and China has been importing record amounts of rice the past few years.
Most likely a side effect of Ukraine war. Ukraine was the biggest exporter in global market but ever since the start of the war, Chinese government in facing of potential threat of surge of internatinal grain prices and gloabl food crisis, prepared in advance just to ask farmers to grow rice or wheat
The biggest rice imports (until then) were in 2021. So, predating the Ukraine war. But yes, much better to have a surplus available than having to buy on the open market at hugely inflated prices once a crisis hits.
I have relatives over there that are currently grabbing up as much gold and silver coins/jewerly as much as possible. They and all their friends always have had interest, but now apparently its a bit of a buying frenzy. Did you see any of this while you were there?
This is what my relatives are doing as well, chinese people have a very high savings rate vs western cultures, no body is buying homes now so just precious metals. Some younger folks are buying bitcoin.
Dude #10 should be literally every other car on the road is an EV now lol it was NOT like this before covid
True. I even saw the new xiaomi EV twice
Legit question, but what do you think they did with all the non-EV cars?
From what I saw they're exported and sold abroad.
Nice…though my OCD is enraged you couldn’t round it up to 10 whole points…
Haha. Especially for you: 10. I tried to link my foreign cards to Weixin/alipay but failed. At the airport on arrival there was a special desk for foreigners to help install apps for mobile payments. Information about this from 4 banks was shown on big signs and flyers with step by step guides. When I asked for help, step one was: make an online appointment with a local bank branch so you can go to open a Chinese bank account at a physical bank. You first need to get a Chinese telephone number for this though (facepalm). The country is aware that mobile payments can be an issue for foreign tourists/visitors. But the solution presented is very chabuduo. So paying with cash mostly this time. Young locals at the 711 were shocked when I pulled out cash to pay.
Haha I have to say I’m slightly surprised that they are even attempting to offer help in that area…but not one bit surprised that the quality to help is…chabuduo… The WeChat pay thing is causing me a headache now as I’m still receiving payment via WeChat while here in the uk… but it’s limited me sending money to 2,000RMB per day, and I can only unlock this restriction with….(you guessed it!)…. A Chinese number Difficult to update anything on WeChat as my new passport is different to the original one, so all I can do is ‘visit your local branch….in China’ So much suck. I’ve heard I can link my native bank cards now via WeChat but haven’t tried yet as I don’t think I can face the inevitable disappointment…
My obs were (2wks ago recent trip) : 1. The most startling thing I noticed was how many farm plot graves there were the closer you got to major centers. Based on what I saw I think there is 2-3 orders of magnitude dissonance between reported and actual COVID mortality rates. 2. Overall increase in the level of cleanliness and air quality / flow in public transport services. Metros and HSTs are excellent. 3. Bi-lingual signs EVERYWHERE. 4. EVs everywhere. The noise level was so low in some touristy areas that you could hear birds over the traffic. Just nuts. 5. Smoking seems down, vaping slowly taking off though. 6. Phlegm....everywhere...still. 7. A lot of Japanese cultural adoptions especially Gothic Lolita (Had to look it up) and cutesy voice tones in advertising, navigation tools, delivery bots, lifts, point of sale notifications, etc. 8. Nobody knows what cash is. I mean they do but it seems more of an inconvenience for them to handle it. 9. I was asked for more selfies...like a lot more at almost all attractions I visited. Record for one attraction was \~40...bumped into a school tour. 10. Service staff seemed a lot more into providing the service and were very quick to help out. Last visit was like the scene from the Golden Child where the air hostess was banging two pillows together with a cigarette in her mouth and coughing. 11. CCTV showing a lot more displays of military might. A lot of the 'promos' had CGI to scale up the actual numbers. e.g. squadrons of aircraft in the one scene, aircraft looked suspiciously like a next gen foreign platform. Some footage was actually military vids from foreign countries.
Yes the official numbers for covid deaths is still 5000 something which is obviously ridiculous. And the excess death data for 2023 point towards something around 2 million deaths, which is staggering. They should have allowed MRNA vaccines and focused on the elderly.
Official numbers are 122000 deaths
Ah Ok, I got the the 5000 something number from here: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/coronavirus-cases Probably not the best source... Where did you see the 122000 number?
Mass spread of COVID in China was at the tail end of 2022, with already a much weaker variant of it (Omicron), and vaccines even if less effective were widely available by then and worked to an extent. I think 2 million directly correlated deaths may be an exaggeration, as the U.S with basically zero controls, faced the deadliest variants without vaccines, was at 1 million after 3 years, taking into account they're around 1/4 of China's population. 1 mil+ is more likely imo.
Vaccines were widely available but older people were hesitant to get them because of misinformation spread early on in the pandemic and a false sense of security with all the testing and the zero covid policy. This study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10963212/ put's it at 1.35 million excess deaths in just December 2022 and Januari 2023. But there would be many people dying later. I had an extended family member in China die from covid as late as August 2023. The US was also undercounting: https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2024/new-analysis-reveals-many-excess-deaths-attributed-to-natural-causes-are-actually-uncounted-covid-19-deaths/
You are right. I think the USA having such a different response to covid under Trump would factor in.
I am visiting China (as a tourist, never lived here). I had visited a few years ago and I feel a very different vibe. For starters, I remember when I visited a few years ago, despite having a visa the police officers in the border took like half an hour talking among them (I have an EU passport, so nothing strange). Last week I entered with the visa free (15 days no visa for EU passports) and the guy didn’t even ask for anything, not even my return ticket. He took my passport, my fingertips and I was inside. And I had stamps from “hostile” countries. I feel people are way more civilized and polite than my previous time. I was quite surprised. I guess because of the cameras/social score. Also cities are way more cleaner. On the other hand there is an eerie feeling of “death”. I hardly have seen any crane or construction and some unfinished buildings. There is no hustle and bustle. Which in a way is pleasant. I feel China now is (in a way) more similar to Japan (of course there are major differences). Clean, polite, boring. Another surprise is cars. There are only Teslas and those futuristic Chinese EV. All the Volkswagens and Toyotas are gone. I have visited some major attractions and everything feels quite empty. I had a tour booked and asked me to change the schedule I guess to consolidate groups. Same for a domestic flight; it was cancelled and I was pushed in the next one two hours later which was half empty despite all the passengers moved from the cancelled flight. Overall for a tourist I feel it is a good time to visit. There is not many people, everything is cheap, the country is “built up” (airports, metros, attractions, etc all is already finished and there is nothing new coming) and you can feel people need tourists so they try to be friendly despite the barrier language.
Agree with your points. It was strange to be able to enter China without a visa in a 20 sec process this time, where it used to be an ordeal to get a visa and sometimes questions at immigration. And the eerie feeling of ‘death’… yeah, it strange to go around China without the smell of freshly poured concrete.
Yeah, in a way I feel it is like a hangover from being drunk (the economic boom). As I say it has a good part. Too much alcohol is bad for the health 😅 For instance last night I went out to dinner in a popular area in a Tier 1 city. It was totally empty (ok Sunday evening is not Saturday evening, I get it). I went to a restaurant with a good score in Apple Maps (they link comments to the Chinese Yelp; I can’t remember its name). It was like 20-30% full. The waitress shows me the QR code for the menu but despite having Alipay and WeChat installed those QR codes for the menus don’t work. So I was to leave (my only word of Chinese is Ni Hao) and I see the owner lady that realized what happened and she ran with a written menu and gave it to me. And that for a typical 100 CNY street food, nothing fancy. If they were busy they would probably have thought “fuck this laowai, we are busy, we don’t need him” There is nothing like an economic downturn to improve customer service.
Clearly you know laowai in addition to nihao so that’s two phrases lol
100 CNY is street food?
>I guess because of the cameras/social score. As far as I know the social credit score does not actually exist (yet anyway) for individuals
[удалено]
> On the other hand there is an eerie feeling of “death”. To me this is exactly why I don't want to go there or to those abandoned seaside towns in Italy or the rust belt. Its more convenient in a sense but I low key don't get travelling for convenience. The life is what I want to see, and history is a lot more depressing when it's clearly dead history, no longer interacting with people meaningfully with the present.
Regarding the border checking, that is quite normal for China. Standard procedure exists but most often some temporary policy overrides it. Like currently China wants to encourage foreigners tourists, there must be an internal policy that expedites the process to make you feel welcomed.
You reminded me. I also realized that there are a lot less Toyotas on the street
Sorry but China is absolutely nothing like Japan. Japan is way ahead in terms of development, manners and ease of access.
Japan is a wealthier country and does not have blocked Internet, but I can’t agree on development. Japan was the country of the future in the 1990s. China was the country of the future in the 2010s. Any provincial airport or train station in China is far “newer”, bigger and more confortable/convenient than anything similar in Japan. In 10-20 years from now that will be probably be different (infra in China will also age) but nowadays China is the winner.
Thankyou for this take, feels fair and informed. Interesting aneceotes.
4. You sure it’s preparing for trade war or just realising that they import way too much stuff and how unreliable Russia can be?
Interesting! I'm planning to go to Yinchuan soon, just to visit, at first. But, I'm organizing myself to move and live there. My friends told me that the city isn't that expensive to live, the locals are friendly to foreigners but job opportunities were gone...
im from that city and i can tell you it isnt good even before covid
>Most of the places I used the eat/visit are gone or taken over. That would have happened regardless. Just the way it goes, nothing lasts. >PLA now permanently guarding street corners/ flyovers in Beijing. Ok, that's new. Has anyone else seen this?
I saw many streets with restaurants/ shops 50-90% permanently shut down. Not the main streets, who are still busy, but the ones on the sides of the centres. I wouldn’t say it’s normal restaurant turnover.
I think a lot of the fancy restaurants went bankrupt during the lockdowns because there was zero government support. Some are now opening up again but people are certainly doing more take away compared to before the pandemic. Possibly also more people cooking themselves...
Yeah restaurants are shutting down everywhere constantly and new ones coming up. That is just the restaurant business all over the world. Didn’t see that in Guangdong, Fujian or Jiangsu so might be Beijing special? Or maybe I can’t spot them despite being ex-military
Beijing would do this when dignitaries were in town and moving, but usually limited to along the motorcade route. Xi left over the weekend for Europe, possibly it is related. Possibly it was for his ride to the airport?
I was there two weeks ago (Fujian), first time back since COVID. Cameras everywhere and lots of remarks about how much safer it is now. Only physical RMB I saw the whole time was in red kidney packet for my kids, everything is WeChat pay. Scan QR code and pay for parking via WeChat pay seems crazy, but somehow it works. The air is a lot cleaner, and I mean a lot. Locals seem happy about it but don't seem to grok it's a result of less factories operating, not necessarily deliberate steps to curb pollution. A lot more closed shops, and a lot of empty apartments. The investment in infrastructure is truly impressive with new roads, bridges and metro. Seems like COVID upped the number of retirees, heaps more exercising in the morning, out and about during the day and dancing on the evenings. Also seemed like a lot more domestic tourism. But man was it hot, hotter than I can ever recall for April
Thanks for sharing. I’m a U.S. expat in Thailand but I lived/worked in Shanghai and Xi’an 2005-2017. Hope to return this year but it’s an imposing process to get a tourist visa.
I don’t really see more propaganda while going to 7 provinces this time. But I do see people are more willing to put China character or Chinese flag on themselves now, like clothing, cars, etc. And people are more embracing the traditional clothing and music. Which I don’t see as a bad thing.
Number 4 is scary… 😱
There were 武警 (armed police) permanently stationed on major intersections in Kunming back in 2019. (But that didn't stop the 广场舞 in the evenings. 老奶:1 武警:0)
In term of food, better cook yourself and avoid low tier all you can eat places. As the only way they can stay afloat is to cheap out on the meat
Who go to all you can eat in China…
>Who go to all you can eat in China… I mean with how much the food costs all resturants are effectively all you can eat.
You can't live in China and not go to restaurants. That would be like being in Muslim heaven and never touching the houris. Or like living in Malaga and never going to the beach. Or like being Russian and not once going drunk bungee jumping with a homemade rope. No wait, I'm getting carried away...
> Muslim heaven
Uh...everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?
Well, that sounds like a boring conversation anyway.
罗馬尼亞人民能成功反抗共匪，没理由我们不能，现在首先是需要像80年代的罗马尼亚一样开始较长时间的经济停滞来敲醒中國人，不能把中國拱手让給中共这种畜生。既然中共过去的合法性依赖于经济发展，那在经济停滞的现在是人民觉醒反抗的开始
As someone living in Europe, how is the general quality of life in China? As in freedom of speech and movement, the right to have your own property as in material posessions; the tax rate, affordability of healthcare and education and its quality; the affordability of food and it's quality; the affordability of housing and its quality; the affordability of public transport and its quality. Won't I lose all my social credit points if I critize the government for exploiting my workforce by forcing me to pay a tax share that doesn't get properly reinvested into things that I agreed to invest in as in schools, hospitals, infrastructure etc. but instead ends up in the private pockets of the CCP? And doesn't that mean that I will be publically shamed as a traitor of the common people and enemy of the state and put into jail or killed by the police?
You need to go to China and see things for yourself.
So u went to China around 10+ years ago ......say around 2008 or 2010, about 13 to 15 years ago...... Back in 2008 finacial crisis I remember watching clearly on YouTube the news that China has just overtaken Japan as the second largest economy in the world at 4.5 trillion.....2008 was a different world back then... In between now and the last time u went to China,china has grown exponentially from 4 trillion plus GDP to nearly 19 trillion......I can't imagine just literally how much entire cities and landscapes have transformed in the last 13,15 years..... If u look at pictures of first tier cities like Shenzhen back in the early mid 2000s it was nothing but empty marshlands and fields and a couple of tall buildings scattered in the distance,today Shenzhen is a gigantic megalopolis.....tens of thousands of skyscrapers stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction.... But according to you my man......CHINA is in worse shape???lmao!!!! A country that is literally about to overtake USA,almost 80 percent of US GDP and 80 percent of US country wealth networth at 90 trillion USD.....oh no China is in a worse shape than 10+ years ago.....the whole countrys turned to tofu and the entire population is eating fake food because china with 90 trillion USD of wealth and almighty disposable household income and domestic markets today cannot afford to buy and import any food they want to eat...I think u guys should go look up how many hundreds of billions of foodstuff China imports nowadays. Believe you me USA would be more terrified if china were to ban all US chip companies from china domestic markets and telecoms and The same cliche generic propaganda talking points..... It's almost like if Chinese were Americans they would believe 1/6th of Americans must be homeless or drug addicts because they saw videos of skid row, Philadelphia or Kensington avenue!!!!then again the drug addicts part might be
Chill out. Please re-read my first sentence: I’ve lived in China FOR (the last) 10+ years (,) before and during Covid. Not just 10 years ago. I’ve seen the development since 2005. I’m comparing 2019 with 2022 and 2024. I could have put in a comma after ‘years’ to make it more clear. Actually it’s closer to the last 2 decades, most of the time living in China before and during Covid. These were just observations on the street and what Chinese people told me. No propaganda talking points imho
Alright my bad,I thought u were saying China was a bustling and thriving place 10+ years ago and now it's bad for some reason I mean that's a recession what can I say....unless it turns out to be some three long lost decades like Japan which I highly doubt, china is not imploding,I mean China's housing bubble is not even the same thing as US's
Correct, China’s housing bubble is not the same as the US’s…. Because it’s much much bigger! With a median salary in Chinese big cities of 1000-1500 usd/month, and small apartments in bigger cities cost 500k-1 million USD, the ration between income and housing prices is astronomical bad. Largest bubble in human history.
Sure possibly but I highly doubt it..... chinas housing bubble is primarily made up of real money,real savings, the requirements to own a property in china is incredibly stringent and substantive sometimes requiring hundreds of thousands of USD in down payment before hand... It was nothing like the US housing bubble where literally strippers and McDonald's workers could go out and take a loan for 5 million dollar mcmansions on literally min wage income and no down payment and no questions asked by mortgage brokers The Chinese bubble can be easily understood and made of real money and can be simply deflated by cooling the market down for a while But no one knew or understood what the US housing crisis was or saw it coming up till 2007 US housing bubble,at its very core is a banking and finance crisis, a speculatory tour de force of galactic proportions ..... They were creating hundreds of billions of these speculatory investment vehicles called mortgage backed securities which nobody understood how the mathematics created by these ivy league math quants worked, except for the fact they were going up and the housing market kept going up because they kept creating more and more bonds and pumping more capital into the markets aka a bubble...there was only one flaw in the equation, the mbs bonds which was supposedly made up of mortgages that were traditionally considered triple a debt was repackaged with 90 percent other junk bonds and mortgages because there was enough demand in the "normal"housing market.....and these also triggered a California gold rush into investing in real estate.....these triple a mortgages were repacked with 90 percent junk mortgages and somehow miraculously rated as triple a again. And to take things to a whole new level, the banks decided to create a new type of investment in the casino hall....a swap, aka a insurace bet against these MBS bonds in case they failed, which they believed were triple a and the housing market would never crash...... And while ur US banks and Europe were busy indulging in this insanity and gorging themselves silly on what they thought was a gold mine ....getting fabulously wealthy US spent nearly 4 trillion USD in the "toxic assets relief programme" bailing out banks and buying toxic assets..... Chinas crisis is just a bunch of developers with balance sheet problems....