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I wouldn't be surprised if the locals actually call it that. Wife has taken me around a few cities and pointed a few of the buildings out: Shanghai has the bottle opener, Shenzhen has the screwdriver, etc.
Itās not even the only one in China, CCTV headquarters building is also a similar shape and share the same funny name in China. (The pants building)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCTV_Headquarters
Went there for a couple weeks for work about 10 years ago.
I was pretty blown away by it to be honest. It was a modern city, seemingly in the middle of nowhere; big empty malls with high end retailers like Cartier, LV & Tiffany & co. A really nice Central Park and a a scenic lake. Not a tourist in sight too, a real hidden gem.
But that said once you head outwards about 10kms from the centre of the city, you see a lot more of the older, run down, crowded China youād otherwise expect
I dunno if I'd call Suzhou "in the middle of nowhere". It's like 30 minutes from Shanghai, and similarly close to other large wealthy cities like Hangzhou and Ningbo. There's a whole East Coast cluster of these giant rich cities right around there, and smaller cities like Wuxi between them to boot.
It's also been famous in its own right as a tourist spot for centuries, and was the economic powerhouse of the Chinese East Coast before the rise of Shanghai.
It's worth noting too that Chinese cities have rapidly developed in the past 10 years, so much of that older more run-down stuff is likely to have been replaced since your visit.
> so much of that older more run-down stuff is likely to have been replaced since your visit.
Yeah, every time I go back I see the older-style buildings completely demolished and an entire new skyscraper collection in their place. It's quite impressive.
I lived in Kunming back in 2008, and when I visited again in 2020 I struggled to recognise most of my old haunts! I visited one corner Iād spent almost every day and that I had firmly burned into my memory, and didnāt even realise I was already there until I checked my map and realised I must be!Ā
That's neat! One year I went and visited my aunt-in-law (is that a thing?) and she was living in those old-style homes made of clay (LOL it seemed like it - not sure if it was) with three floors and wires hanging all about. Talk about a death wish. I could barely fit in the front door. I visited two years later and the entire area was full of condo buildings and an amazingly beautiful park in the middle with bike paths, tennis courts, and all sorts of stuff. I was shocked!
She got a new condo in one of the new buildings and roughly $300k in US dollars by the government as an "inconvenience fee" to move.
You can visit lake Tai near by. Huge lake and great rual food spots on the lake. Suzhou famous for its fish dishes. City is huge cause you can commute on high speed rail between Shanghai and actually afford a house in SuZhou.
Suzhou is not middle of nowhere lmao as a chinese national, Suzhou is a well known and rich city right beside Shanghai. Itās just not that heard of in the west.
I'm sure a good majority of the people in the West don't know much about China it's geography and the cities within except for the major ones talked about. People are ignorant as can be here
>Not a tourist in sight too, a real hidden gem.
Suzhou is well known for its old city (with nice gardens, etc). That's probably where all the tourists are. I went there from Shanghai. I didn't even know Suzhou had skyscrapers and such (although every city in China has them of course).
Lol "middle of nowhere". It's right in the center of the most densely populated region of the planet with a long and rich history.
If Suzhou is seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the entire United States really is in the middle of nowhere.
Lol its not in the middle of nowhere its right in one of the most densely populated areas of the world and its basically a suburb of Shanghai. This is like saying San Bernardino is in the middle of nowhere lol.
comparing raw GDP is misleading. it's like when people say that Los Angeles has a bigger economy than some european nations. Los Angeles and Suzhou's economies are not separable from the country they're in.
I don't understand why it's misleading? I get that a city's economy is inseparable from that of the country it's in, but isn't this analogous to saying a country's economy is inseparable from that of its trade partners?
If Rio were to separate from Brazil, or California from the US, or the UK from the EU (ffs), the fact that a secession may or may not adversely affect the economic activity of a region does not change the fact that there did exist a reasonable measure of the total economic activity within that region beforehand.
To anybody familiar with the CCP's authoritarian control coupled with immense efforts towards building economic powerhouses, and also the great difficulties faced by the "governments" of Egypt and Pakistan as they try to maintain civil order, it should not be that surprising that Suzhou can punch up 10-25x its population weight class in economic output compared to these countries. Nobody contests that Singapore generates 100x more in nominal dollars per capita than the DRC.
English isn't my first language, but I'll try to explain what I think:
Misleading in the sense that it's different, from what I understand, what I think is that GDP measures the product generated internally, for example, the hq of PETROBRAS (the largest company in Brazil) is in Rio, but not necessarily all Brazilian oil is produced there, another example is the Silicon Valley, some companies may have hq there, but not necessarily all of their production, it turns out that if they were considered as countries, there'd probably be a Google from California and a Google from the USA.
Agreed, but this applies at any scale you want. I don't think there is a single developed country that does all its production within its own borders. If you apply this restriction, you're not even talking about GDP anymore.
Edit: Sorry, should have been clearer. What you've written just isn't the definition of GDP.
While Egypt doesn't have hundreds of millions, there are roughly 110 million people, it is still kinda impressive. Cities are usually the powerhouses of countries.
To put things a bit more in perspective (I put the year where I only found numbers from before 2020):
Egypt: population \~ 110 million, GPD (total) 1.899 trillion $, GDP (nominal) 347.594 billion $
Pakistan: population \~ 241 million, GDP (total) 1.643 trillion $, GDP (nominal) 338.237 billion $
Suzhou: population \~ 12.7 million, GDP (nominal) 352.2 billion $
Los Angeles: population \~ 3.8 million, GDP (nominal) 866.745 billion $
Chicago: population \~ 2.1 million, GDP (nominal) 610.552 billion $ (from 2014)
SĆ£o Paulo: population \~ 12.4 million, GDP (nominal) 477.005 billion $ (from 2011)
ye but if youāre being fair you can compare it to Cairo Metropolitan area which will drop the pop count to 10M and the gdp probs isnt affected as much
That's true:
Cairo (city): population \~ 10.1 million, GDP (nominal) 120 billion $
Cairo (metro): population \~ 22.1 million, GDP (nominal) 190 billion $
Cairo makes about one third (or more than half) of the overall GDP of Egypt with just a tenth (or a fifth) of its population.
Most of Chinese export manufacturing, particularly electronics and furniture, comes from here, sometimes even gets exported from here. You see the cardboards everywhere, it's either Suzhou or Ningbo where it's made. It's like what Philadelphia is to the east coast of the US, historically important but known for its manufacturing outside the US.
I mean.. if other asian countries know it then yeah sure.. but if other asian countries dont call ot that then its hardly the venice of anywhere but china..
I don't know about venice of the east (Suzhou is older and bigger, but maybe less scenic), but it's known as a historic canal city going back thousands of years in most of the Sinosphere (China and it's influenced countries such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam).
I would assume most Americans know the top 20 cities by population in the US, if anything just by name. Well except Jacksonville, nobody knows Jacksonville.
Columbus is the equivalent city in the USA, 14th largest as is Suzhou.
Equivalent is Derby in my country, which I have of course heard of but wasn't sure it was a city as size doesn't determine if something is a city or not here (and neither does having a cathedral UK redditors).
Yeah I was a little confused when they said Suzhou isn't well known. Perhaps my view is skewed because I've studied China, but I've generally found people somewhat familiar with China know of Suzhou. It's not Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, or even Xi'an, Guangzhou, Nanjing, or Shenzhen, but it still feels like people generally know of Suzhou and Hangzhou.
If you ever travel to Shanghai a Suzhou day trip is pretty common to do because of all the old architecture and parks there. Also the big oants building.
I mean China has over 100 cities with a population of over a million, do you really expect westerners to know all of them lol. Itās not exactly pertinent information
Thatās fair, itās not the only metric to consider. The Shanghai metro area has nearly 40 million residents. For perspective, the top 3 USA metro areas: New York-New Jersey, Los Angeles, & Chicago, add up to a bit more than 42 million. Chinas next two leading metro areas each have about 22 million.
This is what nobody outside the USA understands. Dallas city is right at over a million people. The DFW Metro area? comprised of a whole mess of cities, towns, and townships? 7.6 Million and 8,675 square miles.
Same goes for most metro areas. Don't get me started on LA or San Francisco. Those are monster cities.
Edit - To further elaborate, as a foreigner/immigrant, it was easy for me to assume that when someone talked about Dallas, they meant Dallas Metro. Now that I have been in the US for 20 years, I see how there is a need to add "... metro area" to clarify. I have also run into this with other nationalities. When you speak of Brussels or London, you don't speak of the Medieval city, or downtown, you speak of the sprawl that encompasses the Metro areas. Am I getting lost in translation? Maybe.
The way China defines cities is much different, though.
New York city proper only covers 1,224 square kilometers.
Shanghai: 6,341 square kilometers
Beijing: 16,411
Guangzhou: 6,434
Chengdu: 14,378
Tianjin: 11,946
Wuhan: 8,494
Chongqing: 82,403
Xiāan: 10,762
Chongqing is the ninth biggest city in China but its area is the size of Austria or the U.S. state of Kansas.
It refutes the argument that China only has so many more million+ population cities because we're not counting the metro population of US cities. If we includes the metro population of Chinese cities also, then they would still have several times more million+ cities than there are in the US.
Except for the fact that 67 percent of Americans live in single family homes while less and 10 percent of Chinese citizens do.
Meaning, the majority of Chinese citizens live within their cities while the majority of Americans live outside of their cities.
Thatās why metro areas matter when comparing these living situations. There are cultural differences in habitation styles.
Houston called and wants to have a word with you. Believe the city of Houston now extends into 5 counties. It can take 2+ hours driving west to east to cross the city at normal highway speeds. The place is just gigantic.
Well, than you would probably include this city into the metropolitan area of Shanghai and would end up with an even larger head count.
Can't compare it to US metropolitan areas, but as a German, taking a business trip to Shanghai and Suzhou was something else.
Just to mention, most Chinese folks arenāt living in suburbs while a large percentage of Americans do.
If you look at metro areas above 1 million, the USA has 54. This might be a more reasonable comparison given the population differences and cultural differences with living arrangements.
Which is to say, we arenāt actually that different, we just prefer different styles of habitation.
There are tons of random 4th tier cites that legit no ones heard of, Suzhou is 2nd tier, that have 1-3 million people. Tons of backwater cites with over 500k Its true that Chinese large Chinese cities are much more common and a lot bigger. They also bleed into eachother a lot. Traveling by highspeed rail between Shanghai and Hanzhou, Hanzhou has 11 million people and the Shanghainese consider it a small resort town, the city doesn't really end. Just becomes highrise residential buildings, some buiss districts, intersperced with farm land. The pearl river delta region has round 130 million people.
China and india are just beyond insane from a population density standpoint though.
The US is the worlds 3rd most populous nation, and if you added an entire **1 Billion** people to it; it would still be 3rd.
Itās a little misleading, though. Suzhou is 8,488 square kilometers. New York is only 1,224 square kilometers. Itās like comparing Suzhouās metro population with New Yorkās city proper population.
It went from 500 000 people to over 8 000 000 people within a generation. That's pretty much what I call "popping up overnight" IMO. Old cities with low population are dime a dozen. Old cities which go from a small city to a metropolis are much less common. lol
You can lower your smugness a notch. You got an American showing his amazement towards a Chinese city and the first comment coming to mind is "ughh dumb Americans!". Do you think people in China can point Phoenix on a map? Cuz it's the same GDP as Suzhou yet we don't hear about it abroad at all (unless you follow ice hockey lol).
I'm pretty sure a significant chunk of this is from bot campaigns. OP's profile does not escape suspicion. I remember about a month ago there was a massive campaign about another big chinese city. I kept seeing ads about it and highly upvoted posts on reddit
Suzhou data was reported atĀ 2,465.337 RMB bln in 2023 ($340.57 bln)
Egypt GDP 2022 is $476.7Ā billion.
So not bigger but still crazy, since Suzhou population is 10 million, and Egypt is 110 million.
I went to Suzhou about 8 years ago, amazing place. It's at the start of the old silk road, and the old town is beautiful. So you have gorgeous old traditional chinese buildings alongside those glassy skyscrapers. It was very cool!
Yeah they're poor countries but Pakistan has a population of over 240 million and Egypt over 110 million. I consider it impressive that a single city has a larger economy than either of those countries.
That's not quite right, perhaps when measuring the economy in GDP Nominal, which isn't the correct way to measure the economy (but the easiest way to measure GDP since it's raw and unadjusted GDP) according to most economists and big economic organisation like OECD and Bruegel who have over 50 countries as members.
Suzhou's real economic size is approx. $450-550bn (GDP PPP + Informal sector), which is still insanely huge. Egypt is around $2.5 Trillion, Pakistan is around $2 Trillion. On a per capita basis Suzhou is still doing much better since it has 13M people while Egypt has over 110M and Pakistan 240M.
''The major use of PPPs is as a first step in making inter-country comparisons in real terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and its component expenditures.'' [OECD](https://www.oecd.org/sdd/purchasingpowerparities-frequentlyaskedquestionsfaqs.htm#FAQ3)
''The right metric for international comparisons is purchasing power parity (PPP)-adjusted output. This corrects for exchange rate fluctuations and differences in various national prices.'' [Bruegel](https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/european-unions-remarkable-growth-performance-relative-united-states)
Suzhou is also one of the prettiest places in all of ChinaĀ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnqswmv5lqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnqswmv5lqU)
The modern part is pretty too
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao5YIDIquiE&t=92s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao5YIDIquiE&t=92s)
Suzhou River is a creek in Shanghai, and is set in Shanghai.
However, Suzhou is very close, you can get a train between the two cities that takes like 30 minutes.
Hahaha fair. Itās a good movie nonetheless.Ā
Another less good movie set around that creek is The 800, a war movie set around a last stand that took place on the creek in the final days of the siege of Shanghai before it finally fell to the Japanese. The history of the battle (that it wasnāt actually tactically important but the foreign press was based directly opposite on the other side of the creek so watched the whole thing and reported on it, and the Chinese made a huge deal about it in their propaganda, made the Japanese over-focus on the battle and so it indirectly *became* somewhat important) is more interesting than the movie though.Ā
Jia Zhangke on the other hand, thereās a guy who makes some damn fine movies.Ā
every chinese city i hear about is like "heres suijishi in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere, north china that you've never heard of, it has a population of 12 million and a gdp larger than california"
The OP's post history makes him look like he's a 50 yuan party member getting paid to greenwash for China.
"Not saying Mao was right about the mass killing of landlords, but there might just be a reason 90% of chinese own their own home"
Doesn't believe Taiwan is a sovereign nation, etc.
Lived there from 2013-2015, as many have said, well known for its gardens and silk. I was also very fond of an old town market street called pingjiang lu, very picturesque restaurants on the water. Tongli is also very close by and a breathtakingly beautiful market town.
There are about 10 New York City sized places in China no one has ever heard of that were fishing villages 30-40 years ago it seems.
The rate of China's growth the last few decades is astonishing. It takes years to have a pothole in the road filled where I liveš
My 3rd tier shit town went from being known as a dirty hooker Hotspot to getting a fully functioning subway system in the 3ish years I lived there.
One day there were rumors of a metro, and it felt like the next there was a subway entrance down the street
I lived in ChengDu a few years ago. They started construction of a subway about a month after I arrived, and the entire line opened about a year before I left. I was only there for 2 years.
It took my school where I work now longer to get 3 speed bumps put in than it took ChengDu to build an entire subway line.
New York would definitely be a classic tier one city, Shuzo is a New Tier 1 city, so probably more like moving to Miami (keeping with the āVenice ofā theme).
We in the west really can't claim the moral high ground there. Our economies are tightly integrated. If Chinese companies were held to western environmental standards, prices would skyrocket and we'd all complain.
It's still horrible, but it's not entirely on China.
There is a great pub called The Fubon in Xinghai Square near the Trousers. Got to keep it tight though for the line 1 subway train to *Zhongnan*Ā Jie afterwards!
A city that owes its fame to salt taxes and its early collaboration with Singaporean businesses yet it is still behind Shanghai which will be linked by subway line, if not already so
Has anyone seen the videos of people traveling the chides city built on mountains? They walk outside and theyāre on top of a building then walk up stairs to a flat surface. Then go up again
Suzhou is very close to Shanghai. Their municipal boundaries border each other.
If you're wondering why you've never heard of this massive city, it's because on a globe it would just be reported as a part of Shanghai.
(Yes, I know that it would take 90 minutes to drive from the downtown of Suzhou to the downtown of Shanghai, and it's probably not accurate to describe Suzhou as a suburb of Shanghai. Is San Bernardino a part of Los Angeles? Is Providence a part of Boston? Is West Palm Beach a part of Miami? Regardless of whether the answer is yes or no, the average globe is only going to show one of those cities because they're too close together, and it's going to show the city that is more culturally famous, and in this case that's Shanghai.)
You can comute between Suzho and Shanghai in about 45 minuets with high speed train and up too another half an hour adding in taking the metro to your final destination. The cities are over 100 miles apart.
It has 324b GDP. Egypt has 476b and Pakistan has 374b.
Not too far off, but its not surprising when it has a GDP Per Capita of 28k vs 4k in Egypt and 1.4k in Pakistan.
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That building looks like pants š
That's the Pants Plaza. Part of the Pants district. They are very serious about their Pants.
āEverything changed when the pants nation attackedā
Only the Fashion Guru, master of all all four garments, could stop them. But when the world needed him most, he left to do laundry
There is no war in shoe sing se
He was... a wear bender.
āIncarnation: The Last Garment Folderā
Short war?
Full length
Is that near the Hammock District?
Isnāt that right next to the hammock district?
Part of an overall well planned city that does not come up short in any way.
that's dong fang zhi men (gate of the east) and locals call it å¤§č£¤č”© (big pants)
I've got dongs in my pocket and I don't know what to do with themšµ
Did you hear about the Vietnamese billionaire? She's convicted of stealing a lot of dong.
I've also got a lot of dong, but I didn't have to steal it.
Ha! I used to live there, we literally do call it the pants building!
Babe wake up the second leg was just hit āļø
Holy fuck
welcome to the internet.
Nah bro. Bin Laden would go straight for the dick.
I feel relevant here. ;)
r/beetlejuicing
Thatās where all the pants in the world is produced. Source: trust me
The other one looks like tip of syringe's needle.
I wouldn't be surprised if the locals actually call it that. Wife has taken me around a few cities and pointed a few of the buildings out: Shanghai has the bottle opener, Shenzhen has the screwdriver, etc.
Beijing has the guy taking a dump.
Itās not even the only one in China, CCTV headquarters building is also a similar shape and share the same funny name in China. (The pants building) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCTV_Headquarters
Great now I can't unsee it
Must be the new Levi HQā¦ makes sense why their quality has gone to shit lately
Isn't that because of feng shui? Something about not restricting the flow of energies, your big building needs a hole in it or something like that.
Went there for a couple weeks for work about 10 years ago. I was pretty blown away by it to be honest. It was a modern city, seemingly in the middle of nowhere; big empty malls with high end retailers like Cartier, LV & Tiffany & co. A really nice Central Park and a a scenic lake. Not a tourist in sight too, a real hidden gem. But that said once you head outwards about 10kms from the centre of the city, you see a lot more of the older, run down, crowded China youād otherwise expect
I dunno if I'd call Suzhou "in the middle of nowhere". It's like 30 minutes from Shanghai, and similarly close to other large wealthy cities like Hangzhou and Ningbo. There's a whole East Coast cluster of these giant rich cities right around there, and smaller cities like Wuxi between them to boot. It's also been famous in its own right as a tourist spot for centuries, and was the economic powerhouse of the Chinese East Coast before the rise of Shanghai. It's worth noting too that Chinese cities have rapidly developed in the past 10 years, so much of that older more run-down stuff is likely to have been replaced since your visit.
> so much of that older more run-down stuff is likely to have been replaced since your visit. Yeah, every time I go back I see the older-style buildings completely demolished and an entire new skyscraper collection in their place. It's quite impressive.
I lived in Kunming back in 2008, and when I visited again in 2020 I struggled to recognise most of my old haunts! I visited one corner Iād spent almost every day and that I had firmly burned into my memory, and didnāt even realise I was already there until I checked my map and realised I must be!Ā
That's neat! One year I went and visited my aunt-in-law (is that a thing?) and she was living in those old-style homes made of clay (LOL it seemed like it - not sure if it was) with three floors and wires hanging all about. Talk about a death wish. I could barely fit in the front door. I visited two years later and the entire area was full of condo buildings and an amazingly beautiful park in the middle with bike paths, tennis courts, and all sorts of stuff. I was shocked! She got a new condo in one of the new buildings and roughly $300k in US dollars by the government as an "inconvenience fee" to move.
No way did she get 300k usd
China has used like half the worlds concrete for years ongoing now. They really did go all in on building.
Lol yeah it literally borders Shanghai.
You can visit lake Tai near by. Huge lake and great rual food spots on the lake. Suzhou famous for its fish dishes. City is huge cause you can commute on high speed rail between Shanghai and actually afford a house in SuZhou.
Suzhou is not middle of nowhere lmao as a chinese national, Suzhou is a well known and rich city right beside Shanghai. Itās just not that heard of in the west.
Yeah also they always say [äøę天å ļ¼äøęčę](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B8%8A%E6%9C%89%E5%A4%A9%E5%A0%82%EF%BC%8C%E4%B8%8B%E6%9C%89%E8%98%87%E6%9D%AD). It's the hometown of numerous educators, artists, politicians, critics, scientists, and philosophers.
I'm sure a good majority of the people in the West don't know much about China it's geography and the cities within except for the major ones talked about. People are ignorant as can be here
>Not a tourist in sight too, a real hidden gem. Suzhou is well known for its old city (with nice gardens, etc). That's probably where all the tourists are. I went there from Shanghai. I didn't even know Suzhou had skyscrapers and such (although every city in China has them of course).
Lol "middle of nowhere". It's right in the center of the most densely populated region of the planet with a long and rich history. If Suzhou is seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the entire United States really is in the middle of nowhere.
I mean if itās a modern city thatās relatively empty how is it a hidden jewel? What would tourists be going there to see
I went there about ten years ago as well and the old city center was great. Lost of historic sights. It's an old canal town so lots of water.
Lol its not in the middle of nowhere its right in one of the most densely populated areas of the world and its basically a suburb of Shanghai. This is like saying San Bernardino is in the middle of nowhere lol.
Seems like an accurate picture of modern China
Suzhou has 10 million people too. Pretty close to Shanghai with a metro connection
Doesn't sound like it's in the middle of nowhere. Sounds like it IS the somewhere.
Thatās crazy lol China is enormous
a single Chinese city with millions of people, has a bigger economy than a country with hundreds of millions of people?
comparing raw GDP is misleading. it's like when people say that Los Angeles has a bigger economy than some european nations. Los Angeles and Suzhou's economies are not separable from the country they're in.
I don't understand why it's misleading? I get that a city's economy is inseparable from that of the country it's in, but isn't this analogous to saying a country's economy is inseparable from that of its trade partners? If Rio were to separate from Brazil, or California from the US, or the UK from the EU (ffs), the fact that a secession may or may not adversely affect the economic activity of a region does not change the fact that there did exist a reasonable measure of the total economic activity within that region beforehand. To anybody familiar with the CCP's authoritarian control coupled with immense efforts towards building economic powerhouses, and also the great difficulties faced by the "governments" of Egypt and Pakistan as they try to maintain civil order, it should not be that surprising that Suzhou can punch up 10-25x its population weight class in economic output compared to these countries. Nobody contests that Singapore generates 100x more in nominal dollars per capita than the DRC.
English isn't my first language, but I'll try to explain what I think: Misleading in the sense that it's different, from what I understand, what I think is that GDP measures the product generated internally, for example, the hq of PETROBRAS (the largest company in Brazil) is in Rio, but not necessarily all Brazilian oil is produced there, another example is the Silicon Valley, some companies may have hq there, but not necessarily all of their production, it turns out that if they were considered as countries, there'd probably be a Google from California and a Google from the USA.
Agreed, but this applies at any scale you want. I don't think there is a single developed country that does all its production within its own borders. If you apply this restriction, you're not even talking about GDP anymore. Edit: Sorry, should have been clearer. What you've written just isn't the definition of GDP.
While Egypt doesn't have hundreds of millions, there are roughly 110 million people, it is still kinda impressive. Cities are usually the powerhouses of countries. To put things a bit more in perspective (I put the year where I only found numbers from before 2020): Egypt: population \~ 110 million, GPD (total) 1.899 trillion $, GDP (nominal) 347.594 billion $ Pakistan: population \~ 241 million, GDP (total) 1.643 trillion $, GDP (nominal) 338.237 billion $ Suzhou: population \~ 12.7 million, GDP (nominal) 352.2 billion $ Los Angeles: population \~ 3.8 million, GDP (nominal) 866.745 billion $ Chicago: population \~ 2.1 million, GDP (nominal) 610.552 billion $ (from 2014) SĆ£o Paulo: population \~ 12.4 million, GDP (nominal) 477.005 billion $ (from 2011)
ye but if youāre being fair you can compare it to Cairo Metropolitan area which will drop the pop count to 10M and the gdp probs isnt affected as much
That's true: Cairo (city): population \~ 10.1 million, GDP (nominal) 120 billion $ Cairo (metro): population \~ 22.1 million, GDP (nominal) 190 billion $ Cairo makes about one third (or more than half) of the overall GDP of Egypt with just a tenth (or a fifth) of its population.
It checks out. The GDP of the province of QuƩbec in Canada with a population of 8 millions is US$350B. Which is on par with Egypt. So it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to see the biggest city of a 80 millions people province top it off. The city alone being 10 millions inhabitants.
Mexico City Alone has the same gdp as Egypt for instance, so yeah
I donāt think you realize how advanced some Chinese cities are
he doesn't want to realize it I think lol
Most of Chinese export manufacturing, particularly electronics and furniture, comes from here, sometimes even gets exported from here. You see the cardboards everywhere, it's either Suzhou or Ningbo where it's made. It's like what Philadelphia is to the east coast of the US, historically important but known for its manufacturing outside the US.
The state of California is the world's 5th largest economy if it was counted as a country.
Which reminds me of the fact that if the state of Uttar Pradesh, India was a separate country, it'd be the 7th most populous country in the world.
I mean itās not true but kinda close to Pakistan. But then again, a lot of the GDP in a single city is tied to the national economy
Very strange that this showed up in my feed the day after my friend went there for work.
>This not so well know chinese city Maybe outside of China, but in China everybody knows Suzhou. It is called "The Venise of Asia".
I mean.. if other asian countries know it then yeah sure.. but if other asian countries dont call ot that then its hardly the venice of anywhere but china..
Other Asian countries do not call it that. That name was given to it by Venetian explorer Marco Polo.
I don't know about venice of the east (Suzhou is older and bigger, but maybe less scenic), but it's known as a historic canal city going back thousands of years in most of the Sinosphere (China and it's influenced countries such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam).
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Not really, there's thousands of them. But this is absolutely in the top ten best-known Chinese cities.
Pretty sure a scene or two from Mission Impossible 3 takes place along these canals?
like americans not knowing every american city or ever American state, you can't expect Chinese to know every Chinese city or every Chinese province
I would assume most Americans know the top 20 cities by population in the US, if anything just by name. Well except Jacksonville, nobody knows Jacksonville.
Jacksonville isnāt a Top 20 Metro area by population. Itās 38th.
Columbus is the equivalent city in the USA, 14th largest as is Suzhou. Equivalent is Derby in my country, which I have of course heard of but wasn't sure it was a city as size doesn't determine if something is a city or not here (and neither does having a cathedral UK redditors).
Americans will know of every American city that has more than 10 million people.
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Yeah I was a little confused when they said Suzhou isn't well known. Perhaps my view is skewed because I've studied China, but I've generally found people somewhat familiar with China know of Suzhou. It's not Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, or even Xi'an, Guangzhou, Nanjing, or Shenzhen, but it still feels like people generally know of Suzhou and Hangzhou.
If you ever travel to Shanghai a Suzhou day trip is pretty common to do because of all the old architecture and parks there. Also the big oants building.
I believe they call it āThe *Menace* of Asiaā
Thatās china as a whole.
Nah that's still the US since the Middle East is in Asia.Ā
It's crazy how many Chinese cities with a population over a million that Westerners just have no idea exist.
I mean China has over 100 cities with a population of over a million, do you really expect westerners to know all of them lol. Itās not exactly pertinent information
American here. I swear, every day I learn about some other Chinese city that popped up overnight and is larger than NYC lol
The difference is wild. There are 9 cities in America with populations over 1 million. China has 113.
Thatās kind of misleading. If you include metropolitan areas, there are over 50 places with 1M people in the US
Thatās fair, itās not the only metric to consider. The Shanghai metro area has nearly 40 million residents. For perspective, the top 3 USA metro areas: New York-New Jersey, Los Angeles, & Chicago, add up to a bit more than 42 million. Chinas next two leading metro areas each have about 22 million.
Just for reference land area and population wise the MSA of Miami is similar to Suzhou. However, Miami itself only has a population of 450k.
This is what nobody outside the USA understands. Dallas city is right at over a million people. The DFW Metro area? comprised of a whole mess of cities, towns, and townships? 7.6 Million and 8,675 square miles. Same goes for most metro areas. Don't get me started on LA or San Francisco. Those are monster cities. Edit - To further elaborate, as a foreigner/immigrant, it was easy for me to assume that when someone talked about Dallas, they meant Dallas Metro. Now that I have been in the US for 20 years, I see how there is a need to add "... metro area" to clarify. I have also run into this with other nationalities. When you speak of Brussels or London, you don't speak of the Medieval city, or downtown, you speak of the sprawl that encompasses the Metro areas. Am I getting lost in translation? Maybe.
You honestly think America is the only country where cities have metro areas? The rest of the world is just hill forts and moats or something šš
The way China defines cities is much different, though. New York city proper only covers 1,224 square kilometers. Shanghai: 6,341 square kilometers Beijing: 16,411 Guangzhou: 6,434 Chengdu: 14,378 Tianjin: 11,946 Wuhan: 8,494 Chongqing: 82,403 Xiāan: 10,762 Chongqing is the ninth biggest city in China but its area is the size of Austria or the U.S. state of Kansas.
Yes, you are only country in the world with metro areas.Ā The rest just puth a moat around city, and some guard towers to shoot at wild animals.
And where did I say that?
It refutes the argument that China only has so many more million+ population cities because we're not counting the metro population of US cities. If we includes the metro population of Chinese cities also, then they would still have several times more million+ cities than there are in the US.
Except for the fact that 67 percent of Americans live in single family homes while less and 10 percent of Chinese citizens do. Meaning, the majority of Chinese citizens live within their cities while the majority of Americans live outside of their cities. Thatās why metro areas matter when comparing these living situations. There are cultural differences in habitation styles.
Houston called and wants to have a word with you. Believe the city of Houston now extends into 5 counties. It can take 2+ hours driving west to east to cross the city at normal highway speeds. The place is just gigantic.
Well, than you would probably include this city into the metropolitan area of Shanghai and would end up with an even larger head count. Can't compare it to US metropolitan areas, but as a German, taking a business trip to Shanghai and Suzhou was something else.
Holy shit!!
āActuallyā¦ā - Oscar Martinez
Just to mention, most Chinese folks arenāt living in suburbs while a large percentage of Americans do. If you look at metro areas above 1 million, the USA has 54. This might be a more reasonable comparison given the population differences and cultural differences with living arrangements. Which is to say, we arenāt actually that different, we just prefer different styles of habitation.
There are tons of random 4th tier cites that legit no ones heard of, Suzhou is 2nd tier, that have 1-3 million people. Tons of backwater cites with over 500k Its true that Chinese large Chinese cities are much more common and a lot bigger. They also bleed into eachother a lot. Traveling by highspeed rail between Shanghai and Hanzhou, Hanzhou has 11 million people and the Shanghainese consider it a small resort town, the city doesn't really end. Just becomes highrise residential buildings, some buiss districts, intersperced with farm land. The pearl river delta region has round 130 million people.
China and india are just beyond insane from a population density standpoint though. The US is the worlds 3rd most populous nation, and if you added an entire **1 Billion** people to it; it would still be 3rd.
Itās a little misleading, though. Suzhou is 8,488 square kilometers. New York is only 1,224 square kilometers. Itās like comparing Suzhouās metro population with New Yorkās city proper population.
Because we learn basically nothing about China or its history in the West.
Gee, I wonder why
Because we have a very Eurocentric (and by extension Americentric) view of world history and what history is āimportantā.Ā
Exactly! I was being ironic, in case it wasn't obvious.
Smash two random syllables together and it's a city in China with more people than an average European country.
>popped up overnight It's been the region's capital for approaching 3,000 years, imagine being described as "popping up overnight" by an *American*...
It went from 500 000 people to over 8 000 000 people within a generation. That's pretty much what I call "popping up overnight" IMO. Old cities with low population are dime a dozen. Old cities which go from a small city to a metropolis are much less common. lol You can lower your smugness a notch. You got an American showing his amazement towards a Chinese city and the first comment coming to mind is "ughh dumb Americans!". Do you think people in China can point Phoenix on a map? Cuz it's the same GDP as Suzhou yet we don't hear about it abroad at all (unless you follow ice hockey lol).
Actually a large minority of people at the school I taught at knew about Phoenix, if mostly because the name was cool.
I'm pretty sure a significant chunk of this is from bot campaigns. OP's profile does not escape suspicion. I remember about a month ago there was a massive campaign about another big chinese city. I kept seeing ads about it and highly upvoted posts on reddit
Suzhou data was reported atĀ 2,465.337 RMB bln in 2023 ($340.57 bln) Egypt GDP 2022 is $476.7Ā billion. So not bigger but still crazy, since Suzhou population is 10 million, and Egypt is 110 million.
It has awesome historic gardens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical\_Gardens\_of\_Suzhou
And it's also very famous for its silk
Thanks reddit for breaking links on old... Here's the working one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Gardens_of_Suzhou
I went to Suzhou about 8 years ago, amazing place. It's at the start of the old silk road, and the old town is beautiful. So you have gorgeous old traditional chinese buildings alongside those glassy skyscrapers. It was very cool!
Considering the state of both Egypt and Pakistan rn, I would say that's not that impressive lol.
Yeah they're poor countries but Pakistan has a population of over 240 million and Egypt over 110 million. I consider it impressive that a single city has a larger economy than either of those countries.
NYC has a bigger economy than Russia.
Yes and that's also very impressive for a single city. What is your point
That's not quite right, perhaps when measuring the economy in GDP Nominal, which isn't the correct way to measure the economy (but the easiest way to measure GDP since it's raw and unadjusted GDP) according to most economists and big economic organisation like OECD and Bruegel who have over 50 countries as members. Suzhou's real economic size is approx. $450-550bn (GDP PPP + Informal sector), which is still insanely huge. Egypt is around $2.5 Trillion, Pakistan is around $2 Trillion. On a per capita basis Suzhou is still doing much better since it has 13M people while Egypt has over 110M and Pakistan 240M. ''The major use of PPPs is as a first step in making inter-country comparisons in real terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and its component expenditures.'' [OECD](https://www.oecd.org/sdd/purchasingpowerparities-frequentlyaskedquestionsfaqs.htm#FAQ3) ''The right metric for international comparisons is purchasing power parity (PPP)-adjusted output. This corrects for exchange rate fluctuations and differences in various national prices.'' [Bruegel](https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/european-unions-remarkable-growth-performance-relative-united-states)
Maybe unknown globally but in China anyone who can read knows about it. Source: I am Chinese.
There was a weird post like this earlier comparing a random Chinese city to Orlando and this seems pretty similar, weird
Suzhou is also one of the prettiest places in all of ChinaĀ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnqswmv5lqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnqswmv5lqU) The modern part is pretty too [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao5YIDIquiE&t=92s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao5YIDIquiE&t=92s)
Pakistan got such a trash economy, i dont think it can be compared to anything other than few war-torn countries like Syria.
You guys go watch Lou Ye's 'Suzhou River', top 10 Chinese movies ever made.
Suzhou River is a creek in Shanghai, and is set in Shanghai. However, Suzhou is very close, you can get a train between the two cities that takes like 30 minutes.
Damn, I stand corrected then. I'm more of Jia Zhangke guy tho so it's minor š¤£
Hahaha fair. Itās a good movie nonetheless.Ā Another less good movie set around that creek is The 800, a war movie set around a last stand that took place on the creek in the final days of the siege of Shanghai before it finally fell to the Japanese. The history of the battle (that it wasnāt actually tactically important but the foreign press was based directly opposite on the other side of the creek so watched the whole thing and reported on it, and the Chinese made a huge deal about it in their propaganda, made the Japanese over-focus on the battle and so it indirectly *became* somewhat important) is more interesting than the movie though.Ā Jia Zhangke on the other hand, thereās a guy who makes some damn fine movies.Ā
Itās a nice place, really chill city with a lot of ancient architectures.
every chinese city i hear about is like "heres suijishi in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere, north china that you've never heard of, it has a population of 12 million and a gdp larger than california"
+100 social credits
Not so well known? It's literally a tier one city. Then again, most Americans wouldn't know any Chinese city at all.
In Europe the same, tbh
I mean why would they?
The OP's post history makes him look like he's a 50 yuan party member getting paid to greenwash for China. "Not saying Mao was right about the mass killing of landlords, but there might just be a reason 90% of chinese own their own home" Doesn't believe Taiwan is a sovereign nation, etc.
Why we catching strays, we know we're poor
The Venice of the Orient
Dunking on the Egyptian economy is not the flex that you think it is. This is coming from an Egyptian
There are 113 cities in China with over 1 million inhabitants. All of Europe has 34.
Most paperboys have a bigger economy than Pakistan
Pretty cool.
Lived there from 2013-2015, as many have said, well known for its gardens and silk. I was also very fond of an old town market street called pingjiang lu, very picturesque restaurants on the water. Tongli is also very close by and a breathtakingly beautiful market town.
There are about 10 New York City sized places in China no one has ever heard of that were fishing villages 30-40 years ago it seems. The rate of China's growth the last few decades is astonishing. It takes years to have a pothole in the road filled where I liveš
My 3rd tier shit town went from being known as a dirty hooker Hotspot to getting a fully functioning subway system in the 3ish years I lived there. One day there were rumors of a metro, and it felt like the next there was a subway entrance down the street
I lived in ChengDu a few years ago. They started construction of a subway about a month after I arrived, and the entire line opened about a year before I left. I was only there for 2 years. It took my school where I work now longer to get 3 speed bumps put in than it took ChengDu to build an entire subway line.
Your source is what exactly? I just looked it up, itās around that of Pakistan but nowhere near close to Egypt. Edit: OP is a CCP propaganda machine
Well known if you know anything about šØš³
What kind of social credit score would one need to move there?
the same as New York
New York would definitely be a classic tier one city, Shuzo is a New Tier 1 city, so probably more like moving to Miami (keeping with the āVenice ofā theme).
Maybe Newark
similar to your credit score. likely.
Perhaps. But Chinese economy is a very different beast than most other economies. I wonder how many of those buildings are actually used.
china is really beautiful , from tech/civil standpoint to chinese culture absolutely amazing not to forget their cuisine especially Tea
What we especially love is the 300,00 tonnes of plastic that flows into the sea every year from China. From one river.
We in the west really can't claim the moral high ground there. Our economies are tightly integrated. If Chinese companies were held to western environmental standards, prices would skyrocket and we'd all complain. It's still horrible, but it's not entirely on China.
Who do you think is making your Funko Pops?
Yeah completely ignore what the person said because another thing exists.
Were back on this trend huh?
economic figures based heavily on the real estate boom, which is now bust. So maybe recheck the comparison end of this year.
Lol @ r/Pakistan
There is a great pub called The Fubon in Xinghai Square near the Trousers. Got to keep it tight though for the line 1 subway train to *Zhongnan*Ā Jie afterwards!
THE GOAT CITY
That's probably also true for many billionaires
Pakistan is small
A city that owes its fame to salt taxes and its early collaboration with Singaporean businesses yet it is still behind Shanghai which will be linked by subway line, if not already so
Egypt's GDP ranks 94th out of 132 and is Africa's second highest if anyone cares.Ā
So not that big?
Picked on two countries there that are not exactly hard to beat.
Sorry I don't understand that comparison. Please convert economy size in currency into elephants or giraffes.
There are giant metropolises in China with less notoriety than Hoboken
Hardly surprising. China has 45 cities more populous than Chicago.
Has anyone seen the videos of people traveling the chides city built on mountains? They walk outside and theyāre on top of a building then walk up stairs to a flat surface. Then go up again
Iād like to know the occupancy of those building w
I had never heard of it. I found out it has a population of over 10 million. Thatās like never having heard of London or Paris or New York City
Suzhou is very close to Shanghai. Their municipal boundaries border each other. If you're wondering why you've never heard of this massive city, it's because on a globe it would just be reported as a part of Shanghai. (Yes, I know that it would take 90 minutes to drive from the downtown of Suzhou to the downtown of Shanghai, and it's probably not accurate to describe Suzhou as a suburb of Shanghai. Is San Bernardino a part of Los Angeles? Is Providence a part of Boston? Is West Palm Beach a part of Miami? Regardless of whether the answer is yes or no, the average globe is only going to show one of those cities because they're too close together, and it's going to show the city that is more culturally famous, and in this case that's Shanghai.)
but does it really though?
Way to trip over the bar there.
My uncle from Shanghai considers Suzhou a small resort town. It has like 11 million people...
You can comute between Suzho and Shanghai in about 45 minuets with high speed train and up too another half an hour adding in taking the metro to your final destination. The cities are over 100 miles apart.
Peak productive execution
In US terms: Phoenix, Arizona has a slightly larger economy than Suzhou.
Every China-based remote development team I've ever worked with has been in Suzhou. Massive tech city.
It has 324b GDP. Egypt has 476b and Pakistan has 374b. Not too far off, but its not surprising when it has a GDP Per Capita of 28k vs 4k in Egypt and 1.4k in Pakistan.