The_seventh_shape says:

I have lived in China for the last 7 years and will give my 2 cents. I think that R. and others here, including some who claim to live in China, have presented a overly rosey-eyed picture of China and a more nuanced view is called for.

Architecture and urban design is an interest of mine and I have explored numerous Chinese cities. Things can look impressive from a distance in those drone videos but there is an element of Ptomkin village here: when you get up close you see that in many cases, buildings are built to a low quality compared to other countries and workmanship is lacking in a lot of cases. You’d see a building that seems to be made of stone or brick but when you get close you realise it’s just a facade, with thin slices of stone put on steel frames or over plaster. Or you’d see a flowerbed and you’d get close and realise they are plastic flowers. Or you’d see a fancy skyscraper but getting closer you’d see it’s unoccupied (some of these eventually get occupied). Footpaths are generally of a very low quality in Chinese cities. They typically don’t cement down the stone tiles they make the footpaths with, and then because ebikes routinely drive on the footpaths the tiles get easily broken.

In Europe it is normal to see stone and brick buildings that are over 100 years old, but it’s very rare to find buildings of that age and stature in China. They rarely build with lasting materials like stone and brick. Almost the only stone buildings that one sees in China are ones built by Europeans over a century ago, like on the Bund in Shanghai or those built by the Russians in Dalian and Harbin, even though China has plenty of stone mines. They just prefer to build things cheaply and quickly. Chinese, and many Asians more generally, have a different attitude and less scruples about fakery, for instance, Chinese women routinely use beauty filters on their dating app pictures and think there’s nothing wrong with it, while Chinese men routinely dye their grey hair.

In Chinese cities they often do not maintain their buildings well and do not build them to last. I will give an example. When I first came to China I was wondering why the paint seems to peel off the buildings so often, even buildings that are new. Even in my apartment I noticed that the paint would flake off the walls with slight impact. Then I found out why: they don’t use primer before they paint!! Or perhaps they use inferior paint-and-primer. And this is typical of the Chinese attitude: get the job done as quickly and cheaply as possible; why use primer when it will cost more money and time and by the time the paint starts flaking off the apartments we’ll have the money in the bank.

There are a lot of very nice cities in China and also a lot of industrial hellholes, but I wouldn’t say China’s best cities outshine other countries’. They are not better or worse but just different. Ron’s article hyped up the urban planning but there is good and bad here. Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province for instance, is the worst planned city I’ve ever seen: in the city centre at every intersection there was railings preventing you from crossing the roads. You are forced to go either under a tunnel or over a footbridge to cross. Imagine doing that every city block! It is a city planned for cars, not pedestrians, and this is a common bias in Chinese city planning. There are cities in China with some wondrously designed areas, impressive skyscrapers, and things built on a massive scale. It should be noted though that most of these are designed by the big Western architecture firms like SOM and Zaha Hadid.

Also, though crime is relatively low in China, there are very high rates of PARKING crime, as I would call it, with people routinely parking their cars along the curb at zebra crossings and the authorities doing nothing about it.

You get the full range of stuff here from tasteful classical Chinese elegance to the tackiness of buildings covered with blinking, incoherent lighting displays. It’s rarely boring. The transportation infrastructure is often impressive but there are negatives too. For instance there are onerous security protocols that create bottlenecks in metro systems and train stations, for instance, all passengers must put their bags through a scanner and then walk through a scanner. Further, the high population density leads to very crowded buses and trains, and people can be loud on public transport. Luckily taxis are cheap.

Contrary to what the article suggested, Chinese university campuses and schools are not so attractive looking for the most part. There are no grand old university campuses like one finds in Europe or the US. There’s almost nothing that can be dated back beyond a century. There are some beautiful campuses and the best I’ve seen is Xiamen University.

Ron’s article also suggests that Chinese cities seem really futuristic. I’m not sure what people mean when they say this; maybe they are referring to how you do everything through your smart phone over here. I don’t necessarily see this as a good thing however. If you happen to lose your phone you can’t function and are in big trouble. I heard of one man who lost his phone and then committed suicide. I can relate, as I left my phone behind in a taxi once and felt seized by panic, though luckily I got it back later that day. I don’t necessarily see this ‘futurism’ as progress. It’s overdependence on technology. People here look at their phones way too much and about 50% of people who you will see here in parks or at urban lakes stare at their phones WHILE WALKING, often watching a drama or silly tiktok videos instead of enjoying the often beautiful surroundings.

Let me say a little about Xingjiang. I agree with Ron that the stories of genocide are most likely total rubbish. That said, things are not fine and dandy in Xingjiang and it’s clear that there is a serious security operation going on there. I know one American who is an adventurous traveller who went exploring there. He said there are certain places where foreigners cannot go. He tried to travel to a traditional Uyghur town in the far West and he had to pass 4 police checkpoints. He got through 3 but on the 4th was driven back by police to the train station. He saw hundreds of PLA men at one train station. He also said he took a bus trip that got stopped at checkpoints 14 times. At these checkpoints, all the Uyghurs on board were checked for their ID, but not the Han Chinese. As a foreigner he was questioned at these checkpoints and at one was kept for over an hour, as the bus waited. The bus journey took over 40 hours because of these delays. I don’t say this in judgment and I’m sure the CIA would just love to stir up trouble there given the slightest opening, like they did in Chechnya for the Russians.

Life in China is getting better in many ways. 7 years ago when I arrived in my city it had one metro line under construction. Now it has a fourth line opening in a few months time. Many new recreation facilities have opened, new malls and shining office towers, and old temples and buildings have been renovated. Some of the old-timers however-foreigners who have been living here for 20 years plus-miss the old days. They reminisce fondly about the Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin era when China was more wild and fun, albeit more corrupt, and you could ‘do whatever you damn well pleased.’