As an American, I want to call this propaganda, but this man doesn't feel like a shill.
I want your reaction to this video, so take a look (I'll summarize below if you don't have time). The 11 minutes is worth the watch to get a view inside China that you won't get anywhere else.
[Warning: A few instances of language]
Here are the 7 ways China has gotten more advanced since 2019, according to this gent:
1. Automation:
You go into the factories and there are robots everywhere ... In the US, we think of China as a cheap-labor country, with them just throwing people at everything and them just being really cheap. But the reality is that they're automating and they're putting robots everywhere they can at the same time. That's a huge change.
2. Electric Vehicles:
30% to 40% of cars on the road are fully electric. And it's not just Tesla, but there are dozens of other Chinese brands you have never heard of that are selling cars as cheap as $10,000 - not like [crap] cars you know, not like a tricycle - but like a full-blown sedan for like $10,000. And they're everywhere.
3. They fixed their air.
10 years ago ... you couldn't see from one side of the airport to the other side of the airport because there was smog in the building ... it's significantly better. It's kind of an amazing point, because in the US we think of China as a smog-filled country with no environmental regulations or anything like that. They fixed the air.
4. People are acting "more civilized."
He rambles in this part, so the short version is people used to have no manners and now they do, and there is better infrastructure like public restrooms. This follows sustained campaigns to promote manners. He says automation with China's state-controlled version of Apple Pay keeps swindlers from being able to scam him (like taxi drivers).
To change the culture, that's much more difficult. But they did it.
5. There are less foreigners.
Kind of a no brainer because of Covid lockdowns, but it's interesting to note that most of the foreigners are Russian (we know who China will side with in WW3!).
6. Business logistics and e-commerce is "significantly more advanced" than the United States now.
I visited 8 different factories ... [they] are opening their own e-commerce store and plugging directly into the Chinese equivalent of TikTok and the Chinese equivalent of Amazon and the factories are super automated ... it's not just the technology but the speed of business and the way business works feels significantly more advanced in China that in the United States.]
7. The lockdowns weren't as dystopian as we think and the average person enjoys more freedom from government persecution than we think.
It just feels like I'm stepping into the future.
His point here is not so much that the dystopian stuff wasn't happening, because it was...
...but that the United States was nearly as bad in some cases, didn't recover well, and has declined overall since 2019.
I don't know what the trajectory of China will be over 5 years ... but it is very jarring and very powerful to feel how different and how better this country is 5 years later and how much worse my home country [America] feels over the same 5 years. It's a mess.
We keep hearing the lines:
- "But China is gonna collapse at any second!"
- "Our tech is so much more advanced!"
And yet ... I see China putting up cities in Africa overnight while we're arguing about whether a boy can use the girls' locker room.
Do you feel like America has advanced and is better off since 2019? Do you see new homes, tech, products, stores, cities, and culture being created everywhere? Or are we just on autopilot as we decline?
Leave your thoughts in the comments. Genuinely interested to see what y'all think of this man's perspective.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
