China poured more concrete in 2023-2025 than the US has throughout its entire history. China creates and consumes an order of magnitude more energy, and in an increasingly sustainable and cost-effective manner. China has largely moved towards internal market sufficiency, with internal demand outstripping external imports.
I'd be interested in a rebuttal piece too, because I don't necessarily want reality to be what it is. But it is, and it is.
The purpose of a thing is what it does. If Western ideals condone and actively fund atrocities like what's happening in Gaza, while failing to match the infrastructural pace of auth. regimes like China, it's only logical that people will gravitate towards the model that works.
For instance, California's Intercity High-Speed Rail Commission was created by the California legislature in 1993 (before my parents got married) to develop a plan that was to begin construction in 2000.
32 years later, it's still not done, yet China has built nearly 50,000 km of HSR in less than 20 years. The differences are as blatant as that between oranges and orangutans.
Western ideals will be less supported every year, if they don’t find a way to prove that they’re actually better. Right now, they’re not proving themselves, as people are just not seeing progress in terms of QoL in their daily lives. There were big jumps every decade, however an average 30 year old hasn’t felt much in the past 10-15 years. Things just feel like they’re same or worse than before, and there’s no sign of improvement while everyone is slowly getting angry and finding a scapegoat.
What does Western ideals even mean today? Only lesson I've learned about those ideals over the last 24 years is that it means killing millions of civilians.
> China creates and consumes an order of magnitude more energy
I'm gonna need a source for that one.
Best source I found quickly was Wikipedia, with 2023 data, showing China at about 2.5 times the US. That's surprising to me, but it's not an order of magnitude.
China's national unemployment rate was reported at 5.0% in June 2025 and 5.1% in July 2025.
Unemployment rate for youth (16- to 24-year-olds) in China ticked up to 17.8% in July . The US youth unemployment rate in the U.S. was 10.8 percent in July 2025.
Sure, and their real estate sector is shaky, their domestic investment model (and their foreign policy wrt trade and subsidy) has some real sustainability questions, it's not perfect but they're absolutely blitzing. Even if the growth plateaued now they'd eclipse the western world for the next century easily.
That's not any worse than big chunks of Europe. Surprisingly, it turns out that in a country with a strong social safety net, unemployment tends to run a tad higher than in places where if you don't work, you starve.
Building in advance of demand is something the US should do a lot more of. Find a >10 year old story about a Chinese ghost city, then Google current population. It'll be full.
Where I live, they build a four-lane highway, then immediately after completing it, they start renovations on the same highway to expand it into a six-lane highway.
While the U.S. has Eminent Domain, although China's version seems to be more impactful (displacing 1.3 million people for the Three Gorges Dam).
"Even China's population of 1.4 billion would not be enough to fill all the empty apartments littered across the country, a former official said on Saturday, in a rare public critique of the country's crisis-hit property market."
Now, housing gets old, people upgrade, so that supply will eventually be soaked up.
But the debt overhang on local governments and indivudal Chinese is the killer. They've built up several years of housing supply and now get to pay for it all while it stays empty for a few years - plus the value is dropping.
It's a massive drag on the economy as all that investment is locked up and unproductive.
China has a 240-hour visa-free transit policy for foreigners. Most major cities have direct flights—come and see China! (Remember to download Alipay in advance and link your Visa card.)
That's good info, thanks. I've been studying Chinese (Mandarin/Simplified) for about 2 years now, just as something to do on the bus for fun. It would be cool to go visit some day, maybe once my listening skills get up to an intermediate level.
I went to China in 2019, and they scanned my iris... yeah...
At an airport, there was a sign that said "Stand in front of the camera and we'll tell you the way to your gate.". It scanned my face, and on the screen it showed me my name (I guess to make sure it's the correct person), my gate, and how to walk there. I never consented to this commercial use...
That's almost certainly available in a public database in China, FYI. I got to speak at a cool event in Shenzhen in 2019 and the gates automatically face (and maybe iris?) recognized for entry -- I never 'got scanned' consciously, but they worked great first try.
As far as I know, face-recognition tech is illegal in law-abiding countries.
Although it's probably mostly a legal impediment, I can imagine if the authorities spotted an event and need to track a suspect, they can put all the footage into a system and it will return a sequence of videos/angles in which the suspect was seen.
Are you not familiar with China's relentless obsession with education and excellence? The cutthroat competition in business, the insane persistence in long-term planning and execution, the vast land of rich treasure underground, the emoumous long history of singular view of history and ancestry?
All these are traits of greatness.
And they have the brutal struggle from external invasion and internal turmoil since 1800s, those hard time breed generations of strong man, men who not only endure physical hardership, intellectual struggles, and spiritual torment, they embrace it, treat them as enjoyable and rewarding. They not only are instant in action, they are also ruthless in reflection. They dire to challenge the strongest coalition of power when they were just gained independence, they are also totally ok to subdue to the same super power when they decide so, without much of a mental conflicting, while still maintaining a unwavering commitment to greatness beyond anyone else's imagination.
China is bound to be the overlord of the nations on earth. That or it vanquish itself in its pursuit of that destiny.
Better yet is to book a plane ticket. I haven’t been in China since ~2015 and already back then it felt inevitably advanced. I’m hoping to go back soon to see the future.
I'd be interested to see something with more detail and citations. Or maybe even a rebuttal piece.