105
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Look up a video in Shenzhen or Chongqing. Everything looks 2 decades out, and the giant crystal skyscrapers light up different colors. Sometimes the whole thing is a TV.

China surpassed USAmerica in GDP already, but it doesn't look close to tied in development and advanced technologies.

The trains there go hundreds of miles in less than an hour, you could commute across the country every day.

Meanwhile in America the "middle class" is struggling to have some walls and a roof. Record debt and crumbling infrastructure. How is all of this ignored and not talked about everywhere?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top new old
[-] [email protected] 91 points 2 years ago

There’s actually nothing in those towers, they’re just big empty buildings with a bunch of led panels on,

anyway I was late to work today bc the bridge on my commute collapsed

[-] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago

The virgin Chinese ghost cities vs the chad US zombie infrastructure

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 81 points 2 years ago
[-] [email protected] 61 points 2 years ago

TFW you will never live in the commie light show tower doomjak

[-] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago

I live in the imperial core so I have to settle for leaving my monitor on and embracing it's glow

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

Obelisk of light if Kane wasn't obsessed with Tiberium

[-] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago
[-] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago

dw they turn it off at later times in the night, this is just for the party anniversary

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 56 points 2 years ago

Okay, but have you considered China = bad

[-] [email protected] 53 points 2 years ago

That's a perspective I overlooked! Have you considered writing for The Economist?

[-] [email protected] 40 points 2 years ago

My parents aren’t rich enough angery

[-] [email protected] 47 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The driving narrative is still ghost cities and assorted racism. The idea of a China as a leading tech hub with massive modern planned cities isn't really something that exists in the American noosphere.

Like six companies control everything 90% of Americans see, all the media coming in. Where would people even learn about this shit? Even if they knew someone who had personally been there and said it was cool, that's one voice against the hegemonic false reality of the Demiurge.

[-] [email protected] 43 points 2 years ago

Every single US city outside of maybe NYC (and that's a very big maybe) is a complete dump compared with some no-name tier 3 Chinese city. Like, imagine comparing somewhere like Ningbo and Wuhan to Houston and Miami. Honestly, most of East Asia blows the US out of the water, and SEA is catching up too. There will be a time when cities like Hanoi, Bangkok, and Jakarta also surpass US cities, if they haven't done so already. The US really is that much of a dump and it's only going to get worse. It's just that Americans soyface over Japan and South Korea because they're the good honorary white Asians. They don't even give Taiwan enough credit because Taiwan is too Chinese, which I guess is appropriate with Taiwan being a Chinese island and all.

[-] [email protected] 40 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Houston is hell on earth. 80 square miles of unplanned concrete in a swamp, with no life, no hint of earthly nature. Gaia has fled that place, god has condemned it. When storms come it floods, when winter comes it freezes, and in all seasons it's denizens beg for the sweet release of death.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago

soying out over taiwan is only for the REALLY egregious liberals. you have to have drunken the liberal kool-aid hard to even have an opinion on taiwan i've personally found.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

IMO Taipei doesn't look nearly as new or cool as the likes of Shanghai, Tokyo, or Seoul. I visited Taipei a few years ago and my first impression was that it was like Shanghai was 15 years ago. Everything was just very worn down. Infrastructure, buildings, and such just looked old and grimey.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

That's what I've heard from most people who have recently gone there. But we're not comparing Taipei to real cities like Shanghai. We're comparing Taipei to dumps like LA.

Downtown Taipei vs Downtown LA

Yeah, this is kinda cheating because the LA video has Skid Row, but as even the LA video admits, "it's actually very sad to see downtown LA like this. Much of it is rundown and I hope it has a brighter future."

[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

In fairness to Taipei, it looks older because most of it was built before Shanghai and unlike Tokyo there's less need to rebuild everything after 30 years. Also in fairness to Taipei, it's still a very safe city, especially compared to anywhere in the US.

[-] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Some of the cities look like that, but it's a huge country and a lot of it is just really normal and of course the rural areas are still pretty old-fashioned. In my opinion it's still consistently better than the places I've been in the US though.

It's just going to get funnier as time goes on and China's infrastructure and transit only continues to improve. Americans can have fun laughing at the "shoddy chinese cities" they see in some tiktok video while their own bridges and subways are falling apart, lmao.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

My uncle is from the US, when I talked about the cities he said that "the Chinese are using up all the resources!"

I was surprised, I had never heard that before. I didn't have a response, what could I have I said? I don't even know how he got to that conclusion, something about ghost cities and poor utilization of resources because of no oversight I guess. Even though he decried planned economies a few sentences before.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

Ah well, you see, if the resources of the colonial periphery are being used by the USA and it's hegemons it's good and efficient, if it's being used by China or the third world, it's wasteful.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 36 points 2 years ago

U don't get it those are evil cyberpunk skyscrapers unlike our business towers

[-] [email protected] 34 points 2 years ago

Because China is evil and satanic and those buildings and cities are fake, sweetie.

[-] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago

Well, I see videos with artistically lit-up skyscrapers, drone light shows, and modern transit quite regularly, but that's because I follow people that post that sort of thing. Sometimes you'll see this stuff on reddit-logo , but the comments will of course mention how China is authoritarian. smuglord

[-] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago

Sometimes you'll see this stuff on , but the comments will of course mention how China is authoritarian.

This bullshit will eventually backfire in terms of people eventually saying "ok, we want that" and then ending up with a fascist theocratic country instead that's 100x worse and wondering what the hell went wrong.

[-] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

I already know many people that believe dictatorships are efficient because China

[-] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

Precisely why the propaganda is fucking dangerous. Meanwhile everywhere else where we're trying to get similar systems built all campaigning is for MORE democracy, not less. I have to assume the intent among the ruling class is to genuinely hurt democracy because they know full well that communist structuring is more democratic, not less democratic. Anything that hurts "democracy" actually actively hurts movement towards what we advocate for. The average person just doesn't understand that because of all the propaganda about socialist systems but it's true.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yeaaa this is why I get pissed off when communists say it's not that important to argue about China or the USSR as long as they understand Marxist theory

The Soviets built the world's 2nd greatest superpower the world has ever seen in a little more than half a century and they still managed to fuck it up because they were the first to ever do it and had no future example

China has constantly learned a lot from their mistakes and have improved upon them

How well would a socialist state function if they believed all the propaganda against the USSR and China? They would never be able to even get a single city functional

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

I heard a white boomer say something like this recently. They will admit that China is doing well, but they think that it’s because of authoritarianism. What they don’t understand is that this is the authoritarianism of the working class.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

Well at least the trains run on time! frothingfash (they do not in fact run on time)

[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If you ever see something cool on Reddit In China the top comments will be some flavor of: -this is fake because China lies

-if it's real it's secretly evil. That cool building is powered by 6.78quintillion victims of communism

-its fake because China just like made it up. This is my favorite because... So what.

[-] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago

Here in Europe we don't build new buildings, but instead reuse ones from around the 1960s (Marshall Plan and all that). To me it's always screamed "we're too poor to build new stuff". And you know, old buildings can only get older, at some point you're gonna have to make new ones...

it's like we like living in the past it's so unreal.

[-] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago

That’s how I feel about transit infrastructure in North America. We can’t be bothered to spend the required money or effort to solve transit issues properly, but we accept ever-higher costs for constantly having to maintain and build car infrastructure because you can always kick that can down the road, so to speak.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

It's pathetic. I was in Minneapolis when the I-35 bridge just up and collapsed. Majorish city, population of millions, I-35 is one of the country's major transit cooridors, and this giant fucking bridge just folds one day.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Having buildings that can last long term is mostly a good thing (The 1920s construction in Vienna for example is great.) But I can't imagine that something thrown up in 3 months in 1952 is going to be particularly well built.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

Here in Europe we don't build new buildings

This is a 100% spot on take. I live in one of the supposedly "richest cities of Europe" and every damn building was constructed between 1950 and 1970 (much thanks to the Royal Air Force bomber command).

Nobody builds any new shit, it's just the rent goes up and the cars in front of the buildings get bigger and bigger. I guess that's progress or something.

[-] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago

Because they'd feel bad. Burgerland is supposed to be exceptional and my-hero is supposed to be the unique special Main Character to guide us there.

[-] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago

Propaganda isn't just about what you show, it's also about what you don't show.

What Americans don't know can't radicalize them

[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

"futuristic Chinese cities" is a genre that trends on TikTok once in a while, but that's the closest I've seen it get to the mainstream.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago

The trains there go hundreds of miles in less than an hour, you could commute across the country every day.

Oh yeah sure, maybe they have all that, but at what cost, mhh?

[-] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago

The ticket prices are relatively inexpensive, and lots of people ride the train. It's horrible.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago

I enjoy freedom a hell of a lot more than riding on a superfast train ancap-good

[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

Some months ago I spoke with a petite bourgeois white boomer who didn’t even know that bullet trains existed. I had to explain them to him, that they’re like airplanes that fly only a few feet off the ground (unlike many Burgerlanders I have used bullet trains many times).

It’s not just centenarians in congress who think that the internet is a series of tubes you can throw in the back of your pickup truck. Many many Americans, including members of the bourgeoisie, are willfully unaware of how far places like China are pulling ahead of them.

[-] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Psssh. Who needs forward-looking architecture? Here in Burgerland every new public building has to be made in the same faux Neoclassical style. Literally, Trump signed an EO mandating this style and afaik Biden has never rolled it back.

I hate Neoclassical architecture so much. And I hate it even more because it seems everyone around me actually likes it and when anyone tries to build anything even remotely modern it gets shot down by white NIMBY types who say “lEt’S dO GrEeK cOlUmNs”

[-] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It is overdone, even in revivalist architecture. Where's our Neogothic revival? I want spiky buildings!

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago
[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

There’s this one video I found ages ago that’s just a three hour compilation of someone driving around Chongqing. The traffic does seem pretty awful but goddamn. They’re in the year 3000 and we’re routinely bulldozing the homeless camps in my amerikkka city. How people are not more radicalized here I still don’t understand

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
105 points (100.0% liked)

askchapo

23013 readers
151 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try [email protected] if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS