from what i've gathered i'd say china is basically as good as most developed countries, with the quirk that it has a fucking bonkers huge population and unlike a lot of the other high-population-density countries the population is really concentrated in the cities rather than the whole country just being a single continous shanty town.
And as a result of both the absolute size of the population, and the fact that they live in high-density and quite new cities (and a lot of infrastucture in general is basically from the past 100 years if even that), it means that you get things like an extensive high speed train network and whatnot.

So it's like if france had 12 Parises and a fairly repressive government. Though it should be noted that chinese politics seems significantly less terrible on a local level, and at this point the rest of the world has started catching up on the whole dystopian government thing..

Certain aspects of life are bad in China.

In the US, there was a failed conman and a failed reality TV character (same person) who campaigned on making the country worse but claimed it'd make the country better (while not actually expecting to get elected), and people decided that he should be president. They elected him again recently.

The alternative party seems to campaign on "Let's make the country less worse and more slowly". Anyone who campaigns on making the country better doesn't make it far in politics.

So yeah, it makes sense that life in the US has been getting objectively worse.

Yeah sure, unless you hold a picture of Winnie the Pooh in public. You'll be arrested and imprisoned/disappeared for life... Or say anything about tiananmen square. You'll get 7 years but for sure will be disappeared shortly before release. That's the quality of life Lemmy users crave 😂😂😂

Edit: BRING ON THE DOWNVOTES YOU HYPOCRITICAL AUTHORITARIAN WORSHIPPING TANKIES

Yeah but can they own a bazooka-flamethrower combo or hurl racist slurs in public whenever they want? Checkmate.

Google the term “996 work culture”, or “migrant worker rights” and see if you want to stick to that statement afterwards.

The catch is that you voted for it. You know the stereotype that Americans are dumb? Well...

Watch some tourism videos of what China is like today and prepare to be envious

I was wondering also. Maybe you need to ride really in the center of them?

Yes, this is china, people drive wherever they like

Besides Hong Kong, they drive on the left I think

They drive on the right. Chinese traffic is kind of controlled chaos and people park wherever their car fits, but at least there's still some semblance of order unlike some other countries where it really is just a free-for-all. Road rule enforcement is basically done entirely by fixed cameras (which are all clearly marked on every navigation app), and in between those anything goes. I've never seen a cop pull anyone over in the nearly 3 months I've been here.

By contrast, Hong Kong is quite different. They drive on the left (a legacy of British colonisation) and drivers are much more predictable. The road rules are more strictly enforced and it generally feels much less chaotic.

Europe isn't one country, and there is differences between places on which colour was picked.

The Netherlands was an early adopter and they picked red. So countries close to the NL (like Germany and Flanders in Belgium) and countries inspired by the Netherlands also defaulted to red.

Denmark went with blue, which is also in turn inspiring some countries to go with blue instead of red.

France seems to have gone with green, and by extention I've seen quite a few green bikepaths in the Francophone sphere. (Though Paris seems to have gone with purple for some of its paths?)

It doesn't really matter which colour is picked, as long as it is distinctive colour that clearly communicates that this is a space for cyclists.