Just a walk in a random big city in China reveals how fast they are progressing. The speed of things changing is ridiculous. In almost every field they are getting better. And fast. Thats what you can achieve when your country has 40 years of mass production experience. The thing I hope most for is that China gets its own high performing chips so that companies like Nvidia really get a competitor.
If you check my post history, I kept encouraging HN posters to go to China to see for themselves. The vast majority of commenters here have never been to a China or have never been recently. It’ll change how they see China instantly.
The problem with many HN commentators on China is that they view China through a western news propaganda filter. Therefore, they think China must be stealing or cheating to get ahead. If they go see for themselves, the moment they step off the plane, they’ll see that major Chinese cities are 5-10 years ahead of any US city. In other words, China is leading in many areas, not stealing or cheating. They have no reason to steal when they’re leading already.
This video by a guy who used to live in China and returned to Shenzhen really surprised me . It's incredible to see how some Chinese cities are today. So many electric cars, incredible metros, drone delivery and more.
I was just in Beijing, and the electric cars are real, like teslas but with fewer features to keep costs down (which is fine honestly). The traffic was still bad, maybe even worse, and the metro network, greatly expanded since I left in 2016, was super crowded even off peak (they could build 2X the lines and still not go past demand!). Alipay worked mostly and I didn’t need to use cash once (like before, when I had to pay 20k 3 months rent with a lot of 100 RMB bills!), the convenience stores all had self checkout, all the grocery stores to, the McDonald’s has take out lockers… I didn’t see any drones or self driving cars there, but I’ve used latter at least in SF that it wouldn’t turn my head.
I’m still not exactly in love with it, I was happy to get back to Seattle (too crowded and the pace of life was a bit hectic, I’m getting old), but the change was definitely there, especially compared to my first trip to Beijing in 1999.
You don’t really see much if China through the western media, so I don’t really get that western propaganda at all. CNN just doesn’t talk about China enough to provide any picture of it (sort of like those “I don’t think of you at all meme”). I lived in Beijing for 9 years (2007-2016) and did 6 months languages study in 2002, my first visit being in 1999. There were of course scam artists back then and I’ve gotten scammed a few times (eg an original iPhone repair that I didn’t watch close enough). I don’t think those people exist much anymore in 2025, compared to 2008.
The face thing is still annoying to me and the GFW frustrates me to no end (no, VPN to get around it don’t grow on trees). However, compared to the crap going on in America China is looking very appealing at this point. Of course, my view of China is biased by being mostly Beijing, if you visit southern cities they are much more organized and nicer (I haven’t been to any other city than BJ since 2015 or so). I urge anyone visiting China to consider skipping Beijing.
The material engineering for advanced chip and jet turbine production are the two things that China has had to build from scratch, so it will take it a bit longer to reach parity in the west. They get either performance or price down right now, but not both at the same time. Maybe 5 or 10 years? Everything else they have the engineering skill to advance quickly.
