Chinese President Xi Jinping called for more people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States on Wednesday.Xi made the remarks while meeting wi...
It could absolutely end up being that, but an increased amount of even just social media communications between Chinese and Western people probably wouldn’t be a horrible idea.
That would be horrendous because the people with social media access and intent are overwhelmingly urbanites from big cities…
And, frankly, the big Chinese cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, the Greater Bay Area) make the big American cities look pitiful. They deserve accolades for their urban planning in the same way that top European cities like Amsterdam, Vienna, Barcelona, Copenhagen do, but have the dynamism of a large city like New York City, London, or Paris. Of note is that China only achieved this at a population scale that boggles the mind (the Greater Bay Area has a population of almost 90 million and is almost triple the size of the New York City metropolitan area),
The smaller cities (Jilin, Lanzhou, Luoyang, Qiqihar) with populations of less than 5 million people aren’t quite there yet, but most are improving rapidly.
Some Chinese cities are in systemic decline (e.g. Qiqihar) due to internal migration to the big cities, but this hasn’t really had the same effects on the city as similar migrations have had in the US (e.g. Detroit). These cities are more likely to be represented in various critiques of government investment, but as a policy China’s governments seeks to reduce income disparity and so overinvest into these struggling cities.
More social media communication is bad for the US (because it’ll sow internal discontent) and bad for China (because it’ll push the idea of “Chinese superiority” over “dirty American cities” and stagnate progress). China has a lot of progress left to make (as can be clearly seen by the urbanization rate, GDP numbers, rural/urban inequality, and lack of global cultural influence), but in terms of urban planning and urban quality of life it compares extremely favourably to North America.
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It could absolutely end up being that, but an increased amount of even just social media communications between Chinese and Western people probably wouldn’t be a horrible idea.
That would be horrendous because the people with social media access and intent are overwhelmingly urbanites from big cities…
And, frankly, the big Chinese cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, the Greater Bay Area) make the big American cities look pitiful. They deserve accolades for their urban planning in the same way that top European cities like Amsterdam, Vienna, Barcelona, Copenhagen do, but have the dynamism of a large city like New York City, London, or Paris. Of note is that China only achieved this at a population scale that boggles the mind (the Greater Bay Area has a population of almost 90 million and is almost triple the size of the New York City metropolitan area),
The smaller cities (Jilin, Lanzhou, Luoyang, Qiqihar) with populations of less than 5 million people aren’t quite there yet, but most are improving rapidly.
Some Chinese cities are in systemic decline (e.g. Qiqihar) due to internal migration to the big cities, but this hasn’t really had the same effects on the city as similar migrations have had in the US (e.g. Detroit). These cities are more likely to be represented in various critiques of government investment, but as a policy China’s governments seeks to reduce income disparity and so overinvest into these struggling cities.
More social media communication is bad for the US (because it’ll sow internal discontent) and bad for China (because it’ll push the idea of “Chinese superiority” over “dirty American cities” and stagnate progress). China has a lot of progress left to make (as can be clearly seen by the urbanization rate, GDP numbers, rural/urban inequality, and lack of global cultural influence), but in terms of urban planning and urban quality of life it compares extremely favourably to North America.