Chinese cities

SOTTREADER

The Living Force
It's hard to know where to start as it's a bit dizzying trying to contextualise the phenomenon of Chinese cities. China has quite a lot of cities that it makes me wonder how our western cities compare e.g. London, Paris, New York etc.

I'm going to use this to mostly post videos of some of the cities, I will try to be methodical. I will exclude the well known cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou i.e. the so-called Tier 1+ cities.

Let's focus on so called Tier 1 cities, not quite at the level of Tier 1+ but close enough. On this list we have supposedly 15 cities in this group which are
  • Changsha
  • Chengdu
  • Chongqing
  • Dongguan
  • Hangzhou
  • Nanjing
  • Ningbo
  • Qingdao
  • Shenyang
  • Suzhou
  • Tianjin
  • Wuhan - of covid fame
  • Wuxi
  • Xi'an
  • Zhengzhou
Out of the above, how many have people heard of? Anyone visited any?
 
Wuhan - Tier 1 city

Let's start with the city made famous by covid. Seemed like a back water place to a western mind with locals eating weird foods that resulted in a global pandemic, supposedly.

Location

Screenshot_20220814_222531.jpg

Population - 8.5 million people (perhaps more?)

Wuhan's economic output of 1.56 trillion yuan in 2020 was nearly equivalent to that of Romania.

So, 8.5 million people live in this city and it has an economic output similar to Romania, the country. Perhaps not a back water place then? Let's see how it looks like

 
Changsha - Tier 1 city

Capital city of Hunan province with a population of 5m though seen estimates of up to 10m.

Location

Screenshot_20220814_225023.jpg

Economy and "hometown" of Chairman Mao.


Changsha made it to the club of cities having a GDP of 1 trillion yuan (about $154 billion) in 2017 and ranked 13th in terms of GDP last year among all Chinese cities. It stands out among other inland cities in China, currently taking the 15th spot in terms of GDP.

There are a lot of tags attached to Changsha, including Mango TV, Yuelu Academy, internet-popular city and the hometown of Chairman Mao Zedong.


 
Here is how a friend described Chinese cities to me. He visits various cities in China on business about every month. USA, there are maybe 5 or so big cities with lots of skyscrapers. In any of these, it might take 15 minutes to move through the densest (skyscraper) portion at a fast clip (light traffic). In large Chinese cities, it takes close to an hour to move through the skyscraper section at a fast clip, and there might be 50 -100 cities of this size there.
 
Hey SOTTREADER, do you have a working hypothesis here? Like is there an angle you have that you could share? ….why?
 
Hey SOTTREADER, do you have a working hypothesis here? Like is there an angle you have that you could share? ….why?
My working hypothesis is that China is way more developed than your average Western mind would think.

It seems like an alien land, some of the design of the cities have no comparison elsewhere. For example can you give me an equivalent of Chongqing?

The infrastructure, the high speed rail, the airports, the public facilities all are a level ahead. How they treat their old, how safe the country is, the community values etc.

It's all so alien to my mind at least. They have whole cities with a GDP the size of some European countries!!!

I can't help but think that whilst we decay here in the West having reached peak pathology, they are going in the exact opposite direction. The future is bright for them, that's for sure.

I'm going through each of the tier 1 cities in turn as in looking at each I'm learning something new about the country. 😜
 
My working hypothesis is that China is way more developed than your average Western mind would think.

It seems like an alien land, some of the design of the cities have no comparison elsewhere. For example can you give me an equivalent of Chongqing?

The infrastructure, the high speed rail, the airports, the public facilities all are a level ahead. How they treat their old, how safe the country is, the community values etc.

It's all so alien to my mind at least. They have whole cities with a GDP the size of some European countries!!!

I can't help but think that whilst we decay here in the West having reached peak pathology, they are going in the exact opposite direction. The future is bright for them, that's for sure.

I'm going through each of the tier 1 cities in turn as in looking at each I'm learning something new about the country. 😜
I agree with your sentiments. China, for Westerners, for myself, it's a bit of a mystery - a bit alien - the language, the customs, the size of the population.

Since 2000 the Chinese middle-class has gone from like 3% to 30% or so in 2020. That's hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty. They are the factory of the world - Real wealth and economic power is what you can produce, both goods and commodities - not having fake GDP numbers and printing of unlimited amounts of money.
 
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