Sounds on the edge of propaganda but still an interesting update on the state of China in 2024. China is transforming fast and Chongqing in the inner country may indeed be a good place to start.
With time, China is looking more and more like Hong Kong and Singapore. No surprise there although these two cities where I have spent a lot of time are not really my cup of tea. Soulless shopping malls with no history or a highly curated one. Overcrowded metropolises from which "escape" is impossible. Not that it matters much since nobody really wants to get out. Shopping and eating. Eating and shopping...
But that's a Westerner way of looking at China. For a Chinese, the key is that 40 years ago the country was miserable, not anymore. Here China looks like Japan in the early 1970s. Another decade and China can become the technological marvel of the world as Japan was 10 years later. As for pollution, China is likewise on the right path. Again, same trajectory as Japan. Heavily polluted in the 1960s. Remember the horrors of the Minamata Bay with it's mercury pollution? 20 years later in the early 1990s, Japan was "clean". Clean air, clean water, clean cities. China will probably get there faster thanks to EV and other solutions. (Who said that EV didn't have a market? Especially a urban, commuting one? The mistake here is pushing the solution where it is not practical: Intercity and countryside for example. But that's another subject.)
So what are the real challenges for China in 2024?
The main one which we have discussed extensively here is the popping of the real estate bubble. It is huge and the consequences will therefore be long lasting. Just as for Japan, it is hard to imagine how this can be solved at this stage. The second major challenge is the crashing population. Here too, the fall will be so brutal that it may be extremely difficult to adjust. Not saying it can't be done though, just very difficult. The third challenge will be integrating successfully the huge Chinese economy into the world economy. It is at this stage very hard to see how this can be done successfully. The Chinese are willing but the Western elites focused on their dwindling power are reluctant to say the least. Few transitions of this magnitude have happened smoothly in the past and it is hard to see why and how it could be different this time.
I just don't know so I leave all the options open without offering a conclusion. The purpose of this article, just as for the video, is to show what China really looks like now in 2024. Not the dystopia often presented in the West but likewise "not there yet". A work in progress, then?
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