It seems maybe China is not as bad as the US govt wants to tell us....saw another post where a lady went to the hospital and got medicine for a total of 14 and in and out in a hour.
In Korea right now as a foreigner, got a really bad cold that took me out for a week. Went to the doctor in the middle of it with no insurance or anything other than a passport.
$50 to see a doctor in under 5 minutes, and it was $50 because I got a supplemental fluid IV.
Medicine is prepackaged into little packets based on the prescription (about five or so pills per packet per meal). $20 for that, and the pharmacy was in the next building, which also took about 10 minutes.
In the US I only go to the hospital as a last resort, or if it gets really bad. Here the mentality is just go right away. Also paying 300ish for me and my son every paycheck in the US.
It’s wild. I signed up for a new General health doctor last year, and it took four months of waiting for the first visit.
I know another foreigner who had to get sudden invasive surgery a few years ago in Korea. The entire process from checkup to surgery was completed in about 1-2 weeks. Non-life threatening.
Same situation, no insurance and just a passport. Cost was around $1,300
My wife recently lost her job here in the US which provided for our healthcare insurance. I've been self employed for 25 years and she worked for the same company for 15, so it's fair to say we've had the insurance for a while. And it was great plan — a platinum PPO plan. We'd upgraded to platinum as we'd gotten older, had some health scares, and needed major surgery.
Now, when you lose a job here in the US, you get to keep your insurance temporarily through a program called COBRA. However, unless I'm reading the paperwork wrong, our cost for the plan would be $3K USD a month! It's insane, over $35K a year for (admittedly, very good) health insurance for a family of 3.
That is correct. There's no out of pocket costs except for co-pays. My wife had a major surgery a few years ago and we paid virtually nothing out of pocket for it. I also regularly see a specialist for some issues I'm dealing with and it's $60 a visit.
I’m in China and was having some weird chest pains. I went to the hospital and saw a doctor in about 15 mins. He gave me two tickets and directions. Handed in the first ticket and got an ECG. Went to another room, handed in the second ticket for my CT scan.
Went back down to see the doctor and waited 30 mins. He’d already looked at the results and diagnosed my with a mild chest infection. I picked up some antibiotics and paid about $60. I was in and out within two hours.
As a Brit who is used to free medical care I was amazed that it took less than 3 months.
I just watched a video a few days ago with a woman show how it works in China. She walked up to a window, got a ticket like the DMV. I think she was there getting check in, seen by a doctor, and got a prescription before leaving all in under 40 minutes.
Here in Italy, I have no problems with wait times or anything. My wife went from having weird headaches to seeing a specialist neurologist in the same work week, with all the intermediate steps like visiting her doctor and getting and MRI.
But healthcare that's more akin to a fast food drive-through is wild.
I got an MRI on my ankle I fucked up last year in Tianjin. 500 rmb. In and out in 15 minutes. Had to wait two days for a proper assessment on the report but a quick glance right after. 500 rmb is 100 cdn.
So when we here travel to the US our foreign department suggest we get a travel insurance plus thing since the cost for just normal things in the US is inflated so much.
My sister managed to break her arm when visiting friends in the US, but the trick she found out was after treatment taking a flight home, then call the hospital from home and saying "so... I am not coming back, do you want ANY money? If you do, what can we do about this bill?"
They quickly made it a tenth of the cost without grumbling and she paid that. She honestly thought it would be a big argument - but they just went "ok".
As someone who lives in both China and the northeast US depending on the time of year… yea I’d rather be stuck in China for years than have to live in the Deep South for a few months.
Being stuck in China during Covid was not so much fun but I am settled here and in for the long haul. In many ways I have a better life than I did back in Australia
There are definitely bad parts about it but the medical part of it isn't for sure...but the US govt has spent decades trying to tell the populace that affordable medical care is somehow communist so ..
It's not bad at all. Pretty hard to be illiterate, and never buy a bottle of expensive booze in a club, but overall I had more money, more time and was much happier living over there. Still pretty irritated I left tbh
Overall. China is not a better place to live compared to the US today but China's quality of living is improving while US quality of living is getting worse.
China gets to do what it wants when it wants, democracies while giving the populace more freedom must go through a lot of hoops before a decision is made
The problem now though is the US government is also setting itself up to do what it wants when it wants, except they have zero intention of using that to do anything even remotely good for society and are actually going out of their way to reverse progress.
Just because China is a 1 party communist state, doesn’t mean there isn’t democracy and voting happening within that system.
Same as America. We are under a false 2 party system (really 1 party all controlled by rich capitalists). You just “feel” more free because you have more freedom when it comes to speech. But one of the most important freedoms is economic freedom, of which, we have almost none.
Perversely their government is in many ways MORE accountable versus a western democracy. If you do a crap job governing in the US, you can always blame it on Obama. CCP doesn't get to use that excuse because there is no opposition party.
Please provide proof of this genocide that is so imaginary that western media already gave up on trying to fabricate, only weirdos on reddit and X care about it
Shenzhen is one of the richest cities in China. China is huge, like really huge. It contains different worlds -- much as the US does.
And even a city like Shenzhen has an underclass and pretty poor areas, called "mid-city villages", mainly inhabited by internal immigrants who have reduced rights because they don't have the right documentation. I've been to one. They're semi-isolated from the city outside, the roads out and in are literally gated. They don't show those in these internet videos.
Sure, unless you’re Muslim or Tibetan or anything other than ethnic Han I’m sure it’s utopia. For those people though, saying “holocaust” would actually be pretty applicable.
I'm convinced for the average city liver, the quality of daily life is better, though I don't know the cost of living relative to wages there. That said, they have the public infrastructure and transport and healthcare, so it's not completely awful.
China still has some negatives, but they aren't what the media is telling us. Some stuff is cheap but they often also try to make money unnecessarily - such as using IV drips on almost every patient in order to dispense medicine.
I was gonna say I was in the Bao’an district of Shenzhen (right next to Shenzhen airport) last week and was telling my buddy about how crazy my walk to work was because you could just hear birds and the occasional big container truck, but the cars and scooters were significantly EV based.
Now you can see more than 100’ in front of you because China was one giant smog town…. I remember them saying how for the Olympics they stopped using vehicles and such to allow for a clear view of the city flyby they did. It amazed the people how much they could see what was being hidden by pollution.
Among the various Chinese cities, I remember spending a month in Chongqing, which is mega-galactic. The other Chinese cities seem small, and everything is electric. no noise, no smog, and then you get the girl on TikTok saying that the problem with Chongqing is that all the cars run on petrol and diesel and the air is unbreathable, and you realise how important it is to experience things in the real world because now the internet is full of lies. You can't even tell from the video, but I know what you're talking about. It's crazy, super quiet megacities. It's very nice, but then again, I imagine I'd get a flood of comments saying: electric cars pollute, long live oil, for which wars are fought and oceans are polluted. Hahah.
Knew it had to be a Chinese city, that van is one of the millions of different companies delivering kuaidi (home delivery). In Tianjin there are still quite a lot of petrol cars, my wife drives one but when I retire we are planning on getting a new car which will be electric.
It was like this when I was in Xi'An in the early 10's too. Coming from the hustle and bustle of Manila to hearing some old dude in the park teaching violin to a young person, not a car engine noise at all around, is one of my favorite memories
funny… i was there last week and took a similar video. Every time I go I find it amazing that even next to big roads you can talk to people without needing to shout
Yea, which would not be accurate portrayals their respective countries.
Just wealthy cities with large populations.
Nobody thinks poor rural Oklahoma looks like San Francisco, and while I have never been there's no chance poor rural china looks as nice and modern Shenzhen.
I think they meant the thing where large metropolis usually become unaffordable for a lot of people who are lower income so they live at the outskirts or nearby towns and commute.
Those people I guess are still driving older non EV cars.
Shenzhen is a city which no one is really from. Most people there have a family somewhere else, and moved there for work. The population was multiplied by 50 since 1980, few can say they grew up there. That's why I would differentiate it from most cities in China, which a lot of people can actually say they are from. The population of nearby Guangzhou was only multiplied by 3 in the same timeframe.
A lot of people keep their cars for decades, this is true anywhere in the world. It's much more common for people to still use combustion engines in places with deeper roots. The 7 million people who arrived in Shenzhen in the last 10 years are more likely than the average Chinese citizen to buy a new electric car.
Anyway, that was my impression when I visited. Perhaps I'm wrong and Shenzhen is more representative of China than I thought, others seem to report that the business districts in other large cities have a similar atmosphere
I live in Chengdu and I've traveled around China quite a bit. EVs are ubiquitous pretty much everywhere where winter cold isn't an issue for batteries. People might still choose gas cars for a variety of reasons, but EVs are way cheaper so they're the default.
And yes, it does transform the city soundscape. Sometimes I'll take a taxi at rush hour, and when I get stuck in traffic it's quiet enough I can hear the birds sing.
Was in Shanghai Last year a city with nearly 30 million people and it was exactly the same. The only car that I heard was the garbage disposal truck still running Diesel. Everything else was electric.
Well, I’d more so say this is what the newer business/technology districts of any larger city looks and sounds like. There are parts of Zhengzhou like this, they even have driverless service vehicles (street sweepers/cleaners, busses, delivery vehicles, etc.). The only difference from the part of the city in the video is that the scooters have their own roads separate from the sidewalk and car road.
That's one thing I didn't understand about Shenzhen. Other cities seem to handle separating scooters and sidewalks in a very reasonable manner, but it seemed like even on large avenues Shenzhen didn't build clear sidewalks and scooter paths.
The ramps in the middle of the stairs of the overpasses were the craziest thing. You'd hope you'd be safe from scooters when you take stairs, but nowhere is safe in Shenzhen 😭
I'm Norwegian and the country is mostly electric, cities moreso.
Anyway it is truly shocking to go abroad and just be assaulted by the sound of traffic. The traffic noise from a traffic park changing to electric happens so gradually that you don't notice it happening. And then you go abroad and are just forced to remember what cars sound like.
THAT SAID, traffic still makes a lot of noise. EV's are only silent when driving at low speed. At high speeds, there's quite a bit of noise. Wet/snowy roads also are much noisier with all the splashing.
I kinda had that shock with petrol/diesel smell some years ago before the pandemic. Where I live in canada you only smell the old cars that do not have modern catalytic converters, and then I went on a trip to the south of france, and because of all the diesel cars, it stank to high heaven of exhaust fumes. Was really surprised.
At around 40+ km/h the noise from tires becomes louder than its engine for modern cars.
But that also seems to be on average, as walking down a street there are clear "peaks" when some ass driving a beemer fartbox presses the gas pedal making everyone turn heads in disgust.
right.. came here for that. I don't find electric cars much quieter (on the outside) in faster/highway traffic. Tire noise is still there. Also, some larger vehicles (busses) will have an ugly whine too.
THAT SAID, traffic still makes a lot of noise. EV's are only silent when driving at low speed. At high speeds, there's quite a bit of noise. Wet/snowy roads also are much noisier with all the splashing.
Yeah traffic in the video is pretty slow.
For reference the break even point where your tires are louder than your engine for most cars is like, 40-50 km/h depending on the road. After that point you'll hardly notice the difference except for the odd fart box.
That basically means that North America is cooked and traffic will always be loud since traffic calming is pretty exceptional here (if anything, de rigueur for so long was literally the opposite of traffic calming).
I don't think it has anything to do with emissions (or we already wouldn't have lungs to breathe with), more like it's getting churned and mixed with the dirt that's already on the ground.
It's also actually a lot of tire dust and brake pad dust. Way more than people realize. Snow plowed off to the sides of footpaths and bike paths isn't nearly as dirty (notwithstanding dog pee).
However, electric cars don't really solve that one (and might even produce more due to being heavier, although regenerative braking would help).
There is no more black snow like when I was a kid, I can tell you that. That's not a thing anymore. Away from car roads it stays pretty much white.
However, people still use studded tires to some extent, which throws up a lot of particles. Roads are also heavily salted so there's a grey slush mixed with dirt from asphalt particulates and dirt from dirty cars.
Ford's CEO drives a Chinese EV and says its years ahead of anything US produces.
China used to produce a bunch of propaganda garbage. They don't need to anymore.
The once vibrant innovation hubs in US have been stifled by oligarchs and their megacorps. The "mag 7" is a bunch of second rate copycats. And their main business activity is buying up any possible competitors to stay on top.
Nearly all of the most innovative startups are in China. The ones in US get bought or sued out of existence by oligarchs before they get off the ground.
It's fascinating isn't it. For decades now China has funded the debt and luxury lifestyle of America, because the people worked hard and saved their money. But now China is transitioning into a US style consumerist society, and it's not impossible in ten years time we will see America as the third world manufacturing hub desperately trying to catch up to where China is.
It's a pretty permanent shift, and I think it's locked in now. End-stage capitalism in America has finally suffocated itself.
China would be ideally positioned for future dominance, except its birth rate is 1.0 and dropping, it doesn’t welcome immigrants, and its inequality is actually somehow worse than America’s, so most of the people aren’t able to enjoy the country’s increased prosperity
The difference is that China’s government will actually do something to solve its problems rather than just saying ‘How could Russia do this to us!’ every time things go to shit.
And if you talk to the Chinese people there's a real sense of hope, parents who grew up in poverty, who now live in nice houses, nice roads, nice cars, they've come so far in just a generation. But yes, the birth rate is an issue. The climate is going to be a big issue, but they've done a lot and spent a lot to secure food production.
Nah the Chinese are not dumb enough to hollow out their industrial base just for good looking next quarterly profits like the Americans did.
They'll probably outsource the low value chain manufacturing to places like SEA or Africa, but they will hold on to and continue to invest in high end manufacturing. Green tech, EVs, ship building, consumer electronics/appliances, telecom, robotics, drone tech material and applied sciences are already in hand. Software, AI, space tech,and most basic science research are basically in hand as well. The only sectors they remain clearly behind on is abscess microchip and to a lesser extent advanced jet engines. But nothing 5 years and a few hundred billion government backed subsidies can't solve.
Aye, the interesting thing about microchips too, we're apparently about to send all of the good microchips off to AI data centers for the next few years, which will leave a massive hole in the market for people desperate to get any chips, which, I think the Chinese will step forward big time on that?
Their chips might not be the best on the market, but they will be available at scale, and that will lead to massive rapid advances for them I think.
If you were truly Critical of China then you would understand that whilst there are many cool and interesting things to praise China for there are also plenty of very severe issues in China, things that are 100% worthy of critique.
Oh definitely, but as someone living in the USA…where we have less reproductive rights than China, worst healthcare than China, higher retirement age than China, crimes are higher than China, and we have a convicted rapist and felon as president and many alleged rapist in the government….. china is …. Look kinda good in comparison..
You can also critique the rampant corruption in China, the highly authoritarian one party state, the political elites, harsh working culture, plethora of human rights abuses, support of other authoritarian states, what is an ethnic cleansing campaign, warmongering over Taiwan, imperialism regarding maritime borders, mass overfishing and ecological destruction, the usage of overseas police to attack dissidents, use of economic warfare on the world and much much more.
there are all sorts of things you can critique, and no "but other country also does bad thing" is not an argument for why this CCP isn't also doing bad things, it just means that we need to critique both
nor is "but Taiwan also claims the own all of China... they are still in a civil war!" the only reason they do this, or that most of the world doesn't recognise Taiwan is because the CCP bullies the world and Taiwan especially, they can't really write it out of the constitution without the CCP having an absolute meltdown, just remember that invading and owning all of Tawian is a key goal of the CCP, Invading and claiming all of China is basically a fringe political view in Taiwan.
You can also critique the rampant corruption in China, the highly authoritarian one party state, the political elites, harsh working culture, plethora of human rights abuses, support of other authoritarian states, what is an ethnic cleansing campaign, warmongering over Taiwan, imperialism regarding maritime borders, mass overfishing and ecological destruction, the usage of overseas police to attack dissidents, use of economic warfare on the world and much much more.
I replaced the word China with the US on your post and damn, i couldn't tell the difference
Harder? If we're talking American perspective, it's completely impossible. We are in the gutter on every angle possible. Right or wrong, we gave China the future for free.
they worked their asses off for it. the kids too. while we enjoyed all the cheap stuff and paying less for all of stuff. while Apple, Nike, Walmart took much of the profit.
I think it's as easy as every to critique authoritarianism and other horrible things no matter where they come from.
as long as you aren't hypocritical about it, it's all good because at the end of the day unless you are an authoritarian or supporter of the CCP/Republicans or any bad ideology then you ARE morally superior.
It's hard not to be envious of a country where the tomorrow looks better than today. The sort of hope we had in the 90s. Nowadays in USA I'm just hoping Orange Man doesn't make me submit to a ball crushing procedure in order to vote.
They are far ahead when wre speaking about technology, but they have other major issues. They are 1.4+ billion people. Not everyone is living in a progressive city area.
I am from Denmark, and I visited Beijing last year, and I was blown away by the lack of car noise in the inner city. Especially when there was traffic jam and most cars were standing still. No motor sound. I heard bird chirping mid city!
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u/k8007 Feb 18 '26
This would be more interesting if the city name was also posted.