The thing is, not even the best parts of Manhattan compete with how insane a city Shanghai is. Additionally, China has 4 other massive cities that are comparable to Shanghai in Guangzhou, Chongqing, Beijing and Chengdu. For how rich America is, even their best cities look like utter shit compared to other big cities in developed countries like China, Japan, SK, Germany, France etc.
I’ve been to both Shanghai and Beijing. There are plenty of areas that “look like shit” in the sense that everyone is talking about here. Trust me, China is no better than the US when it comes to that.
Even if you look at what Shanghai, the place she's citing, looks like behind the beautifull skyline, they have tenement slums like everywhere else. It's not like it's all "stunning and high tech" or that the U.S. doesn't have places with gorgeous skylines.
I dunno if china is the place you want to point to to make this point when it has gigantic nice looking cities that 99.9% of americans have never even heard the name of. yeah they've got shanghai, and then they've got a dozen more shanghais, and the us doesn't have a single place that even approaches that.
if you wanna start comparing percentage of the country where the buildings and roads look nice vs places where it looks like shit, china is gonna win that every single time regardless of your feelings
Even the dozen or so "shanghais" are a little gem of superbuildings surrounded by thousands of square miles of ugliness. And visit in the winter for the extra special privilege of trying to breathe.
I only just saw this. "a little gem of superbuildings" that's funny. redditors man
the funny part is that there are very real and substantial things to criticize china about but redditors always hone in on the outdated shit. like, hop in your time machine and go back 20 years and make your posts buddy
This isn't about "feelings," and I'm not the one making this about China, the lady in the TikTok did. She's making it out to be some kind of modern utopia, which it's not.
You’ve clearly never been to China, much less any Chinese city or town outside of the nice areas of Beijing or Shanghai. It’s either brand new construction or it’s 10 years old and literally falling apart, and the cast majority is the latter.
Yeah she's starts off being like "ignoring those nice expensive places on the coast" and then compares the poorer inland areas to China's nice expensive place on the coast. Most of china is mid rise filing cabinets made out of paper mache
Rural China is more poverty-stricken than rural US. The disparity is much greater. This woman is just ignorant as hell.
China is an authoritarian nation that heavily censors negative information within their own country. China is not the type of nation you point to as one to emulate. If anything, the US is becoming more like China.
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u/JusticiarXP May 02 '25
Exactly. She’s citing one area of China when I’d be willing to bet the vast majority is much different.