Chongqing seems incredible on pictures and YouTube videos. No doubt it's a comfortable place to live for many people, and surely it isn't perfect, especially when it comes to things like air pollution.
What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. If we had efficient large-scale construction solved, we could really put a dent in the cost of living crisis, and reverse the overcrowding of the existing urban centers.
hshdhdhj4444 · 3h ago
It’s missing in most European places because there’s little need for it.
When there is a need, Europe does pretty well. At least relative to the U.S.
For example, Europe built the completely novel floodgates for Venice. It’s been very successful as far as I’m aware when it was heavily doubted before and throughout its development.
On the other hand, the U.S. won’t even contemplate building something similar to protect NYC, despite the fact that Europe has already done it and proven the concept, and that the region this would protect is orders of magnitude more economically valuable than Venice.
Similarly consider high speed rail. Italy completely revolutionized domestic travel by setting up excellent high speed rail over a few years. They did it not by government fiat but intelligent regulations paired with privatization and market rules.
While it’s not China scale, it’s more than sufficient for Italy’s scale.
At the same time the U.S. is completely incapable of creating high speed rail and to the extent it has its done so by redefining it down.
blacksmith_tb · 22m ago
US infrastructure is increasingly terrible, true. But high-speed rail isn't probably what I'd point to as the most glaring problem. No doubt the TGV and Shinkansen are impressive, but the longest route in Japan (Tokyo-Aomori) is 675km compared to 4000km from Los Angeles to NYC (assuming you could it make a straight line, which you couldn't). Not to say I wouldn't be delighted to even have service from San Diego to Seattle, a mere 1800km.
phillipcarter · 23m ago
Partly why this is an apples-oranges comparison is that Italy's federal government stepped in to make it happen (planning, land acquisition, funding, establishing federally-owned corporate structure). In the US, projects like this are governed just as much by states as they are the federal government, and since the 1970s we've had a strong and entrenched culture of not having the federal government step in to exert its will on a system to produce a public good.
There's a reason why Obamacare was so fraught and ultimately led to a political downfall of the democrats: it spit in the face of private and state interests (from their perspective) to undercut what they'd grown to do in the previous 40 years. This good, but ultimately half-hearted measure, is only a fraction of the kind of political willpower needed to transform the federal state into something that can build infrastructure again.
angled · 2h ago
To me, it’s better to compare China with India. Similar populations, yet the effects of different systems of government are extremely obvious.
graemep · 1h ago
Both have large populations, but have entirely different histories and cultures and economies.
Thailand, the UK, and Tanzania have similar populations, that does not mean they are useful comparisons. What about Sri Lanka and Australia, or Syria and Taiwan?
yusaydat · 4h ago
Lots of low-quality construction work though. Anecdotally, I used to live in a 30-story building in one of the special economic zones. My building had horrendously large cracks in the concrete, and even though I knew rationally that it wouldn't come down, it didn't feel safe, especially during typhoons, etc.
vienna is doing it. there is a new neighborhood built from scratch on a green field. literally. a 20 year project for 25.000 residents and 20.000 jobs. just a few decades ago it was all farmland (and an unused airfield).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern
kubb · 3h ago
I love it, and why doesn't every city do that.
q3k · 3h ago
Because of a pervasive meme that only the private sector should be doing this.
moomin · 6h ago
The thing is, we used to do this. Walk around London or Florence or Rome and you will see era-adjusted sights that are equally impressive. For that matter, go check out Blenheim Palace. It’s a reasonable question to ask: What happened? But the answer is prosaic. These sights all come from times of _incredible_ inequality. Which you don’t see in these pictures but is vastly more relevant to the day to day lives of most citizens.
Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed.
lormayna · 5h ago
> Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed.
You are just describing every western European country.
bojan · 4h ago
Every Western European country now. Not in the time those sights were built.
chollida1 · 4h ago
I mean, my family and i just spent 5 weeks over Christmas in Rome, Paris and London.
I live in Toronto where we have our share of homelessness and those 3 cities put Toronto to shame with the amount of poverty and homelessness we saw.
Europe is beautiful and does many things better than North America and Asia but hunger and poverty are area's where its just as bad if not worse.
mc32 · 3h ago
That’s something that’s developed over the last couple decades. Europe didn’t have vast amounts of homelessness and poverty. My guess is Schengen plus lax immigration policies. That is compare requirements for entering the UAE vs Europe. Europe is less selective.
barbazoo · 1h ago
Try wealth inequality. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, at some point poor becomes homeless.
mc32 · 1h ago
You’re importing millions which puts pressure on housing and employment where they compete against locals depressing wages. Additionally many/majority from Eastern Europe, Middle East, Central Asia and Africa are semi skilled and unskilled who in turn either can’t land a job or don’t earn enough.
graemep · 2h ago
Really? So why are there food banks in the UK? Why does Google search remove links to personal details of multiple politicians in multiple European countries? For someone poor the top end of NHS dental treatment is a worry - even assuming they can find a dentist willing to take on NHS patients in the first place.
I could go on, but there are plenty of flaws in western Europe
kubb · 5h ago
I think it’s a misread to attribute large-scale construction mainly to inequality. While inequality funded grand projects historically, today it’s effective planning, strong state capacity, and streamlined execution that make the real difference.
China’s development is impressive because it prioritizes coordination and scale, whereas Europe struggles more with political and organizational fragmentation and lack of initiative.
yorwba · 4h ago
The strong state capacity collects the resources of large areas and concentrates them into large-scale construction projects in a handful of places. China has a small number of megacities with large, wealthy, modern urban cores and a very large population that lives somewhere else. There are about a hundred cities with more than a million inhabitants but only 47 have urban rail transit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_rail_transit_in_China That's inequality.
chipsa · 52m ago
Knowing how China designates cities[0], citation needed on the number of cities.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing
> The municipality covers a large geographical area roughly the size of Austria,[14] which includes several disjunct urban areas in addition to Chongqing proper.
kubb · 4h ago
That's fair, but the number of cities with urban rail transit is increasing over time. Whether it's the smaller cities paying for the bigger ones... I don't feel like that's the whole picture, but I don't know enough to dispute that.
kelipso · 2h ago
A first-order evaluation, just looking at yearly income per person, would say that urban centers make more money per capita and thus contributes more money per capita to tax than non-urban centers.
thelamest · 3h ago
(Maybe I’m reading too much of a narrative into what you wrote, but–) I don’t think it’s causal like that; it doesn’t have to be. In particular, “wealthy, modern urban cores” tend to be self-sustaining economic force multipliers rather than parasitic resource sinks or vanity projects. Each specific megaproject might be one of the latter, of course. In general, however, I’d be careful about mixing up different public choice failures. How easy it is to: (agree on a fair way to) collect public money, identify and agree on some kind of public benefit, allocate resources to further that interest, execute projects without snags – etc.
oceanhaiyang · 5h ago
> Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed.
I think you’re still speaking about Chongqing. China builds these and closes the wage gap.
10u152 · 5h ago
Oh come on.
Lower socio economic Chinese definitely still fear the rich and worry about being homeless and not getting medical treatment.
dangus · 3h ago
Tell me one way that your statement doesn’t apply to the US or many other wealthy developed nations.
The GINI coefficient is higher in the USA than it is in China.
China in recent years has reduced inequality while the US has done absolutely nothing to curb discontent, the same discontent that has led to the election of a fascist leader.
Don’t believe me, look up the data.
graemep · 1h ago
> China in recent years has reduced inequality
After many years of increasing inequality
> the US has done absolutely nothing to curb discontent, the same discontent that has led to the election of a fascist leader.
I cannot imagine possible definition of "fascist" that would include the US and exclude China. China has far more fascist features than any other major country - personality cult, courts compliant with the government, erasure of minority cultures - and actual genocide.
GlacierFox · 1h ago
It seems some people have claimed the word fascist to mean something entirely different to what it actually means in an attempt to shut down conversations when things aren't going their way.
pphysch · 43m ago
> China has far more fascist features than any other major country - personality cult, courts compliant with the government, erasure of minority cultures - and actual genocide.
These are unsubstantiated allegations that come directly from the governments you are loyally defending.
They are definitely substantiated when it comes to USA: Trump has a legendary personality cult and recently released trading cards for it. Trump's FBI just arrested a judge for noncompliance. Trump is hosting genocidal mass-murderer Ben-Gvir in the country right now. This is all just this week! Spare us the vague "look over there, China bad" hand-waving.
skippyboxedhero · 3h ago
It is an insight into human irrationality to see a country where hundreds of millions have been lifted out of crushing absolute poverty, that has built one of the world's best infrastructure from nothing...in the 70s, China was poorer than every country in Africa bar one.
...the problem is that some people are concerned only with how things are done, this is feudal government, this is pre-industrial economic growth, who does things, how they do it, make sure nothing new is every tried because that is dangerous and might lead to the elite losing control. China (and much of East Asia) succeeded because they are concerned only with outcomes, and this is all that people care about anyway. Unfortunately, the West is now controlled by people who see change as dangerous, and nothing is more dangerous than a country leapfrogging them in development because it proves that their leadership is bankrupt and incompetent.
xtracto · 1h ago
Western societies are blinded by the narrative their governments have fed them in the last 50 years: China Bad.
But us in 3rd world countries have the ability to see both Western and Eastern societies' development and compare it ij a more unbiased way.
Frankly the China bet looks more successful.
twodave · 1h ago
I don’t think anyone who understands geopolitics can agree with this take.
China has been able to (for a time) sustain this kind of rapid industrialization because of globalization, a model of hyper-inflation and by taking advantage of wage inequality (i.e. paying their workers less) in order to dump goods into other countries’ markets. Take away globalization and China starves in the dark, because the part of their population that is largest, most productive and knows how to even feed itself (China is a heavy net importer of food, especially pork) is also very old. And when those people are too old to work, China is going to rely on the rest of the world to sustain its (rapidly declining) population.
There are a lot of other Asian countries in a similar situation, but China is unique in how bleak the future could be for hundreds of millions of people.
A year ago I would have said “who knows when the scale will tip?” With what’s going on lately it seems that it may have already happened. Whether you agree with the economic policy of this administration or not, the ramifications are astounding. The US is positioned to come out of this the best, at the expense of the rest of the world. This is why China is all of a sudden calling the US bullies. They would never admit weakness, but they are suddenly feeling the heat. If the US took it a step further and decided to stop securing the seas in that part of the world, all hell would break loose.
For instance, do you think Japan and China would just “play nice” with no incentive to? I’m not so sure, and China has no access to the ocean without going through Japan.
echelon · 1h ago
This argument is Peter Zeihan's thesis too, and I'm not sure it'll be what actually comes to pass.
China still has an enormous population, and if they convert their society from production to domestic consumption and ride the value-add wave, they'll follow the American growth equation. And with more people to bolster that economy, to boot. You can already see this in their dominance of electronics, drones, EVs, and green tech. They're doing advanced, bleeding edge work in all of the industries that matter.
BYD, DJI, Eufy/Anker (vs iRobot), Lenovo, Alibaba, ... China is a formidable powerhouse in advanced products and value-add. These companies absolutely rival the best of what America and the West have to offer. And if your argument is one of demographics, these companies are staffed with young educated workers from a huge and healthy pipeline of STEM grads.
I think of all the predictions about the future of China - from the incredibly bearish ones like Zeihan's "death of China", to the bullish ones that declare this the "Chinese century" - I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
I don't see how China doesn't become a larger version of Japan or Germany or the US. Despite some demographic and economic headwinds, they've got an incredible head start.
If America aims to compete and remain in the top, it needs to stop doing things that look like Brexit that lead to degrowth and isolation. China isn't magically going to get weaker and provide free opportunity to the United States. On the contrary, it's fantastic peer-level competition that the US should use as motivation to work harder.
China is an incredible growth and innovation story, and a bar that all countries should hold themselves to. It's no time to slouch. Competition fosters the best innovation anyway.
christkv · 1h ago
Are you willing to submit to my one party state and be ok with being disappeared if you have an unpopular opinion or being enslaved if you are the wrong minority?
echelon · 58m ago
That isn't the neg that a lot of people think it is. You can keep saying this until you're blue in the face. It doesn't stop China's growth in power and scale. It doesn't impact their citizens at all. It's cheerleading with hot air and ignores the real work that the West needs to put in to effectively compete or counter.
The things the West can do to compete are to work harder on education, become an attractive destination for immigration, foster productive innovation, and focus on key industries and supply chains. Right now the US in particular is doing the opposite, and it's damaging America's standing and ability to compete with China.
China should be incentive to work harder. During the Cold War we used the threat of the Soviets being better than us to do some of the best engineering and science we've ever done. If our response to China is to call them names and hope that their growth stalls, then I think I can predict a different outcome for the West in the coming century.
graemep · 1h ago
I know many people in third world countries who fear China. I did when living in one (and continue to do so as a citizen of one with still close connections to it).
China is a success for whom? Exploited factory workers, Tibetans and Uyghurs?
dan-robertson · 5h ago
I mean, people go hungry today in plenty of places that fail to build (the U.K. for example) and they went hungry or lived in fear of the powerful in plenty of places before they were able to build at impressive scales.
I’m not sure if it’s what you are thinking of, but I don’t think the massive expansion of cities in the Industrial Revolution was caused by incredible inequality (unless you count inequality between urban and rural areas?).
I guess you could be thinking of ‘monuments’ built by the rich and saying they are due to inequality but I would think the analogue to Chongqing would be the constructing of the ‘megacities’ of the past, which is mostly about building lots of residential, industrial, and office space rather than palaces.
genjo · 3h ago
it's a social experiment. "if we don't do it top-down, will the educated and driven try to make us do better or do it themselves?". the answer revealed itself when architecture and design remained procedural but failed to emphasize and to build around the goal of social evolution and identity seeking. instead we got Gentrification, efficiency nobody asked for and wealth wasted on uninspired and demotivating pseudo-game theorists.
it's funny how nobody noticed in time that the side effects of these many experiments destroyed more beauty & opportunities, especially in urban convolution and social convection than they have revealed in data about human nature and civilized networks ... "we happened to become a community and build around the growing desires of our children and our own" is something you only hear on garden plots, even though on the country side everywhere, people are now third and fourth generation heirs.
germinalphrase · 1h ago
“‘we happened to become a community and build around the growing desires of our children and our own’ is something you only hear on garden plots, even though on the country side everywhere, people are now third and fourth generation heirs.”
Meanwhile, in the US, small towns across the country are greying and dying out as wealth and opportunity are increasingly concentrated in urban areas.
apexalpha · 46m ago
The Netherlands grew by 1 million people between 2015 and 2025, roughly 6,5% increase in population.
And (almost) everyone has a house.
Except we don't build flats and suburban one-house-fits-all massive construction projects. We mostly do smallscale development times a 1000, in stead of one big one.
We think it results in better cities.
Though, it is true we should build even more.
kubb · 8m ago
Apparently you have a housing shortage of 400k homes, rents increase 5% YoY, and residents spend more than 20% of their income on housing.
Your cities are great though, I love the Netherlands.
alephnan · 27m ago
> And (almost) everyone has a house.
How come the Netherlands has the most pronounced housing shortage for university students compared to other countries ? Is it because everyone is AirBnb'ing their first and second homes out to tourists?
It's so bad that international students are forced to decline university and graduate school offers. I know because I am in that boat.
> No doubt it's a comfortable place to live for many people,
It does not look very comfortable to me. Lots of huge residential tower blocks, one that has a metro line running THROUGH it, a bookshop with shelves that are not reachable.
All those in a curated set of pictures!
zkmon · 3h ago
The lack of capacity to build in Europe is due to age-old regulations, bureaucracy and very low risk appetite. All this has affected human competence as well, similar to caged animals losing their abilities.
kmac_ · 2h ago
I live in the EU and actually like that citizens are more important than businesses. I wish some construction laws were more strictly regulated, such as those concerning housing development. For example, in Poland, a lack of strict regulation has caused horrible new housing plans with insufficient parking spaces for apartments. There are plenty of similar examples.
1270018080 · 1h ago
In this context, the “business” is… housing and infrastructure for people to live in and use?
And don’t forget the bigger picture. Businesses are jobs. When a country makes it so hostile for business that most can’t even operate there, that’s wages and tax revenue lost.
The above is how Poland ends up with average apartments 8x the average wage.
I don’t even want to get into the issues with prioritizing cars above people. That’s a whole other topic outside of this.
thenthenthen · 2h ago
I would not consider CQ comfortable. Shanghai is 1000x more comfortable.
alwa · 1h ago
What criteria do you consider when you think about comfort in this sense?
The (always-credulous) Guardian seems to go based on photogenic shopping centers/bars and raw square footage:
“A flat in Chongqing costs a seventh of what it would cost in Beijing or Shanghai and is twice as big.”
Presumably your criteria might be more subtle?
dheera · 54m ago
Chongqing has better food.
whatever1 · 6h ago
The cost of housing in the large Chinese megacities is comparable to, if not higher than, that in Western countries. Therefore, they are not constructing housing at a fast enough pace to meet their population’s needs. However, they do build at a rate that is 2-4 times faster than that of Western countries.
yusaydat · 4h ago
The prices depend on the city, apartments in Chongqing cost around $1,000 USD per m², about 1/5th of the prices in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
dan-robertson · 5h ago
What does ‘comparable’ mean? Is it about ratios between incomes and costs? Or cost of the same apartment in two places? Or something else?
markus_zhang · 5h ago
Cost/income is a good ratio. The megacities (Shanghai, Shenzhen etc.) probably have a ratio similar to New York.
Just from top of my head as I left Shanghai 10 years ago, a typical condo in Shanghai could cost over 5 million yuan (urban but definitely not core city), while a salary of 300k pre-tax is considered as a good salary.
On the other side, housing is affordable for locals -- locals usually got very generous compensation from the demolition of their original home.
chgs · 5h ago
Median monthly cost in terms of median take home pay would be the sensible comparison.
This would exclude ex-pats.
yapyap · 5h ago
> What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. If we had efficient large-scale construction solved, we could really put a dent in the cost of living crisis, and reverse the overcrowding of the existing urban centers.
Because China has their singular government system (one party dictatorship, whatever you want to call it) they can make really quick decisions. In democratic countries there is a lot of hemming and hawing cause you need everyone or a majority to agree with you, in China or North Korea they just snap their fingers and the project has to start within a few weeks or months.
surajrmal · 16m ago
After seeing what happens when the president tries to unilaterally enact orders without great care for ramifications, it's definitely more appealing to me that we tend to go slowly. I do feel like there must be a middle ground that's yet to be discovered though.
LetMeLogin · 4h ago
I was there about 12 years ago, and in all honesty, I wasn't impressed.
The air pollution was absolutely horrific, for whole I was there I wasn't able to see the sun at all due to air or lack of it.
"Green" trees were just... grey, covered with all the dust.
And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair :)
The food was great, though.
hardwaregeek · 37m ago
12 years is an eternity in China. I went in 2008-2010 and it was completely unrecognizable compared to 2018. I imagine 2025 is completely different too
RadiozRadioz · 4h ago
> And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair
Please explain
LetMeLogin · 2h ago
Pretty much when I tried to grab a taxi, and it was pretty much every day two times, I could see Taxi were free(no people inside, and now I can't remember if I was the light on or off, but meaning they're just free to take you) no one would stop for about 10 minutes. Sometimes 1 passed and I was able to get it, but usually it was 5-7 cars passing me by.... Someone mentioned people were not accustomed to males with long hair.
pydry · 5h ago
Europe and America have no industrial strategy to speak of and powerful lobbies dedicated to perpetuating the war on affordable housing.
I doubt this is something that can or will be reversed gradually. The consolidation of oligarchic power has been building up over many decades and only shows signs of acceleration.
In order for the power structures responsible for this to be overturned something pretty cataclysmic will need to happen - losing a large scale war, economic collapse, etc. (e.g. like in post WW2 Japan where America dismantled and disenfranchised the Japanese oligarchy).
markus_zhang · 5h ago
A new cold war might help. If that happens any oligarchy with half a brain would have to give back some pies to the ordinary people.
deeThrow94 · 3h ago
For second place, maybe. China is largely out of our grasp without our committing pretty extreme crimes against humanity.
Granted, we were fine with that with the first cold war, maybe we'll find the appetite again.
markus_zhang · 58m ago
We don't need crimes against humanity. We just need more pies from the oligarchs so that we can bring back reasonable housing, some sort of manufacturing and more R&D.
But granted maybe most of them have less than half of a brain once they need to sacrifice the pies.
aprilthird2021 · 4h ago
> What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe.
In the US, especially with renewed appetite for "America First" and bringing back good paying jobs for American laborers, there should be a lot more building of infrastructure and housing units around our country... Why can China do this and we can't even when the government has won a mandate from people to empower domestic labor (for everyone who says China can only do this because of wealth inequality)?
cosmicgadget · 1h ago
What is the administration's infrastructure plan other than to fire a large portion of people who support it at the federal level?
mminer237 · 3h ago
Isn't good-paying domestic labor the main part of the problem? Hiring thousands of manual laborers at $5/hour is a lot more economical than at $15/hour plus $5/hr in benefits. And that applies to the steel workers and lumberjacks and fixture manufacturers who all have to be paid more too via material costs.
deeThrow94 · 3h ago
Because of the national mandate that Big Government Is Bad that happened 40 years ago, as best I can piece together.
thelastgallon · 2h ago
Because the western world (and rest of the world following western world) has one rule (the only rule): make the super rich richer, everything else is just marketing to accomplish that.
Home prices are completely out of reach for most people in UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia (coming soon to a country near you!). You're overpaying to live like a 1920's postman: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tGPHcteG9dY
Create artificial scarcity (by zoning, monopolies, regulatory capture), buy assets (never have to improve any assets because there is no competition, no functional market of competitors producing better housing), extract wealth forever by maximizing rents and asset prices.
SamPatt · 2h ago
Housing shortages aren't a result of some nefarious plot to make the super rich richer.
It's more complex than that. We need to build more housing, and there are various reasons why that isn't happening. Many of them are well-intentioned and even good (high safety standards dramatically increase the cost of new buildings).
graemep · 1h ago
The main reason for high prices is not shortages, its low interest rates.
surajrmal · 21m ago
Interest rates have gone up and housing prices haven't changed much. The average monthly mortgage payment for 20% down 30 year fixed mortgages have shot up though. Something makes me feel like it's not just interest rates.
GoatInGrey · 45m ago
It's remarkable to see how intuitive supply and demand laws are for many individuals until it comes to one particular market: housing.
rcpt · 15m ago
I see countless US stories about how "family farmers defend themselves from evil development" or "Oakland residents suffer the effects of global trade booming in their city". But when I read about China's incredible growth nothing like that is ever mentioned. Why is that?
arrosenberg · 5m ago
The CCP has a pretty tight grip on the domestic narrative. The farmers in China have no agency to complain. US farmers, on the other hand, are a powerful constituency, especially the consolidated, corporate entities.
kappasan · 7h ago
Haven't been to Chongqing in a while, but the vertical nature of the city is fascinating [1]. It's like they layered multiple cities on top of each other! Curious how that affects social interactions in daily life.
which disagree with this (and each other) on which city is largest.
csomar · 4h ago
They should replace this with a density metric. If a city is big enough, it becomes just "cities" next to each other. The difference is in central density and time from the extremities to the center. In this case, Chongqing, HongKong and Paris are denser than say Los Angeles; even though the Los Angeles metro area has a comparable/higher number of people.
glimshe · 5h ago
Jacksonville, FL also claims to be the largest city in the contiguous US... by area. It's not a small or bad city, but not even in the top 10 in most other metrics.
gonzobonzo · 6h ago
The first list appears to come from one U.N. report where they're using completely different standards for different cities - some are using population estimates for the municipality, others population estimates of just the urban core, and others still using population estimates for the entire region.
As far as I can tell, Tokyo is at the top of the list because because they seem to be using the estimates for the entire region. Other estimates for Tokyo's population - even on Wikipedia - are less than half the number listed there.
Stevvo · 2h ago
"Chongqing, which is the largest city proper in the world by population, comprises a huge administrative area of 82,403 km2, around the size of Austria. However, more than 70% of its 30-million population are agricultural workers living in a rural setting."
_fat_santa · 2h ago
I have to say I didn't really have an interest in visiting China until I saw pictures of Chongqing. I spent a whole night one day watching walking videos in that city and vertical nature of it is just incredible.
throwaway743 · 1h ago
You should definitely go. I haven't been to Chongqing myself, but I spent a month in Beijing, two weeks in Shanghai, and a week in Baotou, and each place offered a completely different experience.
My personal favorite was Beijing. Honestly, it felt like stepping into another world, with a vibe unlike anywhere else I have been, even compared to Shanghai or other East Asian cities like Tokyo.
The people were incredibly warm and friendly, the street food was outstanding, the environment felt almost otherworldly, and the historical sites were phenomenal. Getting lost in the hutongs felt like its own adventure, the punk culture was alive and thriving, and the art district was the best I have experienced (even coming from New York City). If you skate, it's a paradise with spots everywhere you turn. Public transportation and taxis were also super affordable, clean, and efficient.
Shanghai was cool too, but it felt much more familiar. At its core, it reminded me of Manhattan, just more intense. The people there also gave off a similar vibe to New Yorkers. If you are into electronics, it's a great place to explore, although I hear Shenzhen is really the true hub for that.
Baotou felt a lot more desolate but also very peaceful. I spent most of my time there on a farm and hiking around the Gobi Desert though.
One thing to be aware of is the air quality in Beijing and Shanghai. On bad days, you would come back with black snot. I was a smoker at the time, which did not help, but even non-smokers experienced it. There always seemed to be random particles or even feathers floating in the air lol.
As someone who skates, I found the police and security surprisingly relaxed. They would usually let you skate for a while before politely asking you to move along. The only unsettling thing I witnessed was a group of officers with SMGs escorting someone out of Tsinghua University.
The saddest thing I saw was the desperate poverty on the outskirts of Beijing. There were large piles of trash, open sewage, and pollution. At one point, a concerned local pulled over and told us to turn around because of violent protests between farmers and the government up ahead. The outskirts of Shanghai showed similar poverty, though without the protests.
That said, aside from the outskirts and days of bad air quality, all three cities were incredibly clean, especially compared to New York.
This was all about 15 years ago, so I imagine a lot has changed since then.
Still, I would absolutely recommend going. If you can, spend time in places that feel unfamiliar, especially Beijing. It's an experience you will never forget.
sagacity · 6h ago
German television made a very interesting documentary about the city a few months back: https://youtu.be/p49QRxO_n2c
rasso · 53m ago
Interesting - not available for me (in Germany!)…
feverzsj · 5h ago
The city is also famous for its hot and humid climate. Locals have to eat lots of spicy foods to make their life a little bit easier. You won't last more than a week there.
sampullman · 2h ago
It gets hot and there's a couple days each year it's probably best to stay inside, but it's really not that bad. I'd take Chongqing over Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur, personally (in terms of weather).
refactor_master · 3h ago
I’ve been there. It’s crazy how the smell of spicy hotpot permeates every street.
And it’s also crazy the spice levels they’re used to. It’s the only place in China I’ve seen 微微辣 (“very very little spicy”). And it was still incredibly spicy!
IncreasePosts · 14m ago
Doesn't sweat stop working in hot+humid climates, since it doesn't evaporate?
master_crab · 4h ago
So it’s just Chinese Houston? Got it. I’ll pass. Done it once. I don’t have enough shirts in the world for that humidity.
stevenwoo · 8h ago
That bookstore is beautiful but how does one access books on that twenty foot tall shelf - it seems a bit impractical for even looking at the spine of a book.
No comments yet
alephnerd · 8h ago
> The largest city in the world is as big as Austria, but few people have ever heard of it
Pet peeve but this article is confusing Chongqing's entire land area with the city of Chongqing and associated urban areas (only 6% of Chongqing's total land area).
The issue is 直辖市 is translated as "direct-administered city" but should be treated as a "Direct-administered municipality" or "Direct-administered state".
Much of Chongqing (the 直辖市 not the city) was formed due to a reorganization of Sichuan in 1997.
luotuoshangdui · 5h ago
This. Chongqing is not a "city" in the English sense of the word. Even in China, they jokingly call it a 省 (province).
olalonde · 4h ago
It's also because it's not part of any province. So if you ask Chongqing people which province they are from, it's natural for them to reply "Chongqing". Same for Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin.
barbazoo · 1h ago
Fascinating. But not a single picture showing a non polluted sky.
topspin · 49m ago
The "Eling Palace complex" photo is interesting. In the midst of all the "rooftop gardens, terraces, stairways, promenades and metal screens," someone nailed up about 4 meters of razor wire on the exterior wall.
Not paradise then.
mathverse · 4h ago
I am totally uninterested in China mainly due to them being so hostile to foreigners. Yes cities are impressive, technology and culture as well. But you are not welcome. At all.
You are sometimes not even tolerated.
And because of that your time in that country will be always limited. If China was to become like BKK or other SEA countries ....
That's another story.
dinkblam · 3h ago
> I am totally uninterested in China mainly due to them being so hostile to foreigners
I am totally interested in the USA mainly due to them being so very welcoming to foreigners and migrants
bsnnkv · 1h ago
There is a very interesting and fast-growing (video) niche of African Americans who have moved to China sharing their experiences of daily life in different Chinese areas ranging from these megacities to rural towns and villages.
The common thread throughout these videos is how much safer it feels to be black in China vs. America, and more generally how welcoming and friendly China is to foreigners (in stark contrast to the expectations that were set for them by non-Chinese people repeating comments like the parent comment here)
ailun · 1h ago
The person you're replying to is ridiculous and ignorant. But also many of the creators you're talking about are paid by the Chinese government. If they're living in China on an ongoing basis creating content it's almost certain. Even if they're not paid, you have to be careful what you post if you're building a life in China.
That's not to say that they are completely wrong or lying. China is safer than the US in almost every way, for everyone. But racism manifests differently there. I was in the country through the entire Covid pandemic. Ask the African community in Guangzhou how they were treated.
bsnnkv · 1h ago
> Even if they're not paid, you have to be careful what you post if you're building a life in China.
This is the case in most western countries now, especially if you post anything related to Palestine. Besides the US, the situation in France, Germany and the UK is quite concerning these days.
As an immigrant to the US I now have to fear being abducted on the street by ICE "officers" who present no identification and conceal their identities, being arbitrarily detailed and tortured at airports[1], being held incommunicado without due process, and being shipped off to CECOT for the rest of my life.
Yes, absolutely criminal and true. The US is quickly going down a dark path. That doesn't make what I said about China any less true.
bsnnkv · 34m ago
> That doesn't make what I said about China any less true.
Just in case we meet again in another comment thread, I wasn't suggesting this; I was hoping that quoting a specific part of your comment would communicate that I was replying directly to that part without questioning the veracity of the rest of your comment
camilo2025 · 30m ago
Being black in the USA is a never ending nightmare, though. The United States of America is a complete shithole for so many people
lifty · 2h ago
What are you talking about?
echelon · 8h ago
These photos don't do Chongqing justice. Google it and marvel at the beauty.
It's an incredible city.
forinti · 6h ago
If you take the list of largest cities in China and google them from largest down, you'll find an incredible number of cities that just look like they're in the future.
rpozarickij · 4h ago
Sometimes I wonder what future Chinese cities will look like in a few decades from now, given that the current ones already look so futuristic.
Havoc · 6h ago
How accessible is this for western tourists?
Snoozus · 8m ago
Most EU passports get 30 days visa free entry, everything is quite inexpensive, the super apps both have a translation feature now, which helps a lot since most restaurants take orders through them.
It is super safe, no theft, almost no scams.
Hotels and train trips on trip.com.
The main challenges are to find a non smoking hotel room and to not gain too much weight.
decimalenough · 5h ago
About the same as the rest of China, meaning not very accessible, but not impossible either. There's a major airport, you need WeChat/Alipay for everything (but you can now easily set up foreign credit cards for these), approximately nobody speaks English but translation apps work and tour guides are cheap, the Great Firewall is a hassle but roaming SIMs can bypass it.
The sheer spice level of the food is a challenge though, even other Chinese think that Chongqing level spiciness is nuts.
lifty · 2h ago
So, very accessible
freetime2 · 5h ago
Those photos are fantastic.
encom · 5h ago
>Rail line going through an apartment building.
Absolutely hellish.
rado · 6h ago
In a walking video from there, it had incredibly clean random streets
What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. If we had efficient large-scale construction solved, we could really put a dent in the cost of living crisis, and reverse the overcrowding of the existing urban centers.
When there is a need, Europe does pretty well. At least relative to the U.S.
For example, Europe built the completely novel floodgates for Venice. It’s been very successful as far as I’m aware when it was heavily doubted before and throughout its development.
On the other hand, the U.S. won’t even contemplate building something similar to protect NYC, despite the fact that Europe has already done it and proven the concept, and that the region this would protect is orders of magnitude more economically valuable than Venice.
Similarly consider high speed rail. Italy completely revolutionized domestic travel by setting up excellent high speed rail over a few years. They did it not by government fiat but intelligent regulations paired with privatization and market rules.
While it’s not China scale, it’s more than sufficient for Italy’s scale.
At the same time the U.S. is completely incapable of creating high speed rail and to the extent it has its done so by redefining it down.
There's a reason why Obamacare was so fraught and ultimately led to a political downfall of the democrats: it spit in the face of private and state interests (from their perspective) to undercut what they'd grown to do in the previous 40 years. This good, but ultimately half-hearted measure, is only a fraction of the kind of political willpower needed to transform the federal state into something that can build infrastructure again.
Thailand, the UK, and Tanzania have similar populations, that does not mean they are useful comparisons. What about Sri Lanka and Australia, or Syria and Taiwan?
Show me a place that looks like that where no-one goes hungry, has to worry about medical bills and doesn’t live in fear of the rich and powerful and then I’ll be impressed.
You are just describing every western European country.
I live in Toronto where we have our share of homelessness and those 3 cities put Toronto to shame with the amount of poverty and homelessness we saw.
Europe is beautiful and does many things better than North America and Asia but hunger and poverty are area's where its just as bad if not worse.
I could go on, but there are plenty of flaws in western Europe
China’s development is impressive because it prioritizes coordination and scale, whereas Europe struggles more with political and organizational fragmentation and lack of initiative.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing > The municipality covers a large geographical area roughly the size of Austria,[14] which includes several disjunct urban areas in addition to Chongqing proper.
I think you’re still speaking about Chongqing. China builds these and closes the wage gap.
Lower socio economic Chinese definitely still fear the rich and worry about being homeless and not getting medical treatment.
The GINI coefficient is higher in the USA than it is in China.
China in recent years has reduced inequality while the US has done absolutely nothing to curb discontent, the same discontent that has led to the election of a fascist leader.
Don’t believe me, look up the data.
After many years of increasing inequality
> the US has done absolutely nothing to curb discontent, the same discontent that has led to the election of a fascist leader.
I cannot imagine possible definition of "fascist" that would include the US and exclude China. China has far more fascist features than any other major country - personality cult, courts compliant with the government, erasure of minority cultures - and actual genocide.
These are unsubstantiated allegations that come directly from the governments you are loyally defending.
They are definitely substantiated when it comes to USA: Trump has a legendary personality cult and recently released trading cards for it. Trump's FBI just arrested a judge for noncompliance. Trump is hosting genocidal mass-murderer Ben-Gvir in the country right now. This is all just this week! Spare us the vague "look over there, China bad" hand-waving.
...the problem is that some people are concerned only with how things are done, this is feudal government, this is pre-industrial economic growth, who does things, how they do it, make sure nothing new is every tried because that is dangerous and might lead to the elite losing control. China (and much of East Asia) succeeded because they are concerned only with outcomes, and this is all that people care about anyway. Unfortunately, the West is now controlled by people who see change as dangerous, and nothing is more dangerous than a country leapfrogging them in development because it proves that their leadership is bankrupt and incompetent.
But us in 3rd world countries have the ability to see both Western and Eastern societies' development and compare it ij a more unbiased way.
Frankly the China bet looks more successful.
China has been able to (for a time) sustain this kind of rapid industrialization because of globalization, a model of hyper-inflation and by taking advantage of wage inequality (i.e. paying their workers less) in order to dump goods into other countries’ markets. Take away globalization and China starves in the dark, because the part of their population that is largest, most productive and knows how to even feed itself (China is a heavy net importer of food, especially pork) is also very old. And when those people are too old to work, China is going to rely on the rest of the world to sustain its (rapidly declining) population.
There are a lot of other Asian countries in a similar situation, but China is unique in how bleak the future could be for hundreds of millions of people.
A year ago I would have said “who knows when the scale will tip?” With what’s going on lately it seems that it may have already happened. Whether you agree with the economic policy of this administration or not, the ramifications are astounding. The US is positioned to come out of this the best, at the expense of the rest of the world. This is why China is all of a sudden calling the US bullies. They would never admit weakness, but they are suddenly feeling the heat. If the US took it a step further and decided to stop securing the seas in that part of the world, all hell would break loose.
For instance, do you think Japan and China would just “play nice” with no incentive to? I’m not so sure, and China has no access to the ocean without going through Japan.
China still has an enormous population, and if they convert their society from production to domestic consumption and ride the value-add wave, they'll follow the American growth equation. And with more people to bolster that economy, to boot. You can already see this in their dominance of electronics, drones, EVs, and green tech. They're doing advanced, bleeding edge work in all of the industries that matter.
BYD, DJI, Eufy/Anker (vs iRobot), Lenovo, Alibaba, ... China is a formidable powerhouse in advanced products and value-add. These companies absolutely rival the best of what America and the West have to offer. And if your argument is one of demographics, these companies are staffed with young educated workers from a huge and healthy pipeline of STEM grads.
I think of all the predictions about the future of China - from the incredibly bearish ones like Zeihan's "death of China", to the bullish ones that declare this the "Chinese century" - I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
I don't see how China doesn't become a larger version of Japan or Germany or the US. Despite some demographic and economic headwinds, they've got an incredible head start.
If America aims to compete and remain in the top, it needs to stop doing things that look like Brexit that lead to degrowth and isolation. China isn't magically going to get weaker and provide free opportunity to the United States. On the contrary, it's fantastic peer-level competition that the US should use as motivation to work harder.
China is an incredible growth and innovation story, and a bar that all countries should hold themselves to. It's no time to slouch. Competition fosters the best innovation anyway.
The things the West can do to compete are to work harder on education, become an attractive destination for immigration, foster productive innovation, and focus on key industries and supply chains. Right now the US in particular is doing the opposite, and it's damaging America's standing and ability to compete with China.
China should be incentive to work harder. During the Cold War we used the threat of the Soviets being better than us to do some of the best engineering and science we've ever done. If our response to China is to call them names and hope that their growth stalls, then I think I can predict a different outcome for the West in the coming century.
China is a success for whom? Exploited factory workers, Tibetans and Uyghurs?
I’m not sure if it’s what you are thinking of, but I don’t think the massive expansion of cities in the Industrial Revolution was caused by incredible inequality (unless you count inequality between urban and rural areas?).
I guess you could be thinking of ‘monuments’ built by the rich and saying they are due to inequality but I would think the analogue to Chongqing would be the constructing of the ‘megacities’ of the past, which is mostly about building lots of residential, industrial, and office space rather than palaces.
it's funny how nobody noticed in time that the side effects of these many experiments destroyed more beauty & opportunities, especially in urban convolution and social convection than they have revealed in data about human nature and civilized networks ... "we happened to become a community and build around the growing desires of our children and our own" is something you only hear on garden plots, even though on the country side everywhere, people are now third and fourth generation heirs.
Meanwhile, in the US, small towns across the country are greying and dying out as wealth and opportunity are increasingly concentrated in urban areas.
And (almost) everyone has a house.
Except we don't build flats and suburban one-house-fits-all massive construction projects. We mostly do smallscale development times a 1000, in stead of one big one.
We think it results in better cities.
Though, it is true we should build even more.
Your cities are great though, I love the Netherlands.
How come the Netherlands has the most pronounced housing shortage for university students compared to other countries ? Is it because everyone is AirBnb'ing their first and second homes out to tourists?
It's so bad that international students are forced to decline university and graduate school offers. I know because I am in that boat.
https://nltimes.nl/2025/04/22/housing-shortage-netherlands-r...
https://www.goinconnect.com/success-stories/the-student-hous...
It does not look very comfortable to me. Lots of huge residential tower blocks, one that has a metro line running THROUGH it, a bookshop with shelves that are not reachable.
All those in a curated set of pictures!
And don’t forget the bigger picture. Businesses are jobs. When a country makes it so hostile for business that most can’t even operate there, that’s wages and tax revenue lost.
The above is how Poland ends up with average apartments 8x the average wage.
I don’t even want to get into the issues with prioritizing cars above people. That’s a whole other topic outside of this.
The (always-credulous) Guardian seems to go based on photogenic shopping centers/bars and raw square footage:
“A flat in Chongqing costs a seventh of what it would cost in Beijing or Shanghai and is twice as big.”
Presumably your criteria might be more subtle?
Just from top of my head as I left Shanghai 10 years ago, a typical condo in Shanghai could cost over 5 million yuan (urban but definitely not core city), while a salary of 300k pre-tax is considered as a good salary.
On the other side, housing is affordable for locals -- locals usually got very generous compensation from the demolition of their original home.
This would exclude ex-pats.
Because China has their singular government system (one party dictatorship, whatever you want to call it) they can make really quick decisions. In democratic countries there is a lot of hemming and hawing cause you need everyone or a majority to agree with you, in China or North Korea they just snap their fingers and the project has to start within a few weeks or months.
The air pollution was absolutely horrific, for whole I was there I wasn't able to see the sun at all due to air or lack of it.
"Green" trees were just... grey, covered with all the dust.
And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair :)
The food was great, though.
Please explain
I doubt this is something that can or will be reversed gradually. The consolidation of oligarchic power has been building up over many decades and only shows signs of acceleration.
In order for the power structures responsible for this to be overturned something pretty cataclysmic will need to happen - losing a large scale war, economic collapse, etc. (e.g. like in post WW2 Japan where America dismantled and disenfranchised the Japanese oligarchy).
Granted, we were fine with that with the first cold war, maybe we'll find the appetite again.
But granted maybe most of them have less than half of a brain once they need to sacrifice the pies.
In the US, especially with renewed appetite for "America First" and bringing back good paying jobs for American laborers, there should be a lot more building of infrastructure and housing units around our country... Why can China do this and we can't even when the government has won a mandate from people to empower domestic labor (for everyone who says China can only do this because of wealth inequality)?
Home prices are completely out of reach for most people in UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia (coming soon to a country near you!). You're overpaying to live like a 1920's postman: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tGPHcteG9dY
Create artificial scarcity (by zoning, monopolies, regulatory capture), buy assets (never have to improve any assets because there is no competition, no functional market of competitors producing better housing), extract wealth forever by maximizing rents and asset prices.
It's more complex than that. We need to build more housing, and there are various reasons why that isn't happening. Many of them are well-intentioned and even good (high safety standards dramatically increase the cost of new buildings).
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CityPorn/comments/8kqwnf/chongqing_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities#List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity#List_of_megacities
which disagree with this (and each other) on which city is largest.
As far as I can tell, Tokyo is at the top of the list because because they seem to be using the estimates for the entire region. Other estimates for Tokyo's population - even on Wikipedia - are less than half the number listed there.
My personal favorite was Beijing. Honestly, it felt like stepping into another world, with a vibe unlike anywhere else I have been, even compared to Shanghai or other East Asian cities like Tokyo. The people were incredibly warm and friendly, the street food was outstanding, the environment felt almost otherworldly, and the historical sites were phenomenal. Getting lost in the hutongs felt like its own adventure, the punk culture was alive and thriving, and the art district was the best I have experienced (even coming from New York City). If you skate, it's a paradise with spots everywhere you turn. Public transportation and taxis were also super affordable, clean, and efficient.
Shanghai was cool too, but it felt much more familiar. At its core, it reminded me of Manhattan, just more intense. The people there also gave off a similar vibe to New Yorkers. If you are into electronics, it's a great place to explore, although I hear Shenzhen is really the true hub for that.
Baotou felt a lot more desolate but also very peaceful. I spent most of my time there on a farm and hiking around the Gobi Desert though.
One thing to be aware of is the air quality in Beijing and Shanghai. On bad days, you would come back with black snot. I was a smoker at the time, which did not help, but even non-smokers experienced it. There always seemed to be random particles or even feathers floating in the air lol.
As someone who skates, I found the police and security surprisingly relaxed. They would usually let you skate for a while before politely asking you to move along. The only unsettling thing I witnessed was a group of officers with SMGs escorting someone out of Tsinghua University.
The saddest thing I saw was the desperate poverty on the outskirts of Beijing. There were large piles of trash, open sewage, and pollution. At one point, a concerned local pulled over and told us to turn around because of violent protests between farmers and the government up ahead. The outskirts of Shanghai showed similar poverty, though without the protests.
That said, aside from the outskirts and days of bad air quality, all three cities were incredibly clean, especially compared to New York.
This was all about 15 years ago, so I imagine a lot has changed since then.
Still, I would absolutely recommend going. If you can, spend time in places that feel unfamiliar, especially Beijing. It's an experience you will never forget.
And it’s also crazy the spice levels they’re used to. It’s the only place in China I’ve seen 微微辣 (“very very little spicy”). And it was still incredibly spicy!
No comments yet
Pet peeve but this article is confusing Chongqing's entire land area with the city of Chongqing and associated urban areas (only 6% of Chongqing's total land area).
The issue is 直辖市 is translated as "direct-administered city" but should be treated as a "Direct-administered municipality" or "Direct-administered state".
Much of Chongqing (the 直辖市 not the city) was formed due to a reorganization of Sichuan in 1997.
Not paradise then.
You are sometimes not even tolerated.
And because of that your time in that country will be always limited. If China was to become like BKK or other SEA countries ....
That's another story.
I am totally interested in the USA mainly due to them being so very welcoming to foreigners and migrants
The common thread throughout these videos is how much safer it feels to be black in China vs. America, and more generally how welcoming and friendly China is to foreigners (in stark contrast to the expectations that were set for them by non-Chinese people repeating comments like the parent comment here)
That's not to say that they are completely wrong or lying. China is safer than the US in almost every way, for everyone. But racism manifests differently there. I was in the country through the entire Covid pandemic. Ask the African community in Guangzhou how they were treated.
This is the case in most western countries now, especially if you post anything related to Palestine. Besides the US, the situation in France, Germany and the UK is quite concerning these days.
As an immigrant to the US I now have to fear being abducted on the street by ICE "officers" who present no identification and conceal their identities, being arbitrarily detailed and tortured at airports[1], being held incommunicado without due process, and being shipped off to CECOT for the rest of my life.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/germany-inve...
Just in case we meet again in another comment thread, I wasn't suggesting this; I was hoping that quoting a specific part of your comment would communicate that I was replying directly to that part without questioning the veracity of the rest of your comment
It's an incredible city.
The sheer spice level of the food is a challenge though, even other Chinese think that Chongqing level spiciness is nuts.
Absolutely hellish.