Nuclear war is the only way to achieve progress in Communist countries, where sincerity is absolutely non-existent.
(Paraphrase of Mr. Anglo-Saxon’s position.)
When you go to a restaurant, they will take you to a private room, to prevent you from mingling with ordinary people. Don’t try to object.
If you talk to an ordinary person on the street, you will probably notice him getting nervous. This is because as soon as you leave, the police will take him away and interrogate him about why he was talking to a foreigner. This is dangerous for him, so don’t do it.
(Paraphrase of a “do’s & don’t’s” book for… China, in the 90’s.)
I remember reading it in the 00’s and thinking it was… a bit odd. I’ll see if I can track it down for the exact year.
Certainly if you look at the Lonely Planet HK from around '81 or '82, the “side trip to Canton” reads like a NK tour today (though without the compulsory bowing to statues).
I think you’re underestimate the huge population changes Taiwan underwent with the refugees from the Mainland. The population grew very very fast very very quickly in a country where flat space was already at a premium.
Japan does have a different culture and does look nicer, but Japan didn’t undergo such a massive population spike.
I think most Taiwanese people just don’t notice or care. Westerners have a culture of trying to one up and impress the neighbours. I don’t think Taiwanese give much of a fuck. I know plenty of wealthy Taiwanese who drive shitty scooters and wear cheap clothes.
The inside of most peoples houses are almost always very nice and tidy. Once you’re in, they want to impress you.
This is literally just a half-assed theory I thought up one day - I welcome better ones
so going by that logic only the highly populated places of taiwan would be a dump and the places with a small population and less density would be orderly? sorry, not true in the slightest.
I actually think the mainlanders are much more conspicuous about their wealth. Taipei is a much richer city than anywhere on the mainland - check the stats. But looking at it side by side with shanghai you wouldn’t believe it. Well until you actually took a proper look at a tier 1 city where poor people literally live underground.
i get what you are saying, its just obviously not true. the most obvious factors are the culture of having no aesthetics, not taking care of things, at least superficially and having almost no regulations. it doesn’t matter how high the population density of a place is, rural or city, both are going to look like crap because the reason behind them looking like crap are the same- the culture.
What you are saying isn’t true. Taipei has less wealth disparity than Shenzhen or Shanghai but the average white collar worker is wealthier in those places. Why would they not be? Salaries are high and business is booming.
That’s like saying Taipei’s GDP per capita is higher than all of France. You don’t compare a city with an entire country. Besides, Ordos is a city near the oil fields, so that comparison makes even less sense.
No. Average white collar workers in Shanghai and Beijing make about 8000 RMB per month, in Taipei it’s around 60k TWD per month. Now numbeo is kinda a crap site imo, but given that the average household income in Taipei is about 1.6-1.7 million NT, that doesn’t seem too far off. For Shanghai that number is 160k RMB.
People seem to forget that only very few people in Shanghai or Beijing make lots of money, especially for cities of that size.
I was comparing city-provinces like the beijing municipality to the entirety of the ROC - where the ROC still comes out on top. If you want to go down to the prefecture vs nation level to prove how rich the PRC is, then good luck with that agenda, and the looming internal debt crisis.
There’s a weird narrative about China. It has indeed grown economically (the GDP growth rates are probably over 50% of what’s actually reported!), but it’s not all of a sudden a developed country or a super power, and never will be.
I think it’s sexier to pretend the US is in a new cold war and china is a new technologically wonderland like 1980s japan but with dumpllngs. But we do need a reality check. And there will be a correction in China. How bad it will be and when it will happen noone knows, but the PRC can’t change the laws of economics.
