Notes on China

Last month, I spent 2 weeks in China - I visited Beijing, Chengdu, Emeishan, Chongqing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou.

I have no illusions about "understanding" China. I've only spent 2 weeks there. This trip is a beginning, not a capstone, of my curiosity about China. And I hope to share what I learn with you via future podcast episodes.

Scale

It’s funny how China has basically the inverse problem as America. We subsidize demand and restrict supply. They subsidize supply and restrict demand. We can’t rebuild fallen bridges. They build bridges to nowhere. In the most desirable cities in this country, every random Victorian house and park bench is a historic site that can’t be disturbed. There, they’ll bulldoze a 500 year old temple to build an endless skyscraper complex that no one wants to live in.

My overwhelming first impression was: wow everything is so fucking big: the cities themselves, the train stations, the airports, the towering and endless apartment complexes. Travel often teaches you things about a country which you honestly should have intuited even without visiting. Obviously, I knew that China is a big country, with over 1.4 billion people. But the stupendous scale of the biggest cities was impressed upon me only after I visited.

Even in Emeishan, a city of just half a million people (considered a quaint countryside town by Chinese standards), we found a Buddhist temple of comical scale - we'd enter what seemed like an impressively large compound, only to discover it was merely the entrance to an even grander structure right behind it. This pattern repeated 5 or 6 times, each subsequent building larger and more ornate than the last, like some kind of inverse nesting dolls. And the place had almost no other visitors!

This must have been structure number 2 or 3?

I asked a monk at the temple how they funded this massive site in a city of just half a million people. He told us that it was simply through donations. We probed further about how such an enormous project could have been financed by just ordinary people's contributions. He responded, "We've got a lot of supporters, dude", and changed the topic.

Chongqing is by far the coolest city I've ever visited. It's this insane cyberpunk multi-level metropolis of over 20 million people. I wouldn't know how to begin describing it, but there's a bunch of great YouTube videos which will show you what I mean. I got a really nice nice 2-floor hotel room that overlooked two rivers and one of the most insane skylines in the world for 60 bucks - highly recommend visiting Chongqing if you get the chance.

In 1995, astronomers pointed Hubble at a seemingly empty patch of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length. Instead of emptiness, the 10-day exposure revealed over 3,000 galaxies. Every speck of light in the image was an entire galaxy containing billions of stars. When I went atop the tallest building in Chongqing and looked out over the city, I thought about the Hubble image. You could zoom in on any direction you'd find - behind the fog and mist, beyond even perhaps the horizon - another skyscraper, each containing hundreds or thousands of people living or working.

We took a 12-hour village train from Chongqing to Shanghai. I'm embarrassed to say that my only experience with the actual countryside was via the windows of this train. Still, the sights were quite interesting. We saw again and again small paddy farms surrounding a handful of 5-10 story skyscraper, plopped in the seeming middle of nowhere. Even in the countryside, many people lived in large buildings instead of their own small homes. I couldn't hop off the train and confirm, but I saw many towns that looked quite ghostly - no actually visible people anywhere.

Outside of Beijing and Shanghai (and sometimes even within), you can tell that these skyscrapers were put up by a country with a GDP per capita of $10,000 (and potentially half or quarter than when many of these buildings went up). America and Europe put up a ton of beautiful buildings in the early 20th century when their GDP per capita was similar to China's - one could even argue that those older structures are more aesthetic than anything we're building today in the West. Not so in China. These endless rows of skyscrapers, put up in the construction frenzy of the last few decades, are ugly - boxes of mostly concrete with visible blight and discoloration all over them. If the great construction binge is indeed over, it'll be a shame that China's infrastructure was built out during a period of particularly uninspired architecture.

Beijing's urban design looks like something straight out of James Scott's "Seeing Like a State". The city is dominated by these enormous apartment complexes - blocks of 10 adjacent 30-story buildings demarcated by 8-lane roads. The government buildings follow the same pattern: huge structures divided by extremely wide boulevards. This layout seems designed partly for social control - during zero-COVID, authorities could lock down 10,000 people by simply guarding a few entrance gates. The wide roads would also make it easy to move military forces through the city. The only break from this pattern are the Hutongs, Beijing's old historic neighborhoods. But even these weren't spared completely - only a fraction survived Beijing's rapid modernization push. Dare I say that China is too YIMBY?

Vibes

I got quite mixed messages about the state of public opinion in China. This is to be expected in a society where you can't establish common knowledge. One person told me that the new generation is quite nationalist, unlike the older reform generation which personally experienced the catastrophes of Mao and the tangible benefits of liberalization. He made the rather insightful point that this tilt in Chinese public opinion increasingly gives lie to the American talking point, "We're against the CCP, not the Chinese people." In fact, he went on to say that the current regime is way more liberal than what would result from an election in China.

Another person told me that these Chinese nationalists were only a vocal minority, similar to the wokes in America circa 2020. While they make up only about 10% of the population, they aggressively shout down others on Weibo (China's Twitter equivalent). Most people find them annoying but feel uncomfortable confronting them directly. This matches what a student who graduated from a top university there told me - the vast majority of his classmates are simply apolitical. And in our own interactions with locals, we saw little evidence of widespread nationalism. In fact, when my Chinese-speaking trip mate would mention he was from the UK to taxi drivers, they would often respond enthusiastically: "Oh wonderful, we love the UK!"

There were very few foreigners. In Beijing I might have seen half a dozen cumulatively across entire seas of people. In Chengdu and Chongqing, I barely remember seeing any (which is a real shame, because Chongqing is a truly incredible tourist destination). So rare apparently are tourists that in Chengdu and Chongqing we got asked for selfies many times.

Outside of Shanghai, almost nobody spoke English. If I went again, I would definitely try to crash course some basic Chinese beforehand. This language barrier did led to some interesting encounters. At a park in Chengdu, an old man reading a book called Medical English asked us to join him for tea. He was mostly just trying to practice his English. He said he loves foreigners, and that his favorite period of life was the 80s and 90s - "We love Deng!".

My trip mate's friend's grandmother was incredibly gracious in hosting us for a dinner while we were in Emeishan. We saw a beautiful Uighur rug hanging on their wall. The grandfather pointed it out and explained, “We have amazing relationships with minorities here in China.” I don't think this was some theatrical attempt to contradict Western propaganda. It seemed like he genuinely didn’t know what is said about the treatment of Uighurs in the West. He was just trying to show his visitors something cool he had.

We kept trying to ask them about their personal experiences over the last seven decades as China has grown and changed. but the grandfather kept responding with lengthy monologues about military history. Here is a representative exchange:

Me (who doesn’t speak Chinese) to my trip mate (who does): Ask them about what job they had when they first moved near Chengdu.

[The grandfather speaks in Chinese for 10 minutes. I get a bit impatient and whisper to my trip mate asking what he’s saying]

My trip mate: He's saying that the mountains around Chengdu make it a perfect base of retreat in case of an invasion, which Mao was worried about during the Sino Soviet split.

Me: What?! Why didn’t you ask him about the first job he had?

My trip mate: I did!!

Grandpas are the same everywhere.

People say that Xi is establishing a cult of personality. This may be true within the CCP cadres, but I saw no evidence of it in public. I don't think I saw a single picture of Xi anywhere - not on any billboards, screens, or walls. People didn't really bring Xi up in conversations. I saw some pictures of Mao, but mostly in museums (or in one case at a tea farm he apparently used to frequent). The hammer and sickle was also a rare sight, mostly displayed on government buildings.

There are indeed cameras everywhere. This is gonna sound super naive - but I genuinely don't understand why. There's no crime. I know you'll say it's to prevent protests. Which might make sense for major streets, but even random alleyway corners will have a couple of cameras. Are they really trying to prevent someone from fomenting insurrection between 2 garbage cans? Beijing in particular had police officers at attention at what seemed like every street corner.

One recent student I talked to said that they understand they don't have freedoms here, but they're willing to take the tradeoff in favor of safety - they don't want school shootings. I thought this was quite silly - not only because there's no reason political freedom ought to lead to school shootings, but mostly because school shootings are such a statistically marginal experience. But I realized this is exactly the way we treat any hints of public protests in China. Just as school shootings are featured heavily in the media but aren't actually something you're likely to personally encounter, so too with protests against the CCP. You are overwhelmingly unlikely to spontaneously encounter them.

People were quite willing to chat openly in public places about problems in the country and with the regime. Including people who seemed to have a lot to lose. Almost everyone I talked to would acknowledge the economy was bad, and many were willing to implicate the government's decisions. Some even casually brought up Tiananmen or the Cultural Revolution. One person was even willing to discuss the odds of regime change at a public restaurant - though he may been have an especially careless fellow.

To be clear, it's an authoritarian system, and I certainly would feel uncomfortable doing what I'm doing there, but it definitely isn't North Korea.

Youngsters

In a shopping mall in Chongqing, a couple of high schoolers came up to us in order to get selfies. It felt like the perfect opportunity to learn about young adult life in China. So I whipped out the Translate app in WeChat and proceeded, rather clumsy, to make small talk. I asked them what they did in their free time. They said they watched 2-3 hours of TikTok every day. I asked them what videos they'd watch. They said it's a whole bunch of "sexy girls". I laughed because I thought they were joking. I asked one of them to pull out his phone. He scrolled past the first 10 videos on his feed and they were indeed all just "sexy girls".

These guys love sexy girls

We chatted up quite a lot of young people on night life streets. I was struck by how many young people expressed feeling stressed or overwhelmed. We met a musician in Chengdu who was writing songs about youth anxiety. We chatted up some modeling school students - even they complained about the intense pressure they felt. We met a guy who had studied in Australia but returned to China during COVID. He explained that many of his friends with prestigious degrees are moving away from Shanghai and Beijing - Yes, the pay there can be twice as high as in second or third tier cities. But the competitiveness is insane. And in order to actually land the high skilled positions, they have to work truly insane hours (9-9-6 is not a myth). He said that many of his friends were opting for these less ambitious lower-paying careers in smaller cities, where the rent is lower and the pressure is manageable.

Karaoke in Shanghai

Speaking of which - we really need to do a better job with Chinese students studying abroad in America. These students will likely end up in influential positions back home, yet colleges treat them basically like cash cows. They often arrive bombarded with propaganda about America, which is reinforced by the prevalent discourse at universities. And they find themselves isolated by language barriers and cultural differences. Giving these future leaders a genuinely positive experience in America might be the best thing we can do to improve US-China relations in the long run.

I'm still puzzled by how China can have both a demographic collapse and massive youth unemployment. You'd think with fewer young people being born, the ones who are around would be in high demand. One explanation I heard while there is that there are plenty of menial jobs available, but today's educated youth - who've gone through high school and college - just won't take the low-skilled positions their parents and grandparents did. Meanwhile, there's a real shortage of the high-skilled jobs that would actually match their education and aspirations. It's a mismatch between the jobs available and the jobs young people feel qualified for and willing to do.

I kept asking young people about the public intellectual landscape in China - who are their equivalents of Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, and Sam Harris? The sense I got is that this kind of popular intellectual ecosystem just doesn't exist there. Sure, there are viral Bilibili videos from professors talking about practical matters like how to manage your finances. But grand takes about what's happening in the world and what we should do about it? Not much going on.

I met a couple of EAs in China - they're exceptionally rare. When we asked them why it's so hard to spread EA or similar worldviews there, they said people just aren't into that organizing decisions using some ideological lens. They're much more concerned with practical, tangible matters. One talking point I heard again and again is that, "China is still a developing country." The implication seemed to be that China can't afford to pursue costly idealistic programs around climate change, social safety nets, or international aid - it needs to focus on basic economic development first.

The Great Firewall

By far the most inconvenient thing about visiting China is internet access. As a foreigner, basically all the websites you might find useful are behind the firewall. Even for websites that aren't blocked by the Great Firewall, I just didn't have anything even close to what you might call high-speed internet. This was true across my entire travel, including my burner SIM card from ChinaMobile or the WiFi at fancy hotels in Beijing or Shanghai. We released an episode of my podcast during this trip - because of the low bandwidth, my editor and I were just sending screenshots to each other throughout the night instead of hopping on a video call. The VPN situation is worse than I thought it would be . I happened to be lucky enough to download one of the VPNs that sometimes works before the trip. It was still pretty slow and unreliable. Astrill or Mullvad might actually result in a connection 75% of the time - often they would cause WeChat and Alipay to crash (which is rather inconvenient since you basically need those apps open all the time to navigate China). Very possible that I was fucking something up. But between these internet issues and the need to use a burner phone and laptop, I would be quite reluctant to use China as a remote work location.

Tech & AI

I am super hesitant to say anything here, because I am extremely unconfident about what's actually happening. Treat this just as some tentative notes from a few conversations.

I've cut out a whole bunch of stuff about AI in this section because I'm not sure if my initial assessment is correct. I hope to make podcast episodes over the next few months which provide a better researched account than I can supply here.

The biggest surprise from talking to Chinese VCs people at AI labs was how capital constrained they felt. Moonshot AI, one of China's leading AI labs, raised $1 billion at a $3 billion valuation. Meanwhile, just xAI's new cluster alone will cost $3-4 billion.

The tech ecosystem feels quite shell shocked from the 2021 crackdown. One VC half-jokingly asked if I could help him get his money out of China. If you keep your money in China, you're basically stuck choosing between terrible options. You can either accept a measly 2% yield from state banks, or throw it into China's perpetually struggling stock market. This helps explain why valuations for Chinese companies are chronically low - the exit opportunities just suck. Even if you build (or invest in) something great, there's no guarantee the company will be able to raise the next round. And even if you do raise again and succeed, the government might randomly cancel your IPO. And even if you somehow make it to the public markets, Chinese equities have been performing terribly anyways. It's a good reminder of how easy it is to completely wreck an innovation ecosystem that depends on risk-taking investors.

Hearts and Minds

In China, liberal pro-Western voices are often censored or shouted down. If I was the US President, and I wanted to win hearts and minds in China, here's what I'd do. In every single speech where I'm talking about China, I'd make a conspicuous effort to complement Chinese people, Chinese values, and Chinese culture. I'd talk about how my Chinese staffers are the smartest and most hardworking people I've ever worked with (which honestly is probably true). I'd talk about how much my daughter is obsessed with ancient Chinese dresses. I'd talk about how I'm learning Mandarin in my free time, and have a live "Aw shucks" conversation in Mandarin.

These clips would go viral on Bilibili and TikTok. And they'd probably stay up because it would just be a weird thing to censor. The CCP might even think that these displays of affection aggrandize them. But in reality, showing our admiration for Chinese people and their achievements (who genuinely are fucking killing it everywhere where they're not held down by communism), undermines the central narrative of the regime - that the West is hell bent on holding Chinese people back, that they have no respect or understanding of their culture, and that the CCP is a necessary bulwark against these imperialists.

On a totally unrelated note, so many people I met in China are in fact super talented and hard working. Someone connected me with the CEO of a company that manufactures life sciences equipment. He told me that before he started this company, he used to be a repairman for foreign imported machines, traveling 200 days a year with a screwdriver to wherever one had broken down. In 2013, he designed and started manufacturing his own machines, building more and more advanced designs, and now they've just built out a $60 million factory 1.5 hours from Shanghai. I asked him what the hardest part of ramping up production is - apparently constructing factories is just not an issue - tons of construction firms can make you a new facility quite reliably (along with the adjacent dorm room building for workers).

What is travel good for?

Noah Smith has a good blog post about what one can't learn from travel - you're not going to learn about the risk of a war or the state of the AI race by gazing at skylines or chatting up taxi drivers. Of course you can learn about those things by talking to the princelings and researchers and CEOs. But if you have access to these higher ups, surely you can also get them on the Zoom call. And fwiw, this should you update you in favor of more Zoom calls, not less travel. During the trip I realized how much I could have already learned about China by meeting the listeners I have in China (who are unusually high quality, presumably because of the restrictions they have to get through to get to my content).

Incidentally, if you're in China (and especially if you work on anything related to AI) please email me at hello@dwarkeshpatel.com. I'm keen for people to reach out and suggest guests to chat about China. Especially keen to better understand the Chinese political system, and how decisions about mega projects, arms races, and technology investment will be made at the brink of AGI.

So what's the point of travel? What about the in person experience can't be replaced by books, travel vlogs, and Zoom calls? For me, it's something like, what becomes salient to you. I started asking questions about China I hadn't even thought to ask about America.

Another thing I noticed is more personal. Two weeks of being AFK, and of having the excuse of using a burner phone to put off messages, helped me clear the cache of thoughts about sponsorships, logistics, growth, hiring, and a bunch of other practical minutiae. My shower thoughts wandered away from upcoming negotiations and towards interesting rabbit holes.

It's a good reminder that what's lacking in life is not time. It's focus. If you're working on what matters, you can advance leaps and bounds in 8 hours. And if you're just clearing the slog, you can spend a lifetime staying in the same place.