Back in China, August 2023: A Summary

• One discovery genuinely surprised me. From outside the Great Firewall to inside it, most of what both the pro-China and anti-China camps say turns out to be true. A small portion is simply fabricated. The bullshit is that these "facts" resemble the most extreme tails on either side of a normal distribution. They are far removed from ordinary life, which makes the picture they create bullshit all over again.

  New media and self-media accounts have built enormous information cocoons. They polarize people with polarized opinions, then use opium-like algorithms to make users addicted to consuming those opinions. From there, they manipulate the mind. This is the greatest enemy human civilization faces right now.

  China has entered a strange state of stratification. Daily life differs enormously by region, city and industry. Any sweeping claim that begins with "China is..." deserves suspicion. It is simply impossible to glimpse one spot and infer the whole animal.

  One striking feature of this stratification is that the populations at both the top and the bottom are growing while the middle becomes thinner and weaker. Yet the resulting structure is not as fragile as it sounds. People have found their own ways to live and, in many cases, seem reasonably content with them.

  Deflation at the top, inflation at the bottom. Prices have entered a peculiar state: high-end consumption is getting more expensive, low-end goods are actually getting cheaper, and prices in the middle are still rising a little.

  The density and intensity of surveillance have increased by one or two orders of magnitude compared with four years ago. It is unsettling and uncomfortable.

  The standard of service has also improved by one or two orders of magnitude compared with four years ago. It is approaching Japan. At times the service is so attentive that I feel slightly embarrassed to be the person receiving it.

  Excellent service has made daily life extraordinarily convenient.

  The cities I visited, Shanghai and Tianjin, remain prosperous and full of energy. The market offers an immense variety of goods and services. At the same time, the consumerist trap behind that prosperity makes people restless and vain.

  Shanghai's standard of living and urban development have probably surpassed Tokyo around 2015. No European city can match it. Political freedom excepted, of course.

  Large-scale closures of physical businesses are real, especially in Tianjin. It is difficult to tell, though, how much comes from an economic downturn and how much from a change in the economic model, with online shopping and food delivery replacing storefronts.

  Restaurants and every kind of entertainment business are extraordinarily busy. Of course, that can also be used as one more piece of evidence for an economic downturn.

  Using cash has become difficult. Not impossible, just inconvenient.

  The lives of my classmates and friends have stratified too. Most households earn roughly RMB 500,000 to RMB 2 million a year, while a small number have slipped below RMB 120,000.

  Because the consumerist trap keeps everyone trying to "make money," many people have raised their income and social class. Their actual level of understanding, knowledge and ability has not risen with it, and most show no interest in changing that.

  People are generally overweight and obsessed with losing weight, yet very few exercise regularly. I almost never hear anyone talk about pursuing physical capability for its own sake.

  The food is delicious and unhealthy. I gained ten jin, about five kilograms, in ten days.