I can feel storms before they arrive. Like I sense the air change so I’m in tune with things like this. I couldn’t sleep for a few days so I spent the time watching videos about China imminently doing things. The same sensation occurred and I could see Chairman Xi out of the corner of my eye, but he was a shadow version of himself.
Had to listen to several of my coworkers discuss China’s “empty cities with houses for millions” and tried my hardest not to have a stroke. I desperately wanted them to understand how anything relating to city planning works, but only 1 of them actually pays any attention to the things I say and the other 2 think I’m too young and naive to really understand the world, which is annoying to hear from some of the most privelledged people at my place of employment.
“More houses than people, stupid commies. Don’t they know you’re supposed to have less houses than people so the people have to fight each other for them and the people who lose don’t get a house to motivate everybody.”
Not even the whole “stupid commies have more houses than people” more like half-remembering the stories about the Chinese ghost towns that were popular prior to the neighbourhoods in Chongqing being completed and people actually moving in.
Meanwhile 30 minutes outside of most major cities look like the setting of a fallout game because of the logical conclussions of capitalism.
I visited chicago and there was, at the entrance near the like on-ramps for the highway (off-ramp?) densely packed tents along the road.
the US has more houses than people, what are they talking about… a lot of them just stand empty so homelessness can be maintained.
Those aren’t empty houses they’re unrealized investment opportunities.
Unlike the Chinese who lack the ability for forward thinking.
The most famous ghost cities are Pudong (5 million inhabitants), Chenggong (A quarter of a million inhabitants), Ordos City (Between 300000 and 2 million inhabitants depending on how you count it) and the Zhengdong New Area (1 million inhabitants)
I was reading the same dumb ghost city bullshit when I was in high-school, in the 90s. How does shit like this stay alive?
Because westerner’s view of China was frozen in time in the 90s. They imagine the country being filled with cramped, dirty, overpopulated cities that look like they came out of a dystopian novel. They can’t imagine that China was building “ghost cities” to house people, because everything China does is just to trick the west.
Honestly, a lot of people in the West seem to be stuck in the 90s. Thats why they keep voting for SucDems who hate them, think Russia is falling apart, think China’s armed forces are completely degraded due to corruption and graft (lmao, this was said by a coworker the same day it came out that Danish Naval Ships had no functioning cannons).
It’s the Francis Fukuyama “History has ended” idea. The US defeated their enemy the USSR and as well all know, when a big empire defeats their biggest enemy they just stay in power for all eternity and nothing changes because they won the game of Civilisation.
I suppose you’re right. It’s just incredible to watch people encounter reality and choosing of their own free will to believe what they’ve been told over their litteral eyes and ears.
I don’t think people are naturally materialistic thinkers. I think the “default” for people is magical thinking, and we need to train ourselves to examine material reality properly. Our perceptions are always subjective, so it can feel like reality is subjective. And for 99% of people, this kind of idea that “reality is what you make of it” works fine in their day to day life, so it is never challenged, so they assume it is true.
The only people those ghosts haunt are westerners.
That story was all the rage in the late-00s. The westoid mind cannot comprehend future planning.
ah, they are too old and indoctrinated to understand new concepts
do they not understand how long term thinking works? I guess it’s hard to do so if you live in a society obsessed with quarterly profits and nothing else