From the letter: ... ... ... And there's more about China, touching on many other subjects, but I'll stop quoting here.
From the letter:
The most important story of China in 2023 might be that the expected good news of economic recovery didn’t materialize, when the end of zero-Covid should have lifted consumer spirits; and that the unexpected bad news of political uncertainty kept cropping up, though the previous year’s party congress should have consolidated regime stability. China may have hit its GDP growth target of 5 percent this year, but its main stock index has fallen -17% since the start of 2023. More perplexing were the politics. 2023 was a year of disappearing ministers, disappearing generals, disappearing entrepreneurs, disappearing economic data, and disappearing business for the firms that have counted on blistering economic growth.
No wonder that so many Chinese are now talking about rùn. Chinese youths have in recent years appropriated this word in its English meaning to express a desire to flee. For a while, rùn was a way to avoid the work culture of the big cities or the family expectations that are especially hard for Chinese women. Over the three years of zero-Covid, after the state enforced protracted lockdowns, rùn evolved to mean emigrating from China altogether.
...
The Chinese who rùn to the American border are still a tiny set of the people who leave. Most emigrés are departing through legal means. People who can find a way to go to Europe or an Anglophone country would do so, but most are going, as best as I can tell, to three Asian countries. Those who have ambition and entrepreneurial energy are going to Singapore. Those who have money and means are going to Japan. And those who have none of these things — the slackers, the free spirits, kids who want to chill — are hanging out in Thailand.
...
Most of the young Chinese I chatted with are in their early 20s. Visitors to Thailand are trying to catch up on the fun they lost under three years of zero-Covid. Those who have made Chiang Mai their new home have complex reasons for staying. They told me that they’ve felt a quiet shattering of their worldview over the past few years. These are youths who grew up in bigger cities and attended good universities, endowing them with certain expectations: that they could pursue meaningful careers, that society would gain greater political freedoms, and that China would become more integrated with the rest of the world. These hopes have curdled. Their jobs are either too stressful or too menial, political restrictions on free expression have ramped up over the last decade, and China’s popularity has plunged in developed countries.
...
I lingered with a group of Dali folks who moved to Chiang Mai over the past year. These are people in China’s crypto community who’ve found it increasingly more difficult to hang on after Beijing banned miners and exchanges. In 2022, police disrupted a festival they held called Wamotopia, which became a gathering point for crypto people and digital nomads. The idea was to burn a big wooden cat in a field in Dali at the conclusion of the festival, but Chinese police dispersed the event shortly after it began. So this year they moved to Thailand.
And there's more about China, touching on many other subjects, but I'll stop quoting here.
I was unfamiliar with this author. He wrote brilliantly about walking across Thailand. Anyone who wants to do something similar in Europe could try the Camino de Santiago through France and Spain...
I was unfamiliar with this author.
He wrote brilliantly about walking across Thailand. Anyone who wants to do something similar in Europe could try the Camino de Santiago through France and Spain or through Portugal.
See also gaming industry (kids preyed upon by microtransactions!) and tutoring (kids are exhausted from spending too much time studying!) and Kpop (young men are wearing glitter!) and tech in...
The trouble with Xi Jinping is that he is 60 percent correct on all the problems he sees, while his government’s brute force solutions reliably worsen things. Are housing developers taking on too much debt? Yes, but driving many of them to default and triggering a collapse in the confidence of homebuyers hasn’t improved matters. Does big tech have too much power? Fine, but taking the scalps of entrepreneurs and stomping out their businesses isn’t boosting sentiment. Does the government need to rein in official corruption? Definitely, but terrorizing the bureaucracy has also made the policymaking apparatus more paralyzed and risk averse. It’s starting to feel like the only thing scarier than China’s problems are Beijing’s solutions.
See also gaming industry (kids preyed upon by microtransactions!) and tutoring (kids are exhausted from spending too much time studying!) and Kpop (young men are wearing glitter!) and tech in school (we need 100% AI monitoring of every facial and eye movement of every child and teacher!)
-- the intentions might have been good (not the Kpop one) but the actual implementations are never human focused and doomed to warp into a Kafkaesque monstrosity as a result.
For all of China’s demographic woes, all projections show that it will still have over 1 billion people by 2050.
Yes. One billion mostly very poor (2014) and angry people. Dangerous times for the rest of the world. A commentator I listed to recently warned that the modern world had grown up knowing a China that's friendly and optimistic and growing more prosperous (it's only 70ish years old.) None of us had ever met a China that isn't growing and optimistic.
If we obsessed only over America’s problems, it would be a pretty ugly picture as well.
Absolutely, and I really appreciate the balanced nature of this piece.
The trouble is that when people suffer — as they do through a property collapse, high unemployment, and months-long lockdowns — they start to doubt. When they’re given a cold, hard smack in the face by something that certainly doesn’t feel like national greatness, they start feeling adrift.
That's exactly what's going on over in America as well, and why there's so much support for Trump and ever declining voter turnout.
It’s easy to forget that the Politburo is entirely made up of old men. Spending time with young people, in Chiang Mai or elsewhere, is a good reminder that the Politburo isn’t representative of the country. The China of the future will not look like the China ruled by old men today.
Amen. I also look forward to many many older generational choke points dying away, including older millennials like myself. The future belongs to the youth in the middle east, India and the African continent, to the optimistic and entrepreneurial young coming to our shores, to those who have rún for a better future. It won't be senile war mongers forever.
From the letter:
...
...
...
And there's more about China, touching on many other subjects, but I'll stop quoting here.
I was unfamiliar with this author.
He wrote brilliantly about walking across Thailand. Anyone who wants to do something similar in Europe could try the Camino de Santiago through France and Spain or through Portugal.
See also gaming industry (kids preyed upon by microtransactions!) and tutoring (kids are exhausted from spending too much time studying!) and Kpop (young men are wearing glitter!) and tech in school (we need 100% AI monitoring of every facial and eye movement of every child and teacher!)
-- the intentions might have been good (not the Kpop one) but the actual implementations are never human focused and doomed to warp into a Kafkaesque monstrosity as a result.
Yes. One billion mostly very poor (2014) and angry people. Dangerous times for the rest of the world. A commentator I listed to recently warned that the modern world had grown up knowing a China that's friendly and optimistic and growing more prosperous (it's only 70ish years old.) None of us had ever met a China that isn't growing and optimistic.
Absolutely, and I really appreciate the balanced nature of this piece.
That's exactly what's going on over in America as well, and why there's so much support for Trump and ever declining voter turnout.
Amen. I also look forward to many many older generational choke points dying away, including older millennials like myself. The future belongs to the youth in the middle east, India and the African continent, to the optimistic and entrepreneurial young coming to our shores, to those who have rún for a better future. It won't be senile war mongers forever.