Visiting China for the first time did not make me an expert.  But I’m willing to publish my opinions for future discussions with friends.  I’ll begin with a bold statement: 

China leads the US in every technical realm except advanced weaponry and some high-tech American cutting-edge research.  Consider these basic factors:

1. China’s percent of world manufacturing revenues is double that of the US. 

2. China has a larger navy (more ships) and army (partly based on China’s population being four times that of the US).

3. China’s generous “Belt and Road Initiative” has extended China’s ability to supply its manufacturing sector with necessary rare minerals and other resources needed to supply its industrial base.  B&R has formed overwhelmingly diverse critical supply sources across Africa and the Middle East.  B&R is even extending into trade relationships with South America and Europe.  Providing Chinese financing for foreign factories, mines, and ports gives the Chinese unequaled access to the world’s raw materials.

4. China’s domestic development has been phenomenal, with annual economic growth rates consistently in double digits.  This has resulted in an astounding growth in the wealth of the Chinese middle class.  I know there must be still poor people in the far-flung villages.  But I didn’t see any in the downtown areas we visited. 

5. Rural people are attracted to relocate from the villages to the cities, looking for better paying jobs.  Our local guide explained that if someone showed up without a job or place to stay in the city, the government would give them a free ticket back to their village, wherever they came from.

6. China’s policy is that everyone should have a job (i.e. no unemployment) and a place to live (no homeless).  The real estate market was so stimulated that they overbuilt!  There are huge real estate developments that sit empty, because of a lack of demand by enough rural-to-city migrants to fill the rows of new empty high-rise apartment buildings. Covid contributed to this problem.

7. The 100% employment policy has enabled immense civic improvement project.  Before this visit, I considered Switzerland to be the most polished manicured country I had ever visited.  Now, China is approaching Swiss levels of high civic physical maintenance of roads, buildings, parks, public gardens, etc.  During the Great Depression in 1933, the government under President Roosevelt, created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), giving jobs to unemployed Americans who were able to create enduring civic projects, such as building roads. (e.g. Blue Ridge Parkway), creating state and national parks, building military bases, etc.  China’s civic development is the CCC on steroids.

8. The Chinese population one sees in the large cities are rich/prosperous.  There are no old automobiles on the road, but plenty of Teslas. 

9. China leads the world in electric vehicles.  Their flagship electric sedan is a direct copy of the Tesla. But there are many inexpensive mass-produced electric automobiles, available for around $12,000, one-third the price of most US-made electric vehicles.  This is why both Trump and Biden want to put 100% tariffs on Chinese electric cars, which have the potential to completely undermine the US electric auto industry.  (Trump’s suggestion is to ignore and shun electric vehicles in favor of gasoline vehicles…Drill Baby Drill.)

10. The wide presence of electric vehicles has resulted in Beijing being a very quiet city.  All motorcycles are electric (especially the food delivery motorcycles, which are numerous).  City buses and private cars are mostly electric.  Beijing does not feel or sound like a city of over twenty million people, as any other city in the world close to its size feels.  Not to mention the cleaner air…

11. There is a movement to make all large cities “green cities”, defined as at least thirty percent of their city space “green”, i.e. forest-lawn-grass or garden-covered.  Instead of being solidly “urban-landscape” like most big cities in the world, Beijing and other cities we visited have large parks/gardens as well as tree-forested areas. 

12. About one-third of the Chinese population owns cars.  That means approximately 450 million cars.  The roads we traveled on were on the same level as the best US Interstate Highways.  But more important for China’s large population is its highly developed public transportation system.  The Beijing subway system is larger than New York’s.  The bus system is also larger, all-electric and inexpensive to use.  The airline system is diverse with different regional airline companies/systems, e.g. China Airlines, China Southern, China Eastern, etc., and last but not least, Tibet Airlines.

 13. In India, their feeling is that China is their main competitor due to their population size.  India is a democracy with a large potential labor pool.  Indians even have the advantage of (mostly) all speaking good English.  But the reality is that India’s percent of global manufacturing is only 5-10% of China’s.  India can still excel in fabric/clothing production due to lower labor costs.  China even has out-sourced some of their own clothing industry to lower-wage countries, such as Cambodia and Indonesia.

14. China feels “new” everywhere.  Except for ancient cathedrals, pagodas, and a few royal buildings, all city centers and suburbs are new construction.  The roads are new.  The huge bridges and tunnels are new.  The cars are new. Many airports are new (and grand!)  There are new parks and gardens throughout the cities.  Every four-lane highway has manicured flowers, bushes, and trees planted in strips between the lanes.  There must be many gardeners employed that keep the roads so beautiful.

15. Worth mentioning is that China has the cleanest public bathrooms of any country I’ve visited.  The machines work.  There are a mixture of western and traditional squat-style toilets.  And public toilets are all free.  (However, not all had toilet paper available.)

16. Chinese civilians are forbidden to own guns.  Since there are no homeless or unemployed, the crime rate is very low.  I’ve not researched it, but I suspect that China must be one of the safest countries in the world in which to travel . (Japan is another.)

17. Does anyone remember when the Europeans, especially Germans, were the dominant tourist nationalities in the US? (Deutsche sind ein reiselustiges Volk.)  Then came the Japanese with their Sony cameras.  But these days Chinese tourists are likely to be the most numerous US tourist nationality.  They are the most numerous nationality and have the most disposable income.

17. Hey…I’m only a first-time tourist. But I can compare my experiences as a tourist in China compared with many other countries I’ve visited.  By and large, I found the Chinese people to be courteous and restrained.  Drivers did not honk their horns except in emergencies.  The general attitudes of personnel in all different positions were very professional and service-oriented.

On the other hand…

I wouldn’t want to live in China.

 There were two Taiwanese women on our Viking cruise.  They asked, “Why can’t the mainland Chinese just accept that we don’t want to live under their system?  Yes, democracy is messy and less efficient, but we prefer it anyway.”

I heard a revealing conversation between a tourist and one of our local Tibetan guides.  He said that government minders cruise internet chat groups looking for dissidents or any type of criticism of the government.  If they read something they don’t like, they trace down the person and send a notification for the offender to come down to the police station for a “talk.”

Surveillance cameras are omnipresent, on street lamps, in buildings, in parks, etc. I heard that with facial recognition software, the government can identify almost everyone.

In short, Chinese citizens (and Tibetan-Chinese) can do anything they want business-wise.  But the government is on the lookout for anyone who appears to be criticizing the government and potentially building any kind of political movement.  So all national decisions are made by the Communist Party of China.  Ordinary Chinese have no experience with voting, political contests, and all other aspects of an active democracy.  They don’t think about it. They don’t miss it or desire it. Democracy does not seem to be competing successfully with Chinese Communism.  Those citizens who might think negatively of the Communist Party are forced to remain silent. Thus most dissidents emigrate.

Because of China’s high population, the government is not averse to Chinese citizens immigrating around the world. Indeed, Chinese restaurants can be found around the world.  But there are also high-tech Chinese immigrants in Silicon Valley and other tech centers.  For the Chinese government, these emigrants represent the establishment of a Chinese presence in diverse communities around the world.  They also help control the Chinese population so that the government doesn’t have to continually construct new infrastructure to sustain a growing population.

China has a “great internet firewall” which blocks Western information sources and networks, including Google, Firefox, Safari, Whatsapp, Telegram, YouTube, NYTimes, CNN, etc.  I could not go online as I normally would anywhere else in the world.  I had to download a VPN, which I was able to do on the ship in international waters in order to access my email when we were inland, in Tibet, etc. Downloading VPN apps is also blocked inside China.  The Chinese have created their own social networking app named WeChat.

Which system is preferable?  That depends on whom you ask.

If you were to ask almost any Chinese person whether they would prefer the Chinese or the American systems, most would prefer their Chinese system.  They see the American democratic process as being chaotic, fragmented, corrupt, and violent.  For example, they can’t understand why a country as rich as the US can’t manage to build any high-speed trains, whereas China has an extensive over-200mph bullet-train system.  There’s even a Mag-Lev (magnetic levitation) train which travels over 300mph!

Chinese see the dismal pace of urban construction and renewal in the US, and clearly perceive their own superiority.  (Detroit still has burned out buildings standing from the 1968 riots!)

The Chinese learn that the US has more guns in our society than we have people.  So they perceive that China is a much safer place and preferable to the always dangerous and potentially violent US society. (American movies contribute to this perception.)

Taiwan manufactures the world’s most advanced microchips, which is one incentive for Communist China to invade/occupy Taiwan, which Chinese people universally consider to be part of China.  If China develops its microchip industry to be almost as advanced as Taiwan’s, then there is less incentive for China to invade Taiwan. Observing the world’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China hopefully will judge that it would have more to lose economically by going to war than by simply continuing to build its lucrative trade channels around the world through the Belt and Road initiative. 

I think that the Chinese are slowly evolving their scientific and technical systems to be true competitors to the US, as well as with Europe, India, and the rest of the world.  As China asserts itself economically around the world, I think the potential for a war with China is reduced. (This may just be wishful thinking on my part.)

Conclusion

In my humble opinion, China has won the global economic war already. As the world economy continuously becomes more dominated by the Chinese, it will come at the expense of the previous American dominance.  It’s okay for the US to not be first in everything as we were in the twentieth century.  The world is big enough for the number-one and number-two powers to co-exist in peaceful equilibrium.  We just have to realize that China is the current world leader in many aspects, and is likely to continue to command an ever more world-defining leadership role in the foreseeable future.