I made my first journey in a long time to mainland China in 2000 - to Kunming in Yunnan province, to be precise. Even then, I was taken aback by the advance of modernization in that relatively remote district of southwestern China, concluding that for many, the standard of life compared well to that of my surroundings in Los Angeles, and that pretty much anything I could buy in Los Angeles was available in Kunming at a not very different price. Over the next couple of decades I was privileged to have the opportunity of several other visits for the purpose of lecturing and teaching, principally to Beijing and Shanghai, and these merely enhanced the impressions I had previously gained in Kunming.

It is now approaching a decade since my last visit, yet still I hear from others who have travelled to China very recently similar expressions of amazement at the advance of China - technologically yes, but in many other domains as well. Their comments mostly have to do with advanced infrastructure, technological innovations, and vibrant urban environments. I can personally endorse most of the comments below, based as they are on reports in China Daily and other, more critical sources.

China’s high‑speed rail network - over 50,000 km by the end of 2025 - is the world’s largest, linking cities, towns, and even villages in a dense “eight vertical, eight horizontal” grid. Visitors are amazed by the speed, comfort, and affordability, as well as by iconic stations like Chongqing East, the world’s largest single‑phase high‑speed rail station, which integrates multiple transport modes. China’s expressway system now spans nearly 199,400 km, built across mountains, canyons, and seismic zones, with some sections featuring snow‑melting and de‑icing systems.

Apps like Alipay and WeChat Pay comprise a level of digital integration which is a hallmark of China’s modern lifestyle and are widely praised by foreign visitors for making daily tasks - from buying coffee to hailing rides - seamless. China’s compact electric vehicles are inexpensive compared to US cars, with some models costing a fraction of the price of a single US new car. These vehicles are popular in dense urban areas and symbolize sustainable, modern mobility. Low‑cost, quickly assembled modular homes — sometimes under $10,000 for a three‑bedroom unit — are drawing attention for their efficiency and affordability reflecting China’s innovation in construction.

Cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu impress visitors with skyscraper skylines, vibrant nightlife, and a blend of historic and contemporary architecture. Visitors are also impressed by the smooth pace of daily life, from QR‑code‑based services to integrated public transport. Improved visa‑free policies, streamlined payment systems, and expanded international flight routes have made it easier for visitors to experience China’s modern attractions. Many travelers note the cleanliness, friendliness of locals, and modern amenities in tourist areas.

Common downsides include complaints that center around digital isolation, strict payment systems, language barriers, and distinct cultural or public hygiene habits. Western visitors find themselves abruptly cut off from the daily digital tools they are accustomed to using. Standard platforms like Google (including Google Maps and Gmail), WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube are blocked. This requires travelers to purchase international e-SIMs or install a reliable Virtual Private Network (VPN) before arriving. Many local systems for booking high-speed rail, securing attraction tickets, ordering food, or renting bikeshares require a mainland Chinese phone number or a Chinese Resident ID, making them difficult for foreigners to navigate independently.

China is almost entirely a cashless society operating on QR codes via Aliplay and WeChat Pay. While foreign cards can now be linked to these apps, visitors complain that setup verification is cumbersome, passport uploads raise privacy concerns, and transactions still occasionally fail. Many small vendors or taxis completely lack the ability to accept international credit cards or provide cash change. Outside of major international hotels or high-end business districts in Tier-1 cities like Beijing and Shanghai, English fluency is rare. Visitors therefore frequently encounter severe communication breakdowns with taxi drivers, train station staff, and restaurant workers.

Unlike many destinations where digital copies are sufficient, China heavily enforces original passport checks. Visitors complain about having to carry their physical passport everywhere for random police checks, high-speed train boarding, hotel check-ins, and entering scenic tourist sites. Travelers frequently report being turned away from budget hotels or guesthouses. Many establishments still refuse foreign guests because they lack the proper registration system capabilities required to log overseas visitors with local authorities.

Outside of big city centers, modern office facilities, and major hotels, toilets are often squat-style and routinely lack toilet paper, hand soap, or paper towels. Western visitors often struggle to adapt to certain localized behaviors that are normalized in China but considered rude abroad. These include loud, frequent public throat-clearing and spitting, aggressive shoving or line-cutting in dense crowds, and pervasive indoor cigarette smoking in restaurants, lobbies, and restrooms. Visitors expecting tranquil or historic experiences often note that China can be intensely loud. Many historic towns and sacred pilgrimage sites have been heavily commercialized, packed with uniform souvenir shops and expensive ticket entry fees that detach the location from its authentic culture. The sheer volume of security cameras and facial recognition gates, while contributing to an incredibly low violent crime rate, makes some Western visitors feeling uncomfortable or constantly monitored, although much the same is true today in Western cities.

Set against these sources of cultural dislocation must be prioritized the sheer immensity of the richness, duration, and scale of Chinese culture and history, and the equivalent vastness of its many neighbors to the immediate west of central Asia with which China is every day more integrated via its Belt and Road initiative. These are resources of incomparable color, intrigue, complexity and mystery that provide lifetime opportunities for personal journeys of investigation and discovery.

And yes, of course, then there are the problems and challenges of running a nation of 1.5 billion people: these include the role of the Communist Party, the nature of a State capitalist system and its relations to private capital, China’s control and containment of foreign capital, the size and influence of the army, regulations governing freedom of movement (the Hukou system) between rural and urban areas, substandard conditions for city workers from rural areas, environmental protection amidst the staggering scale of Chinese industrialization, the scope for political corruption, healthcare costs beyond what is covered by State insurance programs, and on and on.

China is not threatening nuclear war against anyone; China has not recently invaded other countries (though it reabsorbed Hong Kong at the expiry of a lease to the British empire, and could, if sufficiently threatened by the West, assert its historic and US-recognized ownership rights over Taiwan). China is not murdering small boat passengers in the Caribbean or anywhere else. China is not blockading anybody’s Strait. China has been of immense importance to the enrichment of many South American and African countries where it extends its influence solely through trade, not military force. Whereas the US proxy, Israel, is in the process of annihilating the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, while invading Lebanon (among other things, massacring Hezbollah leadership and supporters throughout the region with booby-trapped pagers) and Syria, and in 2025 murdered much of the leadership of Iran including its supreme leader), China does not do genocides. The poorly founded allegations which form the basis of a Western propaganda campaign about how China is committing genocide against the Uyghur peoples of Xinjiang province, notwithstanding, that population of many millions continues to grow in size and to prosper.

These considerations form just a small part of a centuries’ old Western propaganda campaign that has worked so hard on our behalf to enable us to think that a white Western, “Christian” civilization that invested the wealth that it expropriated from the Global South to build impressive churches, banks, legislatures and railroads, is existentially very, very good, worthy, moral, cultivated and important, and that everybody and everything else is just, well, just existential trash.