The China Thread

[LaAguilaNegra]

China had relaxed its visa requirement earlier year and its easy to get around the firewall with VPN - in fact if you're a foreigner coming in with sim card from overseas roam - you're automatically given a built in VPN to go through the firewall. You can also peer into their community with rednote/XHS and billibilli now. Heavy censorship is just a cope.

I see people sharing their experiences NOW even on Western Social Media and they're easy to verify especially with record people coming in and out of China now. How is your algorithm still limited to around a DECADE ago still? A lot had changed especially since their GDP had increased 4-5% about every year in that decade. The environment is like going from the Great Depression to Post-WW2 Boom.

For instance, the Gutter Oil meme was from 1990s (3 DECADES) and I see you're presuming its still rampant (lol).



As someone with easy access in and out of China, whenever someone shares an experience from China from a decade ago and acts as if its still ongoing now in this thread, I can't but help laugh my ass off but at the same time, I feel bad for people who are trying to get serious information or make this board legitimate.

Kind reminder that all VPNs are illegal in China, and conviction carries hefty fines and possible prison sentences. Usage of a VPN carries a maximum prison sentence of 3-7 years under Article 285.



Weirdo China simps were already obnoxious in their continuous CCP glazing, yet have now moved one step beyond that and are openly encouraging illegal acts in one of the most repressive countries in the world. Moderators should step in to put a cap on this type of deceitful and outright dangerous rhetoric, in terms of importance wellbeing of CIK members ranks above CCP shilling narratives by a notch or two. BS above is quite literally the Chang equivalent of boasting about purchasing or selling a illegal firearm in the US. Yeah totally safe bro, nahh it ain't a big deal, been doing it for years yeah bro they ain't gonna get you go for it bro'.

Do not bring phones with pre-downloaded VPNs into China, do not try to download VPNs in China itself, and do not use VPNs in China in general. In China the only people who are allowed VPN usage are human botfarm shills as they spoof their location to rural Texas and twitterpost under 'Mary in MAGA Country', tits half hanging out. Then telling gullible tards how it's time to move our military out of the Pacific, why are we there anyway, bring our boys back home, China isn't the enemy! Likewise Chinese SOE employees also have a waiver, in their case for pragmatic reasons, aka to grease and simplify business practices overseas. None here belong to any of these categories, at least that's what we are hoping.

Below is a video of cell phone checks on a metro. During high profile events like the recent Fourth Plenum surveillance goes up tremendously. Especially modes of public transportation have high intensity security measures, including jackboots demanding access to your phone just because. This has spread to the big cities recently, yet has been a reality in high risk zones since the 2010s already, especially Xinjiang and Tibet adjacent areas are swarming with plain clothes officers at train stations, airports etc. If they profile you they will pull out some sort of weird portable device slightly bigger than a cellphone and plug it into your cellphone. Refusing isn't an option. Increasingly happens at border control as well. Travel with a burner phone instead and do no listen to bad faith detractors.

Conviction for using a VPN.



Random checks on the metro.

 

[Cooper]

This short video has no details, like how many square meters, how old the building is, what city he's in, and how far out he is from the city center. It would be exceptionally rare if the landscaping in the common area was arranged in a way so that you could enjoy being there. I never saw an example of that (all my time was in Guangzhou and Shenzhen), whereas every place I or friends lived had common areas that were literally repulsive and you would never do anything but walk through them as quickly as possible in order to get inside your apartment and away from the other people, noise, pollution and smell.

Now for the tough love. She said the area where she lives around the lake is "clean and quiet." Forgive me, but she is not speaking the truth and I can guess the reason: she's pregnant and wants to see the cup half full, which is understandable.

The fact is that there is nowhere in mainland China with apartment complexes that is clean and quiet. It does not exist. China is extremely dirty from the pollution and noisy from the construction, and also from the Chinese people themselves, who are dirty and noisy. She is coping hard.

1,200sqft 3 BDR 2 bath apartment in the Greater Bay Area near Hong Kong and Shenzhen rents for $300/month, nice clean surroundings, gardens and common areas.



Who is "coping hard" here?? Muh 50 year mortgages and affordable "starter homes" ...

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

Big if true. Would be funny if it turned out the Chinese were monitoring Alex Jones for these lost tech opportunities, researching his conspiracy theories and then capitalizing

Monitoring? I am afraid it goes a little beyond that, Alex J. is going mask off and has in the last couple of years travelled more often to Moscow than to his in laws down the road. His last high profile visit: Tsargrad's Forum of the Future event in June 2025. This Forum was organized by Aleksander Dugin and Malofeev, the two architects of the New Right.

Totally not sus, and AJ's a real American patriot anyway. Alex was enjoying some good companionship though, Sergey Lavrov, Konstantin Malofeev, Errol Musk, Dimitry Simes, Jeffrey Sachs, Max Blumenthal, Matthew Groves and others. Quite a kosher gang bytheway. Word on the street is that Candace Owens was invited too, but she was too dumb and instead booked a ticket to Moscow, Idaho. Classic Candace!

 

[RedLagoon]

So it's the Russians now? What is it 1978 mr Allegra? Alex Jones?

Could you please elaborate on all of this?

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

Literally like clockwork. US-Turkish communist Hassan Piker (hassanabi) was just searched and checked in Beijing, Tiananmen Square. Security guards 'saw' a meme of Piker dressed up as Mao Zedong on his phone, and that didn't go down well. Yet how do you see a meme on someone's phone? Short answer: because he got profiled, picked out and had his devices checked by some low level jackboot who wasn't aware that Piker was there on the CCP's invitation anyway. Nothing will likely happen to Piker because he is 'on their side', yet this could have been a misinformed RW chud instead, no mercy in commie China for those though.

Do not play stupid games in China. The narrative that China is a country like all other East Asian states is a rancid lie, propagated by even more rancid propagandists who make a living out of selling crap to low info and disenfranchised Westoid idiots. China is a heavily authoritian communist dictatorship that after a 20 year or so hike is becoming openly hostile again and which is engaged in a large number of informational, fifth generational and even kinetic warfare operations against the US.



Hasan Piker during Mamdani's victory, lamenting the fall of the USSR. Like said before, domestic and foreign communists will unite in their desire to bring down the USA.

 

[expectation]

Kind reminder that all VPNs are illegal in China, and conviction carries hefty fines and possible prison sentences. Usage of a VPN carries a maximum prison sentence of 3-7 years under Article 285.



Weirdo China simps were already obnoxious in their continuous CCP glazing, yet have now moved one step beyond that and are openly encouraging illegal acts in one of the most repressive countries in the world. Moderators should step in to put a cap on this type of deceitful and outright dangerous rhetoric, in terms of importance wellbeing of CIK members ranks above CCP shilling narratives by a notch or two. BS above is quite literally the Chang equivalent of boasting about purchasing or selling a illegal firearm in the US. Yeah totally safe bro, nahh it ain't a big deal, been doing it for years yeah bro they ain't gonna get you go for it bro'.

You have progressively gone more unhinged since posting hallucinations from the 12 Day Iran-Israel War thread to frantically spending hours and days searching for any agit-prop materials as far back as the 90s on knee jerk reaction to anything on China.

That habit cannot be good for your mental health as it further promotes your own cognitive dissonance. I sincerely hope you're compensated for all that hard work because it comes with the cost of your well being and no internet argument is worth that.

If these 300 million tourists can figure it out then I'm sure you can put on your big boy pants, figure out how to use VPN, and break out of your cognitive dissonance. We believe in you.

300 million tourists just visited China's stunning Xinjiang region. There's a side they didn't see - Yahoo News Canada

China has repackaged Xinjiang into a tourist haven, touting "ethnic" experiences that activists say it's trying to erase.

ca.news.yahoo.com

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

1,200sqft 3 BDR 2 bath apartment in the Greater Bay Area near Hong Kong and Shenzhen rents for $300/month, nice clean surroundings, gardens and common areas.



Who is "coping hard" here??

The price is not bad, but it looked like there was no A/C whatsoever in that apartment, and there is almost never heating south of Shanghai, which includes all of Guangdong. Huizhou is as hot as anywhere else in Guangdong so how are they getting along without A/C.

They said they're only paying 120 RMB/month for water, electric and gas, but they didn't mention internet. I was paying more than 120 for electric alone, but I had A/C and used space heaters.

And like I said earlier about the swimming pool, there are always problems as theirs was not usable for the entire past season.

They touted the exercise equipment in the courtyard that is unusable for healthy people who can move their arms and legs. Take another look at it and try to imagine what you would do. They have the same stuff everywhere in China and it seems designed for recovering quadriplegics. That they would refer to it as a benefit means they're not really using the things that are there, but assuming they're beneficial.

A lot in China looks nice from afar, but when you get close and live with it for a while, you find the problems and drawbacks, which you have to balance against the good. People make assumptions when they see the Chinese facade, but you have to live there in order to know what it's really like.

Huizhou has the same horrendous air pollution as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but not as bad as Beijing, so it's not clean there either. Laowhy86 used to live in Huizhou with his Chinese wife. He saw the problems and pollution, but made the best of things.

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

You have progressively gone more unhinged since posting hallucinations from the 12 Day Iran-Israel War thread to frantically spending hours and days searching for any agit-prop materials as far back as the 90s on knee jerk reaction to anything on China.

That habit cannot be good for your mental health as it further promotes your own cognitive dissonance. I sincerely hope you're compensated for all that hard work because it comes with the cost of your well being and no internet argument is worth that.

If these 300 million tourists can figure it out then I'm sure you can put on your big boy pants, figure out how to use VPN, and break out of your cognitive dissonance. We believe in you.

300 million tourists just visited China's stunning Xinjiang region. There's a side they didn't see - Yahoo News Canada

China has repackaged Xinjiang into a tourist haven, touting "ethnic" experiences that activists say it's trying to erase.

ca.news.yahoo.com

View attachment 25327

You understand these are Chinese tourists, right, and not foreigners?

 

[Cooper]

Literally like clockwork. US-Turkish communist Hassan Piker (hassanabi) was just searched and checked in Beijing, Tiananmen Square. Security guards 'saw' a meme of Piker dressed up as Mao Zedong on his phone, and that didn't go down well. Yet how do you see a meme on someone's phone? Short answer: because he got profiled, picked out and had his devices checked by some low level jackboot who wasn't aware that Piker was there on the CCP's invitation anyway. Nothing will likely happen to Piker because he is 'on their side', yet this could have been a misinformed RW chud instead, no mercy in commie China for those though.

Do not play stupid games in China. The narrative that China is a country like all other East Asian states is a rancid lie, propagated by even more rancid propagandists who make a living out of selling crap to low info and disenfranchised Westoid idiots. China is a heavily authoritian communist dictatorship that after a 20 year or so hike is becoming openly hostile again and which is engaged in a large number of informational, fifth generational and even kinetic warfare operations against the US.

Hasan Piker during Mamdani's victory, lamenting the fall of the USSR. Like said before, domestic and foreign communists will unite in their desire to bring down the USA.

Mamdani took on and beat several dozen mostly Jewish billionaires using essentially the same populist platform that Trump used to win over the Rust Belt and middle America (NV, FL, AZ,...). Instead of helping out middle America as promised, Trump pulled an Obama and put his billionaire buddies in charge, pushing usury on steroids with the 50 year mortgages, being Bibi's b**** and wiping out 2000 years of Christiandom in the Holy Land, squashing the First Amendment by giving TikTok to the biggest zionist billionaire and letting healthcare costs spiral out of control.

Mamdani won because people are pissed at all this, and because the average rent for a 1-BDR in Manhattan is $5,500, not because they love the USSR, that is a pretty dumb premise.

Hassan Piker is a leftist retard, and you are the ziocon mirror version of that.

China is indeed not like the other east Asian countries, all of which are economically and culturally cucked, getting worse every year while China becomes richer and more advanced every year. No one in China yearns for a neoliberal "democracy" (lol) where no matter who you vote for, you always end up with different versions of Nancy Pelosi and Lindsay Graham.

In "authoritarian communist dictatorship China", you will never go to jail for burning the gay flag. The Gay flag and the Israel flag are the only sacred flags in the US today.

Iowa man sentenced to 15 years after burning church’s LGBTQ flag

Adolfo Martinez said he tore down the pride flag because he opposes homosexuality. Hate crime and habitual offender charges enhanced his prison sentence.

www.nbcnews.com

And contrary to what you posted a couple of weeks ago, feminists are not welcome in China, they are identified as foreign filth and dealt with accordingly.



So you're right about China not being like the other east Asian countries... In Japan pedo manga is normalized, and filth like soiled panties have been sold out of vending machines for decades now, and ((US))-funded boy bands and K-pop are turning their young men into fags, and in Taiwan you have the biggest "pride" sodomfest in all of Asia, while in China their authorities block that crap.

That's the side of China people like Hasan Piker cannot face, and neither can you, that is why you are his ziocon version.

 

[Cooper]

You understand these are Chinese tourists, right, and not foreigners?

40 million foreign visitors to China in 2025.

Of those, roughly 10 million never make it back, squashed by drivers running them over and over again, suffocating to death from urban pollution, or trapped inside apartments with malfunctioning killer doors, according to certain former English teachers who have lived there 10 years ago...

 

[Cooper]

The price is not bad, but it looked like there was no A/C whatsoever in that apartment, and there is almost never heating south of Shanghai, which includes all of Guangdong. Huizhou is as hot as anywhere else in Guangdong so how are they getting along without A/C.

They said they're only paying 120 RMB/month for water, electric and gas, but they didn't mention internet. I was paying more than 120 for electric alone, but I had A/C and used space heaters.

And like I said earlier about the swimming pool, there are always problems as theirs was not usable for the entire past season.

They touted the exercise equipment in the courtyard that is unusable for healthy people who can move their arms and legs. Take another look at it and try to imagine what you would do. They have the same stuff everywhere in China and it seems designed for recovering quadriplegics. That they would refer to it as a benefit means they're not really using the things that are there, but assuming they're beneficial.

A lot in China looks nice from afar, but when you get close and live with it for a while, you find the problems and drawbacks, which you have to balance against the good. People make assumptions when they see the Chinese facade, but you have to live there in order to know what it's really like.

Huizhou has the same horrendous air pollution as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but not as bad as Beijing, so it's not clean there either. Laowhy86 used to live in Huizhou with his Chinese wife. He saw the problems and pollution, but made the best of things.

So to summarize your review of that $300/month 1,200 square foot 3 bedroom apartment in two words ; pointy elbows.

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

You have progressively gone more unhinged since posting hallucinations from the 12 Day Iran-Israel War thread to frantically spending hours and days searching for any agit-prop materials as far back as the 90s on knee jerk reaction to anything on China.

That habit cannot be good for your mental health as it further promotes your own cognitive dissonance. I sincerely hope you're compensated for all that hard work because it comes with the cost of your well being and no internet argument is worth that.

If these 300 million tourists can figure it out then I'm sure you can put on your big boy pants, figure out how to use VPN, and break out of your cognitive dissonance. We believe in you.

300 million tourists just visited China's stunning Xinjiang region. There's a side they didn't see - Yahoo News Canada

China has repackaged Xinjiang into a tourist haven, touting "ethnic" experiences that activists say it's trying to erase.

ca.news.yahoo.com

View attachment 25327

Pure impotent Chudrage, and most awkward pivot seen in a while. Tankie turdworldists are apparently still butthurt over the ass whooping Iran received earlier this year, end stage of the collapsing Iranian position in the region and quite literally predicted by yours truly to a T. Yet another worldview in shambles and yet another case of never get high on your own copey thirdy supply.

The CCP groupies are a lost cause but that doesn't exempt them from endangering fellow forum members. So instead of these desperate wild swings and pot shots from the hip aimed at nothing it would be more apt if you'd clarify your position on VPNs in China, coupled with an explanation on why you were trivializing and even recommending VPN usage in China. An offense, which you must have been aware of, that carries a maximum 3-7 year prison sentence.

Additional service announcement: I am building a Chudtower. For every intentional deflection on the VPN issue another educational video released by Chinese authorities on how VPNs are illegal gets added, we are currently at two and just by superficially skimming the socials I have found about five already. Chuds and other resentfuls don't like it when they get put on the spot and have their paid sloptakes pulled apart. The days wherein CCP sludge could be dumped on CiK unopposed are over, better get used to it!

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

Part of it as well is China winning the TikTok/RedNote war, this has been the first time ever China has scored major soft power points, Japan and Korea used to monopolize that region. There are a lot of western bloggers who are doing China now.

Some quick updates on the 'Western e-refugee migration to Red Note' skunk narrative, which Lil Coop spent about a dozen or so posts on. Short recap. Coop, in his infinite wisdom, foresaw that half the Western internet would flock to Chang internet because on Twitter, Discord, Telegram or Instagram one could not criticize Jews/ Israel or whatever. And as an extension our very own Chief CCP propagandist, with that characteristic and quintessential air of feigned confidence-meets-triumphalism tried to frame RedNote 'as a big soft power victory for China'.

Fastforward a year and obviously none of that happened. RedNote never got any traction beyond the initial hype, and barring a few tankies nobody in the West uses it. There's more though, RedNote has recently implemented a string of new security measures. From the Twitter post linked: 'the app now seems riddled with new loopholes: accounts are being flagged as “security risks” for no reason, and users must submit foreign passport numbers, face + ID photo, and phone verification to restore account visibility or even post, only for the process to repeatedly fail'.

This is a coordinated effort to boot the few foreigners left out the door. Guess the Changs got tired of their biggo soft power victory, although I am sure that it all really happened in Coop's head though. Man has legit become a meme. Meanwhile real Gs here on J-posting sprees on any social media platform available.

 

[It_Is_My_Time]

China flexing on the west. They must realize third world immigration and our disgusting way of raising children has made us weak enough to start flexing on us.

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

If these 300 million tourists can figure it out then I'm sure you can put on your big boy pants, figure out how to use VPN...

300 million tourists just visited China's stunning Xinjiang region. There's a side they didn't see - Yahoo News Canada

China has repackaged Xinjiang into a tourist haven, touting "ethnic" experiences that activists say it's trying to erase.

ca.news.yahoo.com

Why would Chinese tourists need VPNs in order to visit a Chinese province when there is, according to you, little censorship in China?

Your position doesn't make sense to me that there are simultaneously: little censorship, VPN's are illegal, but also easy to obtain and safe to use.

40 million foreign visitors to China in 2025.

So 40 million to all of China in 2025, but 300 million to Xinjiang in 2024? There's something off here. Chinese cities with almost a billion residents in total have the capacity for 40 million visitors, but how could Xinjiang handle so many?

The issue was VPN's, which was somehow relevant to the dubious claim in the Yahoo article that 300 million Chinese tourists visited Xinjiang in 2024, which is over 20% of the entire population of the country going to one of its most remote and sparsely populated regions, the other being Tibet.

The American equivalent would be if in one year 80 million people visited Alaska. It sounds logistically improbable for either of these things to occur due to the needed hotel space and other reasons. Xinjiang has a population of 25 million with 40% being Han (it was less than 10% when I lived there), so how could they accommodate so many tourists, who would likely only be staying in Han provided accommodations? Can 15 million people provide the tourist infrastructure for 300 million to visit in one year, which is 820,000 tourists per day, many of whom are going to see the forests? Sounds like something is off here.

It's credible that there is tourism to Xinjiang, but this exaggerated claim and its lack of relevance to VPN's being needed is another deflection. It was in Xinjiang where the current Chinese control grid was established with forced installation of surveillance apps on phones and illegality of VPN's following the brutal crackdowns and police killings in response to riots there in the summer of 2009, when the entire province was completely locked down.

One of my students from Guangzhou was on a summer tour of China and got trapped in Xinjiang for months. She could not leave, use the internet, or make international calls, so she phoned me in Guangdong so that I could relay messages to her husband in Canada. For many years after that, Xinjiang was the focus of a large scale program of oppression against the local population that was carried out by the CCP official who had been in charge of the same thing in Tibet.

The police presence in Xinjiang cities mentioned in the Yahoo article began at this time and included countless checkpoints across the cities so that you had to pass through multiples just to go from home to the grocery store. It amounted to surveillance harassment that was especially targeted at Uyghurs, who received extra attention and scrutiny at these checkpoints.

This is very recent history and it's not easy to imagine that the foundations of surveillance harassment in Xinjiang, internet censorship and the long-standing practice of faking statistics has suddenly disappeared. Getting caught with a VPN in Xinjiang meant jail time and other restrictions, such as travel bans outward for you and your family, as well as refusal of incoming visas for family members living in neighboring countries.

Such offenses also meant increased scrutiny and harassment at all of the checkpoints that was documented back in the early 2010's by foreigners who lived in Xinjiang. The Uyghurs who ended up in the databases for extra scrutiny described their lives as miserable and, because of the harassment at the checkpoints, they didn't want to even step outside.

The oppression escalated in many ways leading up to the large-scale internments and re-education. I used to follow the youtube channel of an American in Xinjiang who left around 2014 because he could no longer reliably use the internet and also because of the oppressive measures being carried out. Here's what he said about Xinjiang when he left:

This is the now-retired channel of travel author Josh Summers, documenting his decade of life in China's western region of Xinjiang. For most people, Xinjiang is known as the place of concentration camps, oppression and cultural genocide. While this is true, what gets lost in the news is the incredible beauty of the Uyghur culture and the breathtaking scenery of the region. Josh's videos remain here as a time capsule of a history and culture that is slowly being erased. Most of what you'll see no longer exists today.

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

So to summarize your review of that $300/month 1,200 square foot 3 bedroom apartment

I've never stayed in an apartment in China without A/C and it doesn't fit with this being a new complex. Shots of the tower's center shaft show A/C units on the exterior of most of the other apartments and definitely has an effect on the rental price.



While I'm used to the heat in the southern USA, it's difficult for me to imagine a couple of Brits going through a Guangdong summer at 95°F/35°C without air conditioning. Chinese people only do it when they have to because of the expense.

The furnishings in this place are bare bones and the Brits don't like the beds, so the owner is probably trying for a low investment rental unit and thought the place could be let out without having to install A/C. Maybe they bought several units and are looking at an overall cost and trying to find tenants who can live without aircon?

It's odd and another example that you have to pay attention to these details when you see shiny adverts from China.

 

[Thomas More]

The Hongqi bridge was recently completed in China. It's one of the world's highest bridges, and has been touted as an example of China's advancement and superiority.

Hongqi Bridge - HighestBridges.com

www.highestbridges.com

It just collapsed.



Edit: When I searched for the Hongqi Bridge, I got a link for the Huajiang Canyon Bridge which was also recently completed and very high. I think this bridge got a lot of attention, and the Hongqi bridge was not as famous. It's still a cautionary tale of hubris.

 

[Wutang]

I don't post in this thread often and prefer to just read since both the pro-China and anti-China tend to give pretty detailed and well-argued posts for their position (outside of the "China is going to turn everyone into fertilizer" posts which I do take time to argue against since it it's so ridiculous and needs to be called out in the same way flat earth stuff needs to be called out) but I have to say seeing one of the biggest pro-Chinese posters who appears to be an ethnically Chinese himself (even though he doesn't seem to be from the mainland) completely deflect the question on how the Chinese government has such strong laws against VPN usage by saying "well plenty of people use it anyways" did raise a big pretty big eyebrow from me. He doesn't deny that the Chinese government does crack down on VPN restrictions but instead suggests people risk getting thrown into jail by using workarounds. Whether it's easy to use VPNs or not, the point that the China critics are pointing out is that the fact that people even have to use these workarounds is already a big stain on the manner in which the CPP are running things.

The fact that even such a law exists on the books is already bad enough but unlike say sodomy laws in some US states, this law does appear to be actively enforced and done so in such a heavy handed manner really doesn't inspire confidence in me that the world will be better off if China does become a superpower.

 

[Cooper]

I've never stayed in an apartment in China without A/C and it doesn't fit with this being a new complex. Shots of the tower's center shaft show A/C units on the exterior of most of the other apartments and definitely has an effect on the rental price.

View attachment 25332

While I'm used to the heat in the southern USA, it's difficult for me to imagine a couple of Brits going through a Guangdong summer at 95°F/35°C without air conditioning. Chinese people only do it when they have to because of the expense.

The furnishings in this place are bare bones and the Brits don't like the beds, so the owner is probably trying for a low investment rental unit and thought the place could be let out without having to install A/C. Maybe they bought several units and are looking at an overall cost and trying to find tenants who can live without aircon?

It's odd and another example that you have to pay attention to these details when you see shiny adverts from China.

There is a large indoor AC unit in the living room corner by the window. Those AC units in your picture above must be for the bedrooms, in the Brits' flat they have set up a large fan for their office and smaller fans for the bedrooms. With a big unit in the living room the temperature in the bedroom is not going to be too high, I would imagine if that were a problem they could easily get a dedicated AC unit for $100-$150 and split the cost with their landlord.

So A/C is definitely not a factor here, and certainly not the deal breaker you make it out to be. As well this is not an "advert", it's just a couple of British boomers being very happy about their setup and about living in China as expats. Their alternative in places like Tenerife would have had 5x the rent.

 

[It_Is_My_Time]

I don't post in this thread often and prefer to just read since both the pro-China and anti-China tend to give pretty detailed and well-argued posts for their position (outside of the "China is going to turn everyone into fertilizer" posts which I do take time to argue against since it it's so ridiculous and needs to be called out in the same way flat earth stuff needs to be called out) but I have to say seeing one of the biggest pro-Chinese posters who appears to be an ethnically Chinese himself (even though he doesn't seem to be from the mainland) completely deflect the question on how the Chinese government has such strong laws against VPN usage by saying "well plenty of people use it anyways" did raise a big pretty big eyebrow from me. He doesn't deny that the Chinese government does crack down on VPN restrictions but instead suggests people risk getting thrown into jail by using workarounds. Whether it's easy to use VPNs or not, the point that the China critics are pointing out is that the fact that people even have to use these workarounds is already a big stain on the manner in which the CPP are running things.

The fact that even such a law exists on the books is already bad enough but unlike say sodomy laws in some US states, this law does appear to be actively enforced and done so in such a heavy handed manner really doesn't inspire confidence in me the world be better off if China does become a superpower.

China already is a superpower, and the world will be better, but not for us, when they are the lone ruler. Unless you think a bunch of 80 and 90 IQ third worlders can compete with them. If you do, then you don't live in reality.