The Xiaohongshu stuff is great and a larger exposure to China is a good thing.

During the Cold War the Soviet Union served as a sort of counter weight to western society. The western powers that be not only had to beat the Soviet Union on an international scale but also convince its citizens that capitalism was the superior system.

The great firewall has, like the iron curtain before it, served to block out a lot of exposure to young western people what China is really like. Though there’s some YouTube videos about how big Chongqing or Shenzhen is and the odd TikTok - middle/working class culturale exchange is extremely limited.

China for whatever faults it has is so far ahead of the west in many many ways. Even 10 years ago when I was living there it felt like going into the future and it still would if I went back there now.

Imagine living in a society where the government invests in infrastructure, doesn’t sacrifice its young on the alter of finance. Has dense walkable cities that are safe with no homelessness or widespread hard drug use and violent crime. A ruling class that isn’t trying to make you fat and stupid. A country where people are generally pulling together to make things better rather than rampant individualism.

A society/government that still has the welfare of its people in mind and isn’t designed purely to funnel money to a few vampiric billionaires.

China is far from perfect but it does a lot of things far better than the west and its certainly not the third world hellhole a lot of people think it is.

EDIT: Crazy how many commenters are sperging out saying "CHINA IS NOT A UTOPIA" - when at no point in this post did I say that. I literally say in the last line that it's "far from perfect" There is however cool stuff about the place it would be good if we observed from the west and we are getting a chance to do that.