I'm a foreigner living permanently in China since 6 years and visiting China regularly for 5 years before that. Sure, I won't notice as many nuances as you would, but to me, the economic situation in China definitely doesn't look as concerning as in many Western countries.
Had a taxi driver in Shanghai tell me that after costs of DiDi and fees etc, he makes way less than 10,000RMB a month (which for Shanghai is pretty poor). People are stating that their salaries have actually decreased significantly in real terms since pre covid and that even government officials are getting their salaries cut.
Taxi drivers definitely don't get much money from their work. For shorter trips, the company maybe takes 30-50% of what I pay as platform fee and car rent/leasing. However, my salary as well as everyone I know in China is consistently increasing over time. I guess, it depends on where and what you're working though.
There is crumbling infrastructure that wasn't there the last few times that I was in China and when asking locals about it the response seems to be similar.
China is still investing a lot into building new infrastructure. everywhere I look they are building new 小区, highways, railways, etc. To me, China's infrastructure is in big part very modern and new. However, I also noticed that it doesn't really last long. 10 year old houses already look like 50 years old, streets are consistently broken up and rebuilt for no apparent reason. For example, the street in front of my house was rebuilt at least 3 times in 5 years...
Yet, this could also be a regional thing. For example, Hangzhou has been incredibly successful in attracting modern tech enterprises recently and Shanghai has alwaysbeen relatively wealthy. However, but I see this also in most smaller tier 2 and 3 cities I visit.
"小政府没钱" - Local Government is broke.
I, too, heard this a few years ago, during the pandemic. Today, it seems better? However, local governments don't really earn money apart from selling land. Everything goes to the central government in Beijing, so no wonder if the local governments are broke.
In my families city, a lot of the small restaurants that I used to go to have shut shop, around my families homes.
During Covid, a lot of commercial real estate was left empty, but it's getting filled up in recently years. Local restaurants constantly change, some are more successful than others. Yet, the empty space isn't left empty for long.
Also, the local market prices hasn't seem to have increased since I was a teenager, which was decades ago. It was 13RMB to buy beef noodle soup back then for breakfast and it's now 14RMB. How are these farmers/small restaurant owners making money?
if the cost of living doesn't change, why should prices go up? Costs for renting only went down in recent years due to a surplus of flats (at least in my residence city), food prices went up only marginally (like 1-2¥). Compare this to Europe where prices for basically everything is skyrocketing now.
-Parents all complaining about how the pressure of kids education is immense. Extra tutoring since the age of 6-8, forcing them to learn a musical instrument because everyone else is, 10-12 hour school days since the age of 11-12. Gaokao was always a bitch since forever but I don't recall it being that bad for younger children.
Funnily enough, BYD which the west sees as very bullish shares the opposite sentiment in China. A lot of people thinks its shit (don't really understand why because being in BYD taxi's, they feel pretty nice).
I noticed more and more electric cars around me over the past years. Of course, almost all of them are Chinese manufacturers. My colleagues who at first were sceptical about electric Chinese cars years ago, have since bought an electric themselves now.
Do they also manufacture electric cars in your home region or somewhere else (like Guangdong)? A negative sentiment towards electric cars could come from a structural reliance on traditional car manufacturing.
Not a single person I spoke to had something good to say about the direction of the country. Which is a complete turnaround from 2018 and 2015 and prior. It just seems that people are bitter and miserable and there's an underlying malaise. A few people even openly criticizing the CCP/local/central government which 5-7 years ago was completely unheard of.
People frequently tell me that China is doing very well, it's so modern and safe. DeepSeek, Huawei, electric vehicles, there are so many success stories here that are brought up.
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