[GUEST ACCESS MODE: Data is scrambled or limited to provide examples. Make requests using your API key to unlock full data. Check https://lunarcrush.ai/auth for authentication information.]  Steve Hou [@stevehou0](/creator/twitter/stevehou0) on x 30.7K followers Created: 2025-07-24 08:41:47 UTC Interesting write-up of experience in China. I’ve heard at least two Americans being similarly impressed if not blown away after visiting China for the first time (in many years). I think the way they were impressed comes down to two dimensions: social decorum and infrastructure. Neither of these is unique to China and much more common across advanced East Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Singapore and even Taiwan. They were likely impressed particularly due to a presumption of China being poorer and less developed than those countries. Chinese cities are clean and they certainly took great efforts to make it so. When I grew up, the city streets weren’t spotless. There was often trash in the streets and sometimes dirty greasy water from cooking, but they were always clean in terms of drugs, crime, and graffiti. The latter is much more about Western cities and the (excessive) tolerance of personal liberty and “free expression” in public spaces. There’s a sense in the West that whatever is not strictly forbidden by the law is allowed. In East Asia there’s still much more of a traditional moral code of conduct. In fact, I suspect similar was true of most homogenous European countries. This may have been a downside of immigration and a breakdown of moral consensus. A microcosm of this is an apt building that has a lot of turnover of short-term tenants from different cultural backgrounds. It leads to an equilibrium of less mutual trust, more crime and graffiti. The second dimension is the physical infrastructure, which China has come to excel at in recent years as the country grew richer and its ability to build greatly improved. However, great new physical infrastructure whether buildings or transportation isn’t unique to China. Other East Asian countries/regions like Japan and Korea or even HK/TW have clean modern subways and fast trains. Heck, Europe had clean and efficient trains. I remember being blown away by German infrastructure when I visited as a student in 2003 or so. There was graffiti everywhere too but the urban decay wasn’t quite the same. In general East Asian cities benefit from developing later with less expensive baggage plus the cultural factors mentioned in the previous paragraph. Whereas I see excessive individual freedom leading to an erosion of social trust and moral decay in the West, China has gone too far in the opposite direction that I’d feel suffocated in such an environment. In China you are allowed a great deal of freedom and creativity but only within a strictly pre-prescribed sandbox. Ofc such things can be quite personal, even though I see the clean modern streets of the East and all the ills of the cities of the West, I still marginally prefer to live in the latter. While I worry about the trend of bad getting worse, I do think societies like all things tend to auto-correct and self-equilibrate after having swung too far in one direction. I’m hopeful that more are waking up in the West about undesirability of urban decay and moral erosion. While I strongly disagree with many elements of the populist politics, I do think they represent a backlash towards exactly this excessive liberalism I spoke of. Social changes are hard and sometimes painful, esp after habits had hardened over many years. Trust and consensus are weakened or lost from a combination of social media empowering individuals and multi-cultural immigration. I do hope for robust evolution, perhaps even some regression towards more conservatism in the West, if only to avoid a revolution. Revolutions are bad, speaking from a personal experience. H/t: @CamdenHutchison who wrote a nice short quote tweet about the same post. XXXXX engagements  **Related Topics** [told](/topic/told) [$2607hk](/topic/$2607hk) [shanghai](/topic/shanghai) [beijing](/topic/beijing) [japan](/topic/japan) [countries](/topic/countries) [china](/topic/china) [hou](/topic/hou) [Post Link](https://x.com/stevehou0/status/1948302578883682669)
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Steve Hou @stevehou0 on x 30.7K followers
Created: 2025-07-24 08:41:47 UTC
Interesting write-up of experience in China. I’ve heard at least two Americans being similarly impressed if not blown away after visiting China for the first time (in many years).
I think the way they were impressed comes down to two dimensions: social decorum and infrastructure. Neither of these is unique to China and much more common across advanced East Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Singapore and even Taiwan. They were likely impressed particularly due to a presumption of China being poorer and less developed than those countries.
Chinese cities are clean and they certainly took great efforts to make it so. When I grew up, the city streets weren’t spotless. There was often trash in the streets and sometimes dirty greasy water from cooking, but they were always clean in terms of drugs, crime, and graffiti. The latter is much more about Western cities and the (excessive) tolerance of personal liberty and “free expression” in public spaces. There’s a sense in the West that whatever is not strictly forbidden by the law is allowed. In East Asia there’s still much more of a traditional moral code of conduct. In fact, I suspect similar was true of most homogenous European countries. This may have been a downside of immigration and a breakdown of moral consensus. A microcosm of this is an apt building that has a lot of turnover of short-term tenants from different cultural backgrounds. It leads to an equilibrium of less mutual trust, more crime and graffiti.
The second dimension is the physical infrastructure, which China has come to excel at in recent years as the country grew richer and its ability to build greatly improved. However, great new physical infrastructure whether buildings or transportation isn’t unique to China. Other East Asian countries/regions like Japan and Korea or even HK/TW have clean modern subways and fast trains. Heck, Europe had clean and efficient trains. I remember being blown away by German infrastructure when I visited as a student in 2003 or so. There was graffiti everywhere too but the urban decay wasn’t quite the same. In general East Asian cities benefit from developing later with less expensive baggage plus the cultural factors mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Whereas I see excessive individual freedom leading to an erosion of social trust and moral decay in the West, China has gone too far in the opposite direction that I’d feel suffocated in such an environment. In China you are allowed a great deal of freedom and creativity but only within a strictly pre-prescribed sandbox. Ofc such things can be quite personal, even though I see the clean modern streets of the East and all the ills of the cities of the West, I still marginally prefer to live in the latter. While I worry about the trend of bad getting worse, I do think societies like all things tend to auto-correct and self-equilibrate after having swung too far in one direction. I’m hopeful that more are waking up in the West about undesirability of urban decay and moral erosion. While I strongly disagree with many elements of the populist politics, I do think they represent a backlash towards exactly this excessive liberalism I spoke of.
Social changes are hard and sometimes painful, esp after habits had hardened over many years. Trust and consensus are weakened or lost from a combination of social media empowering individuals and multi-cultural immigration. I do hope for robust evolution, perhaps even some regression towards more conservatism in the West, if only to avoid a revolution. Revolutions are bad, speaking from a personal experience.
H/t: @CamdenHutchison who wrote a nice short quote tweet about the same post.
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