Preconceptions that have been fostered for more than one and a half centuries are difficult to change. However, Western ideas about China, which date back to the Qing Empire’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Britain during the Opium Wars of the 1860s, are in dire need of an upgrade. For me, a drastic yet unexpected shift in perspective occurred quite unexpectedly during the 2018 FIFA World Cup. This wasn’t because of China’s achievements on the soccer field—their team didn’t qualify for the tournament—but because of Hisense, a major Chinese electronics manufacturer. Hisense entered the European market a few years earlier and became a familiar brand here. However, their World Cup ads, which ran prominently on huge screens along the sidelines of most games, weren’t targeting us European consumers. They were solely in Chinese, the message directed exclusively at the more than 200 million Chinese viewers.
I had visited the country about a year before the World Cup, and was left with the impression that this was a nation coming of age. Its people, it seemed, were caught up in the rapid transformation of every aspect of life, often driven by their growing self-awareness as courted consumers. On my latest trip to China, in October 2025, those transformations seem to have been completed.
One angle to look at how China changed over the last two decades is the rise of Super-apps like WeChat and their QR code–based payment systems. Back in 2017, they had already modest popularity among the younger generation, but older folks rarely had access to that technology. And millions of people still were too poor to afford a smartphone with a data plan. During my most recent travels in China, however, I was the oddball for paying in cash. Everyone who sold anything—from high-end boutiques, supermarkets, and convenience stores to museums, restaurants, food stalls, street peddlers, and even beggars—expected patrons to use AliPay or WeChatPay. The latter is used by over 1 billion people in China today—out of a total population of 1.4 billion—and in 2023, it facilitated more than 30 trillion dollars in payments. It’s no surprise that Meta (with WhatsApp) and Elon Musk (with X) aspire to emulate WeChat’s success. However, it’s also no surprise that they continue to fail, given the immense fragmentation of the payment systems landscape in the EU, the public’s skepticism toward digital payments, and the immense lobbying power of existing banks, payment providers, and credit card companies.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Chinese people of all ages and socioeconomic statuses are glued to their phones today. People of all ages and walks of life have become dependent on their devices for communication, entertainment, reading the news, payments, ordering food and groceries, and transportation. Nowadays, it’s practically impossible to hail a cab, rent a bicycle, or ride the subway in China without a phone and a working internet connection.
The Chinese consumers who do all these things and rely on these payment providers to pay for them undoubtedly have significant spending power. Thus, as early as 2018, Hisense made the rational choice to focus on this market with their Chinese-language ads, even at the risk of alienating European consumers. Of course, that’s difficult for us to accept, as we are accustomed to being wooed by the world’s biggest brands, and we used to be a prime shopping demographic for consumer goods. But while the amount of disposable income in China has grown significantly since then, Europe is facing stagnation at best, and recession at worst.
However, China’s transformation has not only been fueled by an increase in private consumer spending. The country’s massive investment in infrastructure projects is also outstanding. In 2017, when I traveled from Beijing to Shanghai by train, China already boasted the world’s largest high-speed railroad network. Since then, the system has more than doubled in size and now extends to an astonishing 45,000 km of track. This time, when I boarded my train to Wuhan at Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Terminus, I felt as if I were checking in for an international flight rather than hopping on a train. The ride itself, of course, did not disappoint. We covered the approximately 1,300 kilometers in under six hours, cruising most of the time at over 240 kilometers per hour. The fastest speed I saw on the dashboard was 351 km/h. The train was, of course, perfectly on time, clean, comfortable, and relatively quiet. The same can be said about the subway systems in most Chinese cities. Wuhan’s subway system, for example, consists of 16 lines and over 300 stations, and it is undoubtedly the most convenient way to navigate the metropolis—and the preferred mode of transportation for most of its 17 million inhabitants. What about those who prefer individualized transportation? They clearly favor electric cars of Chinese origin. Diesel- or gasoline-powered vehicles, especially those made by European or U.S. brands, are rare on the streets. For every Volkswagen, BMW, or Mercedes I saw in Wuhan, I saw twenty made by BYD, Geely, or XPeng.
After spending a few days wandering around Wuhan, one overarching impression stuck with me. In this city, at least, the ongoing transformation I thought I had encountered in 2017 felt nearly complete. To a European, Wuhan seemed to be something out a not-too-distant future. However, it’s not a perfect utopia. But it’s a model city for dense urban living characterized by high-rise buildings, flawless infrastructure, high speed internet, cashless payments, ubiquitous public transportation, and ample space for parks, lakes, and greenery. Living your whole life in 50 square meters on the 48th floor of a housing complex might sound like a nightmare to many of us. Still, if you were designing a megacity from scratch to house millions of people sustainably (as, for example, Indonesia is attempting with Nusantara), I think the result would have to resemble Wuhan much more than the srawling suburbian deserts of Europe or the U.S. But hutongs, like the one I stayed in in 2017, would also not be part of that design, I guess. Consequently, Beijing has demolished most of them in recent years.
China’s massive transformation encompasses more than just gleaming skyscrapers, huge infrastructure projects, and rampant consumerism. This new “Chinese way of life,” if it can be called that, comes entangled with many dire constraints. The most obvious are curtailed personal liberties, severe infringements on individual human rights, and widespread surveillance. China’s handling of the pandemic, particularly the disastrous lockdowns imposed on Wuhan and Shanghai, offered the world a rare glimpse of these issues. As a tourist a few years down the road, however, you can’t help but notice them, or be affected by them, either. For instance, you may discover that your phone cannot access Google Maps, Wikipedia, or ChatGPT due to China’s “Great Firewall.” You may also find that your GPS signal is scrambled, causing the “you are here” dot on your map to be off by 100 meters or more. You will see countless uniformed officials swarming around every subway station, housing complex, and shopping mall. You will be asked to present your passport every time you board a train, enter a museum, or visit a tourist attraction. You may hear announcements such as the one on the high-speed train that says, “Disorderly behavior is punishable by law and will affect your social credit record.” In my opinion, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed—or if it has, then not for the better. Today, China doesn’t feel like a “free” country.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Mao Zedong wreaked havoc on the nation with his “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution.” Millions of Chinese people died of hunger or were killed, countless irreplaceable historical artifacts were destroyed, and many religious sites were demolished. Mao had little to offer his people in return except poverty and suffering. Today’s Chinese rulers, however, are in a much more comfortable position. Some may consider the severe constraints they impose on people’s lives, the atrocities they commit against ethnic minorities, and the violence with which they crack down on dissent a fair price to pay for the prosperity, security, and wealth of its 1.4 billion people. This line of thought raises a number of hard questions, though. Can some of the positive aspects of the modern Chinese lifestyle be transplanted into our democratic, liberal societies without backsliding toward totalitarianism? What would happen in China itself if the CCP could one day no longer uphold its end of the bargain? Could China transform its political and judicial systems completely differently, without the need for—potentially violent—regime change?
Perhaps it’s this underlying sense of “unfreedom” in Chinese society, or maybe it’s just the language barrier or the simple fact that they don’t see many Westerners in the places I’ve visited, but the Chinese people I’ve met still seem somewhat distanced towards foreigners. Unlike in many other Asian countries, receiving random greetings on the street or being approached by schoolchildren eager to practice their English is rare here. However, that doesn’t mean there’s no room for human connection and kindness. For example, a lack of foresight caused me to step off the high-speed train in Wuhan without a single yuan in my pocket and with no working AliPay or WeChatPay app on my phone. There was no ATM around, and the next bank was a long walk away. When the Wuhan metro staff realized my dire situation, they tried to get an old credit card reader that should have accepted foreign cards to work. After that failed several times, one of them simply scanned the QR code on her personal phone and paid for my fare out of her own pocket. A heartfelt “Xièxiè” (thank you) was the only thing I could say, and not just because it’s the most Mandarin I know.
At a time when the West, Europe, and my home country are stagnating at best or–more truthfully–slowly declining, I can’t help but wonder how the Chinese people feel. Is it disorienting to be at the eye of the storm? Does it provide reassurance that, according to officials, everything that matters is moving upward and to the right?