Quick Take: China 2025

An old world of hurried construction and German cars is dying, a new world of locally-sourced wine and e-payments is flourishing

I’m writing this from Beijing, where I am on a family holiday, although I will be back in Europe by the time it’s published. No matter. I believe in the power of first impressions.

China in 2025 appears slightly less crazy than earlier versions of China I saw over the previous three decades. I first arrived in the country in 1998, fresh off college, and remained here for three years working as a “foreign expert” (chief copy editor) for China’s state-owned newswire, Xinhua — they appreciated my bilingual skills in English and Spanish and the fact that I spoke no Chinese, and knew nothing about China so I couldn’t really be all that troublesome for the regime.

Like many other such foreign experts, I also got a job on the side, as stringer (part-timer) for Spain’s own state-owned newswire, so I could make some dough. So I was attacking the Party in the mornings and defending the Party in the evenings. I’d like to think that gave some sense of proportion when it comes to this country.

My next significant encounter with China was in 2008. I was by then working for the Wall Street Journal’s newswire (Dow Jones) out of Singapore, and it turns out that I was one of two fluent Spanish-speakers employed by the WSJ in all of Asia at the time; the other one was away on a vacation, so I was corralled into getting back to China to cover an official visit by definitely non-English-speaking insane clown strongman Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Those few days, with no family around and the tough-but-fair WSJ resident correspondent

Shai Oster

making things interesting and Chavez and his traveling circus making things entertaining, are burned in a memory as a useful point of comparison with the China of now and the China of 1998.

Mind you, back in 1998 (and even more so in 2008) a lot of the smart-set conversation was about China slowing its insane rate of economic growth, the breakneck speed of its construction drive, cooling down the real estate sector… Almost three decades later, those are exactly the same expectations and discussions current now, but now we have finally arrived at the moment when all of that really is happening.

Beyond economic data (in China always a bit suspicious, albeit less so of late) it’s clear to me, and to most, that the whole construction thing is in its last legs. There are fewer construction cranes in Beijing than I ever saw. There are some road works, but definitely not as many as in 2008, when the traffic was a disaster, being a permanent end-to-end jam especially around the airport when I tried to reach Chavez’s group as they arrived.

The other day, when I traveled to a temple and the famous archeological site of Zhoukoudian (southwest of Beijing) by car with the wife and kids from my sister-in-law’s house in a swanky northeastern suburb, we went all around the northern end of the city. I was shocked to see huge residential buildings popping up behind every mountain well after we thought we had left the city behind, like Elon Musk’s starships nestled, row after row, wherever there’s flat space.

I’m pretty sure this is the end of that process. China is an aging society with no discernable immigration and 1.2 TFR. There’s nobody left to put in any new buildings. And commercial buildings already fill out the Beijing skyline. Not sure more office space is needed. Shopping malls? The talk is that the whole industry is slowly going under, as most people buy stuff online. A lot of things you can see in, say Huawei or Xiaomi stores inside of the Beijing malls are products that you try in the store but can only buy online.

The real estate boom is done, and that’s definitely a change from 1998, when most people lived in shit Socialist-style projects and everyone was very excited to be relocated to better quarters by their “work unit.”

The slightly improved traffic, probably related to the decrease in road works, is another change. One can drive through Beijing now, slowly and somewhat tediously, but it’s possible, and you don’t suffer as much. In 1998, in true developing country style, everybody thought they were Nascar drivers, they honked each other as a form of communication and pedestrian crossings were at best a Platonic ideal; now, some cars do stop at the crossings, people honk little and there are few daredevils on the roads.

A huge, huge number of cars are electric (green plates, the others carry blue plates) and many are Tesla, so Elon Likes China. Competition is fierce, though. I’ve been inside Huawei and Xiaomi electric cars — yes, they make them — and they are pretty cool.

Back in my in-law’s swanky house, I noticed that the well-to-do neighbors all have German cars: Mercedes-Benz, Audi (for years the official car of Chinese officialdom, they never left home without one) and BMWs. But these people are also older, some of them really old. Young people don’t buy German stuff thinking it’s the best available, so I expect to see fewer and fewer German cars when I return. Sorry, Germans, but you know better than I the huge hole your country is in.

Chinese wine used to be a running joke. In the lovely Friendship Hotel, where all foreign experts used to live, they only had Great Wall red wine in 1998, and everybody hated it. Even British chronic drunks — a significant chunk of the hotel’s permanent British population — avoided Great Wall. I think the joke is over. I’ve tried excellent Chinese wine, and it makes sense that, after decades of efforts and experimentation, the Chinese have cracked the wine code.

They have also cracked the e-payments thing. As a Bloomberg correspondent in Singapore about a decade ago, I remember Asian experts, officials and bankers all worried about the effects of e-payments and their adoption by a populace concerned about privacy and such. China doesn’t really care all that much about your privacy, so e-payments are effectively mandatory, and carrying cash around is next to useless, at least in Beijing.

A note on Chinese companies going global: yup, we all know about the likes of Tiktok, Temu, the aforementioned Huawei and Xiaomi. They all have acceptable-sounding names, as far as non-Chinese consumers go. Chinese firms keep innovating on this field, though: I saw a clothing retailer called “Chinism” that, well, made me think about perhaps trying too hard. “Laboratory of Barbecue” can work as a franchise at least in the West, having that appealing combination of clarity and tongue-in-cheekness. Fellow Spanish-speakers will agree with me that “Putato” for a fast-food joint is a name that will be tricky. “Trumpme” cars can be appealing to some.

One final thought: Taiwan is nowhere to be seen, or heard of. Yes, of course, everybody is sort of worried about the issue, and the TV news every once in a while have a report about “the regime in Taipei did something that, as a Communist Party official warned, may be seen as detrimental and irresponsible by the Chinese people” but let me tell you that this is nothing compared to Argentina.

Remember Argentina? Javier Milei’s experimental project?

When you walk down the streets of Buenos Aires, you see reminders of the Falklands War of 1982 and Argentina’s claim to the islands (las Malvinas) all over the place, with maps, portraits of fallen heroes, etc. And yet nobody thinks Milei is about to invade.

There’s nothing like that in Beijing regarding their own rogue island. We may need to start thinking about Taiwan in a similar manner.

(I will post something separate about Zhoukoudian, a fascinating site, within a few days.)