It is time to apply a more positive view on China

I just came back from Chongqing, which was still largely an agricultural province about 25 years ago. Many—including myself—don’t fully realize how much it has transformed. Today, Chongqing is officially the largest city in China by population, with over 32 million residents in its administrative area.

Despite this breathtaking development, most people are unaware of its real magnitude. One reason is that the Chinese don’t typically show off. They let progress speak for itself—quietly and efficiently.

These megacities are now surprisingly green and calm, with little to no smog, and a remarkable shift towards sustainability. One striking example is the widespread use of electric vehicles (EVs), easily identifiable by their green license plates. In contrast, combustion engine vehicles still use blue license plates. It’s a subtle yet clear signal of the country’s transition.

Where do we have such a visible distinction in Europe? Nowhere, really. While EV incentives exist in many European countries, the clear visual categorization, as seen in China, is missing. China’s approach combines regulatory clarity with everyday visibility, nudging consumer behavior in a low-key but powerful way.

Chongqing’s case is emblematic of the new face of urban China—massive, modern, and environmentally forward, yet still underappreciated by much of the outside world.

What China has build in infrastructure the last 25 years is probably more than the rest of the world in the same period of time with only 20% of the population. 600 Mio people have been guided out of poverty. Not only have they transformed remote agricultural regions into megacities, but they have also connected these urban centers with one of the most efficient and extensive multimodal transportation networks on the planet.

As of 2025, this includes:

45,000 km of High-Speed Rail (HSR) – by far the largest network in the world

155,000 km of conventional railways, including regional and freight lines

10,000 km of urban metro systems (MRT) across more than 50 cities

180,000 km of expressways and national highways

Over 4.8 million km of regional and rural roads

This scale of development is unimaginable unless you have seen it with your own eyes. The transformation is not just in quantity, but in quality—modern stations, integrated ticketing, AI-powered traffic management, and massive logistics hubs all integrated into a nationwide smart infrastructure grid or double deck bridges with double capacity. Why don't we apply this in Europe as well? Corridors are the most valuable land strips and if capacity can be doubled with only marginally increasing the investment it will benefit future generations.

Many still do not realize that China today can be more capitalistic in practice than some Western nations. A major turning point came in 1998, when the Chinese government allowed private ownership of properties for the first time — though the land itself remains leased from the state, typically for 70 years in urban areas. This marked a shift from socialist planning toward a hybrid system combining state control with market forces.

Fast forward to today, and China’s transformation is astonishing. Its stock market — primarily represented by the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange — has grown to a combined market capitalization of over USD 17 trillion (as of early 2025), making it the second-largest in the world after the United States. In comparison, Japan’s stock market stands at roughly USD 6.5 to 7 trillion, making China’s more than twice as large.

Ironically, this is the very direction Western governments and economists had encouraged China to pursue for decades: market reforms, private enterprise, and integration into the global financial system. Yet now that China has embraced these elements—albeit in its own model—few in the West seem willing to acknowledge it or give credit where it’s due.

Importantly, China maintains a strong state role in the economy, especially when it comes to preventing excessive profiteering or monopolistic behavior. While this is often criticized in the West as "interference," it can be argued that this tempered capitalism has advantages. In contrast, Western democracies often witness individual entrepreneurs amassing personal fortunes in excess of USD 100 billion, sometimes exerting outsized influence on politics, media, and public discourse with little accountability.

This raises an important question: Is unchecked capitalism truly the ideal, or does a blend of market dynamism and state oversight offer a more balanced path forward? China may not offer a perfect model — no system does — but its pragmatic evolution deserves a more nuanced and honest recognition.

In addition, China is now world-leading in several key industries such as electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, steel production, shipbuilding, drones and robotics, and renewable energy technologies. This has been achieved through a combination of a strong work ethic, rapid scaling, and globally competitive pricing. From 2000 to 2015, this rise was not only tolerated but actively encouraged by many Western countries, as it significantly boosted global trade and increased the living standards—particularly for the middle class—through access to affordable goods. In exchange, Western nations were allowed to supply high-end technology to China, including automobiles, aircraft, semiconductor chips, and precision machinery. China, in turn, rapidly moved to develop and localize the production of these technologies.

This trend was accelerated by rising costs in the West, such as higher social welfare spending, energy prices, and structural inefficiencies in manufacturing and supply chains. As a result, many industries in Europe and the U.S. struggled to remain competitive in volume manufacturing. Despite these shifts, German automobiles remain popular in China, especially among the wealthy, due to their reputation for quality and the prestige they convey. In 2023, for instance, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi collectively sold over 1.9 million vehicles in China, their single largest market.

However, Chinese brands are catching up rapidly—not only in affordability but in design, technology, and innovation. Companies like BYD, NIO, and XPeng are increasingly gaining traction, and BYD alone surpassed 3 million EV sales globally in 2023, overtaking Tesla in quarterly volume. If European and Western manufacturers fail to adapt and innovate, their market share in China—currently the largest automotive market in the world—is at risk of further decline. The same applies across other sectors, as China increasingly moves up the value chain.

While I am not in favor of the surveillance practices seen in China—despite their effectiveness in maintaining low crime rates—I remain concerned about the potential for misuse when such power falls into the wrong hands.

At the same time, I strongly support the protection of intellectual property, an area where China has historically faced criticism. However, it’s worth noting a major shift: China now files more patents than any other country, submitting around 1.6 million annually—more than three times the number filed in the U.S.

That said, I believe our focus should increasingly shift toward the positive contributions. China's efforts to lift 600 million people out of poverty, promote renewable energy through aggressive national policies, and drive down global costs for green technologies could have a more significant impact than many of the West’s idealistic—but sometimes less scalable—approaches.

Progress may not always look the same everywhere. Sometimes, pragmatism beats perfection and if we apply a more positive view on China the world will benefit from better cooperation and communication.