Shanghai

"Our first hotel in Kunshan was a great success. With that confidence boost, we proceeded to open another one in Suzhou, and then one in Shanghai. By the end of 2017, Hanting had opened 2,244 hotels all over China."

"Kunshan at the time was a third or fourth tier city. My reasoning was that it would not be surprising if Hanting failed in Kunshan because, after all, there were not many tourist and business traveller flows. If we failed in Kunshan, we might make it work in Shanghai. But if we were successful in Kunshan, then we could make it work everywhere."

"The year 2008 offers a direct comparison between California’s speed and China’s speed. That year, California voters approved a state proposition to fund a high-speed rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles; also that year, China began construction of its high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai. Both lines would be around eight hundred miles long upon completion. China opened the Beijing–Shanghai line in 2011 at [a cost of $36 billion](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor281). In its first decade of operation, it completed [1.35 billion passenger trips](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor282). California has built, seventeen years after the ballot proposition, a small stretch of rail to connect two cities in the Central Valley, neither of which are close to San Francisco or Los Angeles."

"Liupanshui locals greeted Li’s plans mostly with skepticism. Though their region is home to waterfalls, karst caves, and stunning green mountains, the city itself has little of beauty. Local industry consisted of coal and iron mining. One man wondered to a TV crew, “We don’t have much to see here. How much money would we have to spend to create something worthwhile?” Li Zaiyong believed a great deal, and he mobilized a great deal of funds to make things happen. Since he was the top official in the city, local banks had a hard time saying no to him. But none of Li’s efforts bore fruit. Liupanshui never developed into an appealing ski destination: China’s skiers went to the northeast in the winter, which has real slopes and real snow. Richer tourists from Beijing and Shanghai skipped Li’s gaudy European facsimiles for the real deal in Venice and Vienna. The faux European town squares have been taken over by local black goats, which treat the lawns as grazing grounds. Even the chestnut rose bushes died."

"The state loves showing footage of big container ships that berth under enormous cranes, plucking from a mosaic of containers. As exports soared, China’s ports became the world’s busiest. [Shanghai alone moved more containers](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor302) in 2022 than all of the US ports combined. China’s export engine sputtered in the early 2000s, not for a lack of ports but for a lack of power in Guangdong. So the state invested in a network of new power plants mostly burning coal. In addition to using fossil fuels, China builds a third to a half of the world’s new wind and solar capacity each year. It is sending renewable energy from its sparse western provinces into its industrialized eastern provinces."

"I was much happier to live in Shanghai, where many streets have remained human-scaled rather than being built for cars. The French Concession, where I lived, remains leafy and full of cafés. Shanghai is highly walkable, and one is rarely more than a fifteen-minute walk from one of the city’s many subway stations. Shanghai has vowed to open [120 new parks every year](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor307) until 2025, when the city will reach 1,000 green spaces. The city of twenty-five million people works remarkably well. Like Tokyo, it has flourishing spaces for commerce, where little dumpling shops are tucked away even in subway stations. And Shanghai is superbly connected by high-speed rail to nearby cities—for example, Hangzhou, home to tech companies like Alibaba, and Suzhou, where many multinationals have manufacturing operations—which are themselves some of China’s most successful cities."

"Shenzhen was China’s greatest boomtown and, therefore, the world’s. [Its population soared](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor344) from three hundred thousand in 1980 to seven million in 2000 and eighteen million in 2020. For many Chinese, who are intently judged on the region they’re from, Shenzhen was a land of opportunity where no one was a local. One of the city’s slogans, still occasionally found on billboards, reads, “You’re a Shenzhen local the moment you’re here.” It’s a poke at Beijing and Shanghai, cities where older families maintain a certain exclusivity (as they might in Paris or London)."

"In late March 1943, we set out from Shanghai. At the time of departure we only knew the general route; as for how long the whole journey would take, what means of transportation we would use, and where we would stay along the way, we had only incomplete and uncertain information that my father had inquired about. The first leg of the trip was the most reliable: taking a train to Nanjing, then transferring to a train to Xuzhou. Xuzhou was in Japanese hands at that time, but it was already very close to the front line where the Chinese and Japanese forces were fighting. After passing Xuzhou, the goal was Luoyang. Luoyang was in Chinese hands, so from Xuzhou to Luoyang we had to cross the battle line."

"From Xuzhou to Luoyang, we used every kind of transportation we could: when we could take a truck we took a truck; when there were rickshaws or tricycles we took rickshaws or tricycles; when there were no vehicles at all we walked. When crossing the front line, we of course chose a section where there was no fighting, but there was absolutely no guarantee that there would not be gunfire or artillery; that section was entirely on foot. The journey from Xuzhou to Luoyang took several days. Each night we stayed either in small inns, or in small shops, or in temples. During wartime, in places close to the front line, troops often came to inspect travelers. I remember that one night, the ones who came to inspect us turned out to be the Nationalist army; for the first time since leaving Shanghai, smiles appeared on my parents’ faces!"

"Over the past several decades of life, I have already traveled a million miles, but no matter how comfortable or even luxurious travel in recent years has been, the journey I miss the most, the one that has the greatest meaning for me, and the one that left the deepest impression in my mind, is still the trek from Shanghai to Chongqing when I was eleven."

"Before I turned eighteen, I had already fled disaster three times, lived in six cities (Ningbo, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Chongqing, Shanghai), and changed schools ten times. I had experienced gunfire (Hong Kong) and bombings (Guangzhou, Chongqing), and crossed battle lines (from Shanghai to Chongqing). I had a carefree childhood (Hong Kong), and also tasted the impassioned life of a middle school student during the War of Resistance (Chongqing); still more, I tasted the sorrow of leaving home and country, not knowing when I would return (from Hong Kong to the United States)."

"BYD was founded in 1995 and is a private high-tech enterprise. At the beginning of its establishment, BYD had only 20 employees and was virtually unknown in Shenzhen, a city filled with many enterprises. However, unexpectedly, 14 years later, it developed into a high-tech private enterprise listed in Hong Kong. Now, BYD has built nine major production bases in Guangdong, Beijing, Shaanxi, Shanghai, and other places, covering nearly 7 million square meters in total area, and has branches or offices in the United States, Europe, Japan, and other places, with a total of more than 130,000 employees and total assets of nearly 35 billion yuan."

"BYD Automotive has built a first-class R&D center in Shanghai, with an automotive R&D team of over 3,000 people, obtaining more than 500 national R&D patents each year. To date, BYD has established four major automotive industry bases in Xi’an, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, reaching an international leading level in aspects such as vehicle manufacturing, mold R&D, and vehicle model development. The ultimate goal of BYD’s development is to utilize its unique global technological advantages to find the best solution for human society entering the "automobile society," addressing issues like energy shortage, clean environment, and convenient living."

"In BYD's automotive engineering institute located in Songjiang, Shanghai, there are thousands of automotive engineers, 90% of whom came to BYD right after college. Every year, Wang Chuanfu has these young engineers learn to dismantle cars, and he also requires them to write detailed reports after disassembling. Initially, some young people were reluctant to casually dismantle new cars, especially expensive ones. Knowing this, Wang Chuanfu immediately scratched his own Mercedes with a key and then said: "Now, you can dismantle my car.""

"Supporters of the R&D hubs say the negative view of them reflects the insecurities of engineers in Cupertino, who were losing their power as more decision-making got done in China. Before the hubs were built, Apple had been sending so many engineers to China on temporary trips that Cupertino convinced United Airlines to begin direct flights from San Francisco to Chengdu, three times a week, arguing that Apple would regularly buy enough of the thirty-six first-class seats to make it profitable. The 6,857-mile flight became United’s longest nonstop flight. Two years later, Apple again convinced United to begin flying nonstop—to Hangzhou, a tech hub on the outskirts of Shanghai. “Hangzhou is a bit of a schlepp from Shanghai,” says a former Apple executive. “Yes, you can take a bullet train, but for all the American guys getting off the plane from Cupertino, navigating the train station is kind of complicated. So Apple basically said to United, ‘Look, you put up a flight to Hangzhou and we’ll fill it for you.’ ” Apple’s signature line had long been that its products were “designed in California,” but the hubs began to indicate otherwise. China’s influence was growing, and as the hubs performed more work, the engineers there would openly question the need for so many of their counterparts to constantly fly in from America."

"Doug Guthrie recalls the first time he met Mahe. He was one of the people advocating for an official head of China, but he didn’t play a role in the selection process or know who she was. So he was surprised when, on one of his trips to Cupertino, she asked him to come by her office. It was after Chinese New Year, in early 2017, a time when Guthrie had developed real influence with senior executives. He walked to her office in Infinite Loop and exchanged pleasantries. Mahe gazed at him and said, “So I guess I have you to blame?” Guthrie’s eyes widened; the question felt aggressive. “We’ve never met,” he responded. “Have I done something?” And Mahe said, “Well, I’m getting on a plane and going to China, and it’s because Tim [Cook] said, ‘You better listen to Doug Guthrie.’ ” Within a few minutes it became clear Mahe wasn’t just referring to a typical jaunt over to China; she’d been asked to take on a major career challenge, one that would involve moving to Shanghai with her non-Chinese-speaking husband and their children."

"“The central government has control over personnel, whereas subnational governments run the bulk of the economy; and they initiate, negotiate, implement, divert, and resist reforms, policies, rules, and laws.” Such decentralization allowed for experimentation on a grand scale: what worked in Guangdong could be replicated in Shanghai. But Beijing was often patient: It waited for the results of these experiments rather than rushing ahead with them. This combination of decentralized decision-making, experimentation, and gradual adoption of new policies played a critical role in how China became a manufacturing powerhouse."

"The paradigm shift Apple initiated was so consequential that it left Chinese officials convinced that its JV model was broken. In 2018, officials in Shanghai allowed Tesla to become the first foreign automaker to establish a manufacturing plant in the country without a local partner. It was characterized in the press as a sweetheart deal, as if government officials had succumbed to the charm of Elon Musk. But China was acting in its own interest. When Musk proposed to open the factory within two years, the mayor of Shanghai convinced him to fast-track the effort to just twelve months, offering big incentives, including affordable land and tax benefits. “It was probably the fastest and most CapEx-efficient factory ever built in the car industry, let alone EVs, in the world,” says Harsh Parikh, then the head of global supply management for CapEx at Tesla."

"Still, Cupertino wanted to send engineers to China and offered bonuses between $500 and $1,000 a day for people to go. But flights had been dramatically reduced. United halted nonstop flights from San Francisco to Shanghai from March to October 2020. So Apple scrambled the jets. In the spring, Cupertino began sending engineers to Shanghai on private planes departing from San Jose, with a pit stop in Alaska. “Each jet could hold thirteen people, but we only sat six,” says a person familiar with the flights. “We wanted room and, you know, we’re Apple.”"

"It’s also good to pay attention to tech trends that have the potential to disrupt economic models but haven’t hit their stride yet. Two examples relate specifically to the supply chain industry, where I’ve spent the past 13 years. 3D printing (also called industrial additive manufacturing) will drive seismic change in supply chains in the long term. It’s had a slow start—in the ’80s and ’90s, there was a joke that 3D printing was endlessly ten years away from being viable. Now, it’s being adopted for all kinds of purposes, especially in medicine. Ten years ago, dentists were giving patients a temporary tooth for a couple of weeks while a crown was made from an impression of the tooth. The last time I went to the dentist, he took measurements and told me to hang out for an hour while the office printed my crown. Hearing aids are 3D printed now, too; so are a lot of prostheses. Sophisticated industrial products, including structurally critical parts for jets, are 3D printed out of metal. As the cost continues to go down, I expect that 3D printing will be a growing part of local autonomous manufacturing. That will change the transportation industry, the global supply chain, and the entire geopolitical balance. Currently, the global economy is still based on an outdated model of sourcing cheap labor overseas, especially from China, and then paying a high price to get it transported to the consumer. For example, the goods travel on a plane or ship from Shanghai to Los Angeles, and then the dray containers go by rail to Chicago, where they’re put on a truck and driven to a warehouse in Kansas City. Eventually, the product is trucked the “last mile” to…"

""When I visited China 35 years ago with California Governor Jerry Brown, there were multitudes of people on bicycles. Shenzhen, now the factory of world production, was a fishing village. After the Cultural Revolution, people could barely feed themselves. Now, China is the second largest economy with high-speed trains crisscrossing the country, connecting megacities with a middle class larger than the entire US population. Shanghai schools are distinguished by having graduates who are only the best of the best. [...]"