Transportation, not healthcare. High speed rail is ridiculously good, it connects just about every major Chinese city, it’s affordable, very comfortable and fast. I would consider healthcare an exception, it may be affordable but outside of a few expensive clinics in Beijing and Shanghai it’s really bad. Mobile payments are way ahead of other places (you can pay any random person you meet instantly with your phone, and that’s been the case for at least 5 years). Any kind of logistics/delivery (food, online shopping, post etc) is very fast and cheap and this has a lot of flow-on effects in terms of convenience and lifestyle.
Basic research in (for example) AI is probably on par with the west, I think it’s fair to say the engineering/applied side is ahead. This is helped by essentially zero concern for privacy = more data. WeChat translate CN-EN is miles ahead of Google. Any kind of large scale tech that has anything to do with surveillance, things like CV, deep-packet inspection, would be unmatched I’d say.
> WeChat translate CN-EN is miles ahead of Google.
That's interesting!
At the same time, deepl.com is also miles ahead of Google, so I'm not all that impressed by Google Translate anymore. (Deepl itself is impressive is heck!)
The healthcare thing doesn't jive with what I've heard from my native Chinese friends; I've heard if you have the right connections (and by association, wealth) you can get exactly what you need, but without that you can't get anything.
On the contrary, I believe most people will be better off with the Chinese healthcare system than the U.S. one, because nobody go bankrupt from going to the doctor. Office visit cost at most $20 - that's without insurance. Every thing has a fixed price, so you will never get a surprise bill afterwards. If you insist on visiting the best doctor in the field, wait time can be long; but otherwise you can walk into the hospital and be seen pretty quickly. Meanwhile, in the U.S., I have good health insurance through my employer, yet I am still terrified of going to the doctors, especially, god forbid, the ER.
As for quality of care, obviously the facilities in the U.S. are nicer - they better be, you are paying 10x - 100x for that! For the treatment, most friends of mine from China complain the doctors in the U.S. don't do anything; they just give you some advil and send you home. However, antibiotics are probably prescribed too liberally in China, and IV injections used too much.
Of course there are some drawbacks too. First, the flip side of "no surprise bill" is everything is due upfront, so it's not unheard of that critical treatment is delayed because the patient is trying to find money. Second, since healthcare is so cheap, people usually don't carry health insurance other than the government provided one, which has a maximum payout amount per year. As a result, if you get rare / serious condition you can still get ruined financially. Nowadays more and more people begin to purchase commercial health insurance - which are still an order of magnitude cheaper than the U.S. ones.
I can’t speak to healthcare generally but one of my college roommates was from China and she just could not wrap her head around the politicization of birth control in the US. I remember her asking us if Americans thought it was dangerous or addictive because she couldn’t understand why it was so controversial that the affordable care act required birth control to be covered.
Let's not forget china has 1.4 billion people and a median income less than Mexico. As a westerner visiting China, one tends to stick to the places most similar and accessible to people from the west.
I doubt you'd want to trade your healthcare for what is available to the average Chinese person (as opposed to wealthy urban elites and expats). The public transportation really is extraordinary though.
throwaway2474|5 years ago
Basic research in (for example) AI is probably on par with the west, I think it’s fair to say the engineering/applied side is ahead. This is helped by essentially zero concern for privacy = more data. WeChat translate CN-EN is miles ahead of Google. Any kind of large scale tech that has anything to do with surveillance, things like CV, deep-packet inspection, would be unmatched I’d say.
It’s definitely not free of racism.
Wowfunhappy|5 years ago
That's interesting!
At the same time, deepl.com is also miles ahead of Google, so I'm not all that impressed by Google Translate anymore. (Deepl itself is impressive is heck!)
eigenvector|5 years ago
Public transportation and affordable healthcare are the norm in most highly developed Western democracies such as the UK, France, Sweden, etc.
jbay808|5 years ago
esrauch|5 years ago
HeavenFox|5 years ago
As for quality of care, obviously the facilities in the U.S. are nicer - they better be, you are paying 10x - 100x for that! For the treatment, most friends of mine from China complain the doctors in the U.S. don't do anything; they just give you some advil and send you home. However, antibiotics are probably prescribed too liberally in China, and IV injections used too much.
Of course there are some drawbacks too. First, the flip side of "no surprise bill" is everything is due upfront, so it's not unheard of that critical treatment is delayed because the patient is trying to find money. Second, since healthcare is so cheap, people usually don't carry health insurance other than the government provided one, which has a maximum payout amount per year. As a result, if you get rare / serious condition you can still get ruined financially. Nowadays more and more people begin to purchase commercial health insurance - which are still an order of magnitude cheaper than the U.S. ones.
elliekelly|5 years ago
unishark|5 years ago
jdm2212|5 years ago
malka|5 years ago
The sweet pleasure of being spied upon by the CCP ?
Dahoon|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
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