I teach ESL and all my students are Chinese from Shanghai.
It seems that the Chinese economy has surpassed the American economy. And their leader is less obviously insane than ours. Of course they have no online freedom: everything from Google to YouTube to Amazon is blocked.
But my students don’t seem to really want to rebel or to badmouth their leadership or their culture.
Have any of you had much contact with the Chinese professionally?
To me it seems so obvious that, at least economically, they have won the contest against the USA.