China just approved flying taxis – no pilot needed

It is both amazing and sad to see China is literally in the future compared to the US in terms of infrastructure and social development.

A trip to one of the major cities in China made it clear to me that they are ahead of the world right now. The amount of tech and the level of integration are unbelievable. In comparasion, the streets of SF, one of the crown jewels of the US technosphere, are just so "normal" I find it hard to believe.

It is the same feeling I had decades ago walking into a then-modern metropolis in the US for the first time. All the cool tech, the convenience, the upscale atmosphere, the extravagance of it all were striking. I have not felt that again for a while and I just think it can't happen again with what I am already used to now. Incredible that China managed to evoke that sense of awe in me again.

Is there hard evidence of this beyond random anecdotes? Genuinely curious as I haven't visited there.

> social development.

How are they ahead in this regard? Tech is one thing, but social credit scores and the level of censorship seem regressive rather than progressive to me.

Have you been to SF? It’s like a zombie movie with shocking public transport. There are many nicer cities which seem futuristic compared to SF. I’ve not been to a Chinese metropolis but if you just look at some photos it wouldn’t be hard to imagine somewhere like Shenzhen being much further ahead.

Strange comment, there’s plenty of videos of both locations on YouTube to make the comparison and I think it’s quite apt. Chinese (and other SEA) major cities definitely feel much more modern than most American cities these days. Most American metropolitan areas are quite bland/bleak outside the “beautified” green areas.

Chinese cities like Shanghai have been world class for a long time. The last time I was there, I had a dinner with a client on the outskirts of Shanghai. I took multiple subways to reach there and found that neighborhood quite ordinary and starkly different from Shanghai itself. Of course this is also an anecdote but gives you a different perspective. I also know a few people who visit China often and they tell me the cities are definitely futuristic.

Personally I think Singapore is the most futuristic city-state in the world.

> A trip to one of the major cities in China made it clear to me that they are ahead of the world right now

Sorry, I should have been more clear, this is what I was referencing. I have been to SF recently and would agree it's not hard to make a lot of cities look better in comparison.

Given that permanent residents in the U.S. seem to have lost all of their free speech rights, and citizens aren’t far behind, I think we can call that precise issue a truce for now. Definitely other human rights/freedoms we still have over them at the moment.

Can you tell me more? I visited Shenzhen few months ago and wasn't that astonished. Pretty normal city. Well, I was surprised about few things, like overall lack of traffic jams in the 17-million city, roads seems to be well planned, but I could just be lucky. And that's me coming from Kazakhstan, which is not exactly first-world country. Life seems kind of the same, taxi apps, map with reviews, delivery guys, etc.

Actually I'd argue that Chinese IT is slightly behind Kazakhstan, because their localization is so bad. Baidu maps does not provide English translation at all, and that seems the only proper maps for China. Most WeChat apps I tried also were Chinese-only. I'm pretty sure that every major website and application is well translated to English in my country, Chinese people seems to care very little about English, which makes it particularly hard for international visitors. I literally had to screenshot some app over and over, pasting it to Google Translate to be able to register in the some metro app, so I could actually buy tickets with app and not cash.

Also motorcycle people were absolutely crazy about road rules, like they don't care at all about anything. Auto road, pedestrian road, red light, opposite direction, anything works for them. I was seriously concerned about someone hitting me, which didn't happen, but few times it was close. Car people, on the opposite, were pretty disciplined. May be cameras don't work for motorcycles?

This seems to be a matter of preference. I feel awe when I visit charming old European cities with great walkability. "Modern" is great for aeroplanes but overrated for cities.

> Tech is one thing, but social credit scores and the level of censorship seem regressive rather than progressive to me.

I can't stress enough how you need to do your own research on this stuff. American propaganda has depicted China as a ruthless peasant state for decades, and it's only in recent years that news like this has opened peoples' eyes to the fact that that all was a cover for the fact that they've passed us in recent decades.

https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-unt...

tl;dr: The "social credit score" is mostly myth. From the article:

>By 2019, China’s central authorities were stating explicitly that they were not happy with the idea. They issued formal clarifications that scores could not be used to penalize citizens and that only formal legal documents could serve as grounds for penalties.

Compare this to the US, in which things like DUIs on your background can be used to deny you Constitutional rights. There's no nothing exceptional about how they're doing things over there when it comes to this.

For me, I guess it was the experience with the public transport, the cleanliness of the city, the way everything was built to interact with your phone seamlessly and automatically once you have the local apps(at the cost of privacy, I am fully aware), and the dazzling look of it all. Everything is new and shiny and feel safe. And not just the sterile kind of clean, but one that has a vibrant life under it.

Yes, the english localization is trash. But I mean, I am in China, I am happy enough they even have some english available. I speak some other Asian languages and not sure if it was obvious, but the US also have trash translation to those languages here too.

Maybe that was the biggest difference. I can read a bit of chinese so my experience was more "the way it was meant to be" I guess? I assume it can disappoint if you expect just an upscaled Western experience there. China is big enough they don't need to cater to rich foreigners. I knew the feeling well enough when I first came to the US so I am not surprised. But maybe it is a novel experience to Westerners.

It is also amazing and sad to see positive comments on such technological developments in China where similar developments in e.g. the USA would be lambasted on this very same site: Flying taxi drones? They'll fall out of the sky on the heads of the elderly and Musk should stay away from this. Tech and integration? Big brother getting even bigger and no I don't want Musk to be part of this. Is it just that the neighbour's grass is always greener or is there some deeper reason for the oikophobia that has become so popular, especially in 'progressive' circles?

I also notice you're mentioning SF without mentioning that this city - like so many others - has been driven into the ground by decades of mismanagement by so-called "democrats". California is on a road to nowhere while building high-speed trains to nowhere, the streets in SF only get cleaned up when the leader of the Chinese Communist party comes to visit, the place is a dump and people are leaving it in droves. It wasn't when I was there for the first time in 1979 - people on roller skates, some left-over hippies, disco really made it - but the last time I visited - 2003, for the IETF conference - the signs were already clearly visible and I was warned that the hostel I stayed in in the Tenderloin district was 'not in a safe area' and that I should not walk around the city (which I did anyway, I'm stubborn).

California should kick the "democrats" to the curb for a while, try to repair the damage they did to the place and its reputation and maybe, just maybe the "Golden State" can once again become the place of dreams it once used to be. This is not so much an endorsement of Republicans but simply a statement of fact, a single-party system nearly always leads to decline. To slightly paraphrase MC5: Kick Out The Dems! [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvJGQ_piwI0&t=13

When I made that comparison, I did not mean to bring politics into the conversation, but I assume it is a natural direction people can take it too.

I will just say this: the issues with the US are beyond *partisan* politics. In my opinion, it is a social problem much deeper than what is shown on TVs and discussed in election campaigns. Changing the party in power will not change the situation. Until the US acknowledged these matters, it will continue on the same path it has been.

> Compare this to the US, in which things like DUIs on your background can be used to deny you Constitutional rights.

Can you elaborate on what you mean here?

The problem is the many cities in the West are objectively terrible compared to cities elsewhere in the world, so many people who don't have that global perspective come to China and think "it's so futuristic" or so, when in reality it's something that has been achieved elsewhere decades ago and China is just one in the line of a common trend. Even when others in this thread say cities like Singapore or Hong Kong are "futuristic", Singapore has been like that since the late 90s, that's not futuristic, it's rather the norm since the 2000s. Certainly those from Asia, even Southeast Asia aren't finding those cities paticularly revolutionary, if not a bit shinier.

Some Chinese Cities may try to "integrate" tech more like in Shenzhen with drone delivery, flying taxis here, or qr-code scanning or whatnot, but that's just more of gimmicks for a select few rather than fundamental lifestyle changes. Far as I would say, Tokyo is still likely the most "developed" of cities in terms of quality of life.

>The problem is the many cities in the West are objectively terrible compared to cities elsewhere in the world.

If anything that's more of an American problem rather than a Western one. There's plenty nice cities in Europe.

Singapore will always be Disneyland with the Death Penalty (early 90s) in my book. But seriously, china built outs its cities much later than the west, and they have a cyberpunk feel. But it feels like a lot of gimmicks, even Japan feels like that (they build things like Tokyo's Skytree, but it isn't very practical, and they just repeat this all over the country). If you live in a city, the basics matter, like...nice public transit, which china has built out very nicely in the last two decades.

"The West"?

Do you mean North America? Because cities in Europe and Oceania are wildly different from the cities in North America and definitely not 'objectively terrible compared to cities elsewhere in the world' (which includes cities in Africa, which honestly aren't amazing).

There are many reports of international students having their statuses, i.e. permission to stay in the US, revoked for being involved in legal matters. The wording of the revocation is vague so nothing is certain but these students reported they have never done any crime except DUIs/DWIs/traffic incidents.

The status revocations are sudden and opaque. The students do not have an opportunity to appeal nor explain. They immediately become illegals once the decision is made and thus become subjects to detainment without due process. In practice they must immediately make arrangements to leave the US or they will risk future visa bans as them being in the country without status can also be considered violating immigration laws.

So, hypothetically, someone who came to the US for a bachelor and decided to go for a PhD, spending about 10 years here, can be forced to abandon everything in matters of days. A tricky situation, yet completely overshadowed by the tariff news and ignored by the masses.

Thanks, I hadn't heard about DUIs being used as a justification for revoking status.

(I'm all for treating DUIs seriously, but using a one time offense as justification for such serious consequences seems over the top to me; obviously the lack of transparency and due process make the whole thing much more troubling as well.)

I think you used the wrong map app. Everyone in China use gaode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoNavi. This is the best map app I ever seen.

You will be denied the rights to carry arms in many states if you have a DUI.

Yeah, that’s particularly funny coming from the guy who petitioned to forbid discussing politics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43122960

Actually I would enjoy a low tech, less integrated and connected experience.

I like interacting with nature, people more than swiping in an app.

I like old tramways in Lisbon more than flying taxis. I like small Greek buildings and even baroque and neoclassical architecture more than glass and metal buildings and skyscrapers.

I have not been to either for 20+ years, but Singapore or Hong Kong did not feel futuristic to me. Singapore is certainly efficiently run and clean, but at the time I definitely would have preferred living in London (or multiple smaller British cities), or Paris, or Sydney (culturally, if not geographically, western)

> A trip to one of the major cities in China made it clear to me that they are ahead of the world right now

Is that a fair sample. Foreigners tend to visit the best bits of anywhere and China is a very big and varied country.

> The amount of tech and the level of integration are unbelievable.

Also dystopian as it enables government control and monitoring. In many ways China is ahead in things I do not want to happen.

> the way everything was built to interact with your phone seamlessly and automatically once you have the local apps

This sounds so horrifying to me.

In the future in a good way or a bad way? I haven't seen or heard of any tech being used only in China that i would actually want in my city. These "air taxis" for example are way too loud

Tokyo feels more retro futuristic than modern futuristic. Aside from the Shinkansen, a lot of the tech and software you interact with there feels antiquated and even borderline terrible. Meanwhile in SF there are self driving cars everywhere, tech company billboards everywhere, apps with great UX, etc.

SF varies widely be neighborhood. Public transport is not the final solution for SF, instead it’s driverless cars.

> It is both amazing and sad to see China is literally in the future compared to the US in terms of infrastructure and social development.

To be fair, it's usually easier to build state of the art, when you start from scratch. Western countries have a big legacy they build decades ago, which has to be used and maintained for decades to justify the investment.

And as a visitor, it's also more likely to only see the fancy parts, and not be confronted with the dark parts, especially when you have a strong leader who's dedicated goal is to sell a positive view of the country.

What do you mean by "social development?"

I've not heard about DUIs being used to revoke visas, but I've definitely heard about criminal records making it hard to get visas. And that's not just in the US.

You stayed in the Tenderloin? Geez.

Most large US cities have, "bad neighborhoods." It's not specific to blue states.

The US cities with top highest violent crime rates are more likely to be in red states:

https://www.police1.com/community-policing/articles/where-ar...

I am no fan of the two-party system but your view of the parties is almost 20 years out-of-date and is ignoring some pretty glaring issues.

Believe me or not, I've read plenty of info in the Internet and I don't think I've found this app. Weird! Thanks for information, it looks like a missing piece. Hopefully my future trips will be more fun. I've used Google Maps and Apple Maps, but both were bad.

Read those threads again, I am not petitioning for 'forbidding politics' but for applying the same rules to all discussions related to politics - no more 'rules for thee but not for (D)'. It has become impossible to keep politics out of the discourse since everything has been made political.

> The US cities with top highest violent crime rates are more likely to be in red states

Red states with blue cities, an important distinction. I looked it up - https://ballotpedia.org is a good place to start - and would be interested to see this disproven.

In what way is my view of the parties out of date?

As much as that might be true to some degree, I doubt most people are comparing China's best to their grandparent's collapsed barnhouse in the boonies. The best I've seen (NYC is the best I'll publicly mention, but also a few other east coast cities) basically look like Ravenholm compared to the photos/videos of what's coming out of China.

It's a cop out in my opinion, it will never scale or be as useful , reliable or enjoyable to use as a well designed, operated subway. Besides Tokyo, Shenzhen, Beijing etc, will have both, subways and driverless, flying taxis, drone delivery and still be ahead of most major US cities in terms of transport options.

You have to visit a top tier East Asian city to understand just how good they have these things running, safe, clean, reliable, always on time. Like, it's amazing. Uncomprable to anything I've experienced in any major US city.

I think if a New Yorker went to Tokyo they'd be amazed how far ahead they're public transport is.

There are also health benefits to using public transport which I think we will see play out with self-driving, people will just become slobs when a car comes to their door, picks them up and drops them at the next door. Using a subway is actually a bit of healthy exercise.