An American who’s lived in Hong Kong for decades left an insightful comment on my Facebook page after reading my substack post on my trip back to Beijing:

“From the late nineties until 2019, I got used to being confronted with a new normal every time I went to China (which was every year or two from '95 to 2010, and then every few months from 2010 to 2020, when I was living in HK) - oh, now there are traffic jams! oh, now there's a new neighborhood of high rises where there had been residences! oh, now you can't hail a taxi on the street but have to use an app! oh, now no one uses cash! oh, now everything requires some kind of ID verification! But since 2022, every time I go back - which has been yearly - I'm confronted by how nothing has changed. China seems to have almost totally stagnated. That's the new normal, that it's the same as the now a little older normal.”

After some reflection, I think he’s right. Back in the 2010s, China was changing all the time, in a way that you could feel on the ground. Society was changing, the political environment was changing, daily life was changing with all the new apps… Today, all that change seems to have come to a halt. I went back after three years, and the only real difference with when I left was the number of foreign tourists. Apart from that, everything felt the same. The system seems to have solidified in its current state.