A year ago, China lifted draconian COVID restrictions that were an anvil around the neck of the economy and placed unprecedented controls on a society that, for the previous four decades, had grown accustomed to expanding personal freedoms, not shrinking them
Definitely not true for folks who use digital privacy tools
I mean, their vaccine is just saltwater and spit just like the Russian one. And they didn't let anyone catch it at all (or at least they tried) wich means there isn't a natural resistance either.
So in the end they completely fucked their economy (and the economy of other countries with it... But thats a different story) and just postponed the unavoidable outbreak of covid making it essentially worse than any other country. Oh and thanks to the new outbreaks covid has definitely mutated a lot...
Cars were so uncommon to people outside of Beijing that they would pay to have their picture taken with a car as a memento or proof to others that they saw a car and they do exist. Motor vehicle production didn't really pick up until the early 90's. Before that, manufacturers were only making a couple hundred thousand cars per year in the entire country.
At least that's how I interpreted it after reading about the Chinese auto market history on Wikipedia and combining it with my own personal history with computers while growing up in a rural town in the US.