Changchun the ‘Detroit of China’? Don’t believe it

I am constantly surprised at how poorly many Westerners understand modern China.

The March 4, 2016, edition of the Los Angeles Times published Staring Down an Economic Reckoning in the Detroit of China, a long article by Julie Makinen that characterized Changchun as facing the same fate as the American Rust Belt city.

I lived for a full year in Changchun in 2008. When I returned on vacation in 2017 and again in 2018, if Changchun was a city showing signs of economic shabbiness—a second Detroit in the making—I saw no evidence of it. And I should know, because I have lived in Toronto since the 1960s and am intimately familiar with what the hallowed-out American Rust Belt looks like, including the cities of Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit.

I am not arguing that Changchun has experienced the degree of growth enjoyed by Shanghai, Beijing or Shenzhen. Yet, compared to urban growth in North America, modern Changchun is doing very well indeed.