Notes on China

Dwarkesh Patel shares on-the-ground observations from two weeks in China covering AI capital constraints, youth anxiety, and political vibes.

• Moonshot AI, one of China’s top labs, raised $1B at a $3B valuation — xAI’s Memphis cluster alone costs $3–4B.
• Chinese VCs feel capital-trapped: 2% state bank yields or a struggling stock market, with IPOs randomly cancelled.
• The 2021 tech crackdown left the ecosystem shell-shocked; one VC half-jokingly asked Dwarkesh to help get money out of China.
• Young educated Chinese won’t take low-skill jobs their parents took, creating simultaneous demographic collapse and youth unemployment.
• A local told Dwarkesh the current CCP regime is more liberal than what a genuine democratic election in China would produce.
• Chongqing has 20M+ people and hotel rooms with skyline views for $60/night — almost no Western tourists.
• China’s construction boom was built at $10K GDP per capita, producing architecturally uninspired concrete blocks unlike early-20th-century Western builds.
• A popular independent intellectual ecosystem (podcasters, public thinkers) largely does not exist in China the way it does in the West.

2025-03-05 · Watch on YouTube