The Truth About China's Awful Urbanization

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He talks about the region and forgot to mention the center is Guangzhou, the biggest and oldest cities in the region. The region didn’t start with Macao and Hong Kong, Guangzhou / Canton have been the main port for millennia

As a Cantonese native, I have to say that this video started with an awfully, awfully euro-centric historical viewpoint. Guangzhou (Canton) had been the only city in the region open to Maritime trade hundreds of years before the colonization of Macau and Hong Kong, and the historical reasoning should've started at least with that.

Nice video, but the title is completely misleading

I’m no China defender, but the bad effects of Chinese urbanization can be found in any mass urbanization process

Guangzhou was also the main city historically (not HK), 2,200 years old and a main nexus and port on the naval Silk Route - often one of the world's largest cities through history, as well as through the colonial era. It's still the main anchor to the region, and 2-3x the size of HK.

Hong Kong and Macau very much do not have and were not granted "democracies independent of China." Even before the National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong, that description would've been inaccurate. And the city certainly isn't "politically autonomous" now.

Pretty sure there were people there before the Portuguese came to Pearl River Delta

Well the history of pearl river delta starts not at 1557 AD, but at least at 203 BC, when Guangzhou/Canton became the capital of Nanyue Kingdom, since then it has been one of the most important trade centre in China.

One of the main reasons allowing Chinese cities to grow the way they did - government ownership of land. Western commentators cannot understand the sheer power the government has to push through projects. The same is not possible in most other countries around the world without intervention from environmental groups, people refusing to give up their land etc.

I’m left wondering why you’re saying this is awful, aside from the title generating more clicks. Many of these cities are actually very nice places to walk around in. Also wish YouTubers at least tried a little bit to not butcher all the names, I mean you can just go to Wikipedia, listen to the name and then say that…

By 2030, the GBA will have more than 100 metro lines spanning on more than 2500 km and with 1200 stations. They will be grouped into high speed metro, rapid metro and conventional metro. Adding to that commuter rail line spanning around 2000 km for 11 lines and many HSR train stations connecting to the whole country. Talking about connectivity!!

While the criticism of the HK-Macao-Mainland connections is warranted, the only way of removing them would be to erode the autonomy of HK and Macao even more than it already did in 2020.

You said the time between HK and Shenzhen isn't good because of the border crossing. Anybody that has done that journey will tell you it's one of the fastest border crossings in the world, even for Europeans with visas

HK, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan: been to many cities of the Pearl River Delta. They all offer great quality of life and excellent public transportation of millions of people.

The Pearl River Delta is experiencing massive water and air pollution — OP proceeds to show footage of Beijing and Shanghai 😅

Are we to ignore 05:07 when someone gets hit in the face?

The history of the Pearl River Delta does not start with the Portuguese colonizers. Can anyone include more historic evidence of its importance prior to European invasions?

The Pearl River Delta is not a single metropolitan area. Even though it is a contiguous urbanized region, the individual cities do not share typical urban infrastructure nor is it feasible to commute between them. This is what separates it from the Greater Tokyo Area, which is defined by communities made up of people who commute into the 23 wards area that makes up inner Tokyo. We’re Japan to play the same game as China here, we’d have to include Nagoya, Ustunomiya and most of Ibaraki prefecture in Tokyo. It just doesn’t make sense.

I wouldn't call it Awful cause no other country can manage that much population density within a small amount of land mass, 85 million ppl is equivalent to twice amount of population of Canada and a bit more