There's a bit more to it than that. But yes EVs are subsidized in China.

I worked in a business where we had one product that was useful for automakers but especially useful for EVs. About 8 years ago the EVs in China were mostly cheap shitty BYDs.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the government changed a bunch of rules and regulations for new cars. Within a month design teams were being established at every major automaker in China focusing on EVs. It was a great year for us.

Key EV components, especially the materials to make batteries, started to come down in price.

Then the green plates started turning up. Every city has its own rules for car registration, some places like Shanghai, would auction new number plates each month resulting in a low supply and high demand. It was possible to buy a car cheaper than the number plate. Then if you register an EV you can get a green plate for almost nothing.

About 3 years ago the cities started requiring new taxis and busses to be EV. Places like shenzhen just converted everything to EV. Released licenses for training and testing self driving.

Charge stations started popping up everywhere. There's no way a shopping mall or new residential development could avoid having at least a large section for charging. My own home, converted an entire floor to charging parking stations in the underground car park.

Finally tesla set up Shanghai giga factory. I have no idea how they managed to make that deal but not long after they started shipping model 3s domestically they slashed the prices down to cheaper than a niceish BYD.

If you go to Shenzhen today about a third of cars are EV and you will see a dozen brands you've never heard of before (some are terrible cars, but most are reasonable quality and a handful are bullshit luxury)

As in tradition in China, the government will now let them go into a price war to push the manufacturers to find cheaper ways to make them. Many will go bust or give up.

capslock drains the battery too quickly

you can visit the entire country on the subway or a short grab ride.

owning registering, parking, repairing and fueling a car is a completely unnecessary living cost, not to mention much much more expensive than the US or Europe.

what a lot of people can't understand is that a car I'm singapore is a ball and chain. it's not freedom by any stretch of the imagine there.

it's a status symbol or a job requirement.

As a percentage of population (incarceration rate) its way way down the list, like 129th.

As a count of prisoners，its number two. USA is number one.

China opened up long before the soviet union collapsed. that's just wrong.

like 20 years wrong. You really need to do some reading chief.

it's a thing and kind of rough

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation

Common sense would dictate that we look into the cause of the pandemic. But I totally get the fear of the pointless propaganda war that would have probably come out of it.

It's beyond belief at this point how much the western press will bend any story about China into China bad.

maybe 40 years ago. but 20 years ago was 2003. China was not like India or Africa is now.

If you can train is less than say 6 hours. Trains are hands down better.

They are much more reliably on time.

The station is usually much closer than to the ultimate destination than an airport.

There's little or no waiting in queues or what not, in a lot places you can roll up the platform 10-20 mins before departure.

The seats are better for pretty much every class of ticket. sans a standing ticket but Planes don't have those.

Once you factor getting to and from the airport, messing about with check in, security, and boarding at around 6 hours a train is better than a 2 hour flight.

What I have seen from 10 years living there:

A big chunk of the dirt poor got to send their kids to university and secure real assets for their families while working an honest job.

The kind of job that pays for fuck all barely a life in the west.

Of course at the same time the rich got even richer. The crazy rich kind of stayed where they are.

Sadly there are still a lot of dirt poor families in China but within ten years the transformation has been breath taking. And these families now have a real chance.

I don't know if you've ever been there, but i live there now for about a decade.

a lot of people own a house by default. at some point all the houses where people live were somehow given to them. then the values sky rocketed, or where their building got developed and the developer paid them out.

so families brought more than one house or prepared money for their kids to get a house, and the property market continued to grow.

On top of this, Chinese are more accustomed to living in what could be called extremely efficient housing. small apartments in big apartment blocks with 99% of what they need in life 10 minutes walk away.