“Take one look and tens of millions are gone. Take another look, and tens of millions disappear again. Money vanishes not because of mistakes, but because time itself has turned against you.
This is Shajing, Shenzhen. It used to be one of the most vibrant, crowded, and energetic places in the city. After work, you couldn’t walk ten meters without bumping into someone. Voices overlapped, lights stayed on late into the night, and the streets felt alive. Today, all of that feels like it belongs to another era. Everything here is stitched to memory now. What once symbolized speed, opportunity, and ambition has quietly turned into history. Even Shenzhen—the strongest of China’s first-tier cities—can no longer hold its ground. There was a time when people said they were fleeing Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou just to come here.

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Thai F-16s ruled the skies, while Cambodia’s Chinese-supplied jets never left the ground. In just a few days of escalation along the Thailand–Cambodia border, a brutal reality was laid bare: air power decides modern conflict, and Cambodia had none. Six Chinese-made FTC-2000G fighter jets—worth over fifty million dollars and advertised as Cambodia’s pride—sat motionless on the runway as Thai aircraft carried out real strike missions overhead. The imbalance was absolute. One side controlled the air. The other absorbed the blows. And China, the arms supplier and Cambodia’s closest political patron, said nothing.
This was not merely a border clash. It was a live-fire exposure of what Chinese military aid is really worth when war stops being theoretical.
As Thai F-16s crossed into contested zones and launched precision strikes, Cambodia’s air force remained invisible. No interceptions. No counterattacks. No aerial presence of any kind. The silence from Cambodian airbases was deafening. Those six Chinese jets—paraded in ceremonies, praised in state media, and used to project an image of modernization—were suddenly useless. In the moment that mattered, they became hangar decorations.

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For years, the world has been fed a single, hypnotic narrative: China’s EV industry is unstoppable, and BYD is the untouchable king at the top of the throne. Month after month, headline after headline reinforced the myth — record sales, soaring production, relentless expansion. The message was clear: this machine could not be slowed, let alone stopped.
But as late 2025 unfolds, the numbers are telling a very different story — one that is darker, sharper, and far more dangerous. What we are seeing is not a seasonal dip or a short-term correction. It is a violent rupture. A sudden reversal so severe that even insiders are struggling to explain it away. According to industry data, this downturn is so abnormal that the secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association publicly admitted that BYD’s current performance is “relatively rare.” That phrase, in bureaucratic language, is a red alert.

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Driven by their own selfish desires, they shamelessly urge others to make sacrifices, wrapping greed in the language of virtue. This is not devotion—it is deception. It is not responsibility—it is plunder. If the benefits of a system can never be shared, then why must its burdens always be evenly distributed? They chant, “Under heaven, a new king rises, and every commoner bears responsibility,” as if history itself demands obedience. On the first day of 2026, I hope people learn one thing: love the country a little less, shout slogans a little less, and love yourself a little more. We are all ordinary people. Stop pretending to be the masters of a nation that has never treated you as one. When they label you “human resources” or “demographic dividends,” you still call them your own. That is the tragedy. Stop being sentimental. They do not see you as one of them. In fact, they do not even see you as human. Meanwhile, essays titled “Why Maduro Is Not Panicking” circulate unfinished, half-drawn, as if even propaganda itself is too tired to pretend anymore.

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Shanghai did not collapse with a bang. It faded.
There was no single headline, no dramatic crash, no official announcement declaring the end of an era. Instead, the city simply began to feel… empty. Not ruined. Not destroyed. Just hollowed out. And if you live here, you don’t need GDP figures or policy briefings to understand what’s happening. You feel it the moment you step outside.
This is a city that once overwhelmed you. Shanghai used to press against your senses—noise, crowds, neon, urgency. It moved too fast, demanded too much, and never apologized for it. People complained about the congestion, the stress, the endless competition. Now those complaints feel almost nostalgic. Because what has replaced them is far more unsettling: silence.
Walk through Shanghai today and something feels off. The streets are too wide for the number of cars. The sidewalks are too clean, too empty. You can stand at a major intersection at rush hour and not feel rushed at all. The city still looks the same on the surface—glass towers, wide roads, polished malls—but the life inside it has thinned out, like blood slowly draining from a body.

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Right now, I’m not working. Every single month, the mortgage comes due like a weight on my chest, pressing so hard that sometimes I feel I can’t breathe. But there’s no exit. If I sell the apartment, my children lose their school placement. If I don’t sell, I drown in debt. Either way, there is nowhere to run. I honestly don’t know what choice is left. I never caught the so-called “golden era.” When I was young, policies shifted, and suddenly having a second child became normal. But if your child wanted to attend a decent local school, you needed two things: a home and a local household registration. So I bought a house. I followed the rules. I did what society demanded. And now, everything has collapsed. Jobs are disappearing, incomes are shrinking, and people like me are being crushed in silence.

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