Video · Everlast AI ·
Ex-Consul General Opens Up: 'We Slept Through EVERYTHING!' The Truth About China (Wolfgang Röhr)

In an interview for the Everlast AI channel, Dr. Wolfgang Röhr, the former German Consul-General in Shanghai who lived and worked in China for roughly 23 years and witnessed four Chinese leadership generations, reflects on China's rise. He says China's economy has grown explosively over the decades and material living standards have improved enormously, but spiritual and cultural openness has declined since the late 1980s. He contrasts China's efficient, punctual infrastructure—such as its high-speed rail, where a full train is simply replaced by another minutes later—with Germany's apparent stagnation, citing a Chinese professor's observation that Berlin's Bahnhof Zoo still looks like an ongoing construction site. He argues the German auto industry missed China's development and that people who were in China during the COVID period could have anticipated what happened. He also recounts that a passage about the exiled writer and later Culture Minister Wang Meng was cut from a Chinese newspaper interview.
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