In March of that year, US Secretary of State Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan listened to the leader’s teachings like elementary school students: you are not qualified to speak condescendingly, the Chinese people don’t buy it.
This is a highlight moment of national confidence.
Self-media big Vs popularized and analyzed the truth that the United States is about to collapse, Europe is in turmoil, and a great power is rising.
That year, the transaction volume of China’s real estate market hit a new high, with the annual sales area of commercial housing reaching 1.83 billion square meters and sales reaching 18.7 trillion yuan, both setting new records. Various places constantly emphasized “housing is for living, not for speculation”, and regulated the market’s heat through price limits, purchase restrictions, and the release of second-hand housing guidance prices. At the end-of-year summary, real estate people drank heartily and ate heartily, and everyone’s faces were filled with an optimistic and upward atmosphere.
The land transfer revenue of major cities also created a historical high, with Shanghai and Hangzhou both exceeding 300 billion yuan, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Nanjing exceeding 200 billion yuan, Wuhan and Chengdu exceeding 150 billion yuan, and Suzhou, Chongqing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, and Xi’an exceeding 100 billion yuan. Zhengzhou, which is now known for its unfinished buildings, had land transfer revenue of over 90 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 29% over the previous year.
Local governments were financially well-off and generous, competing with each other in attracting investment with preferential policies.
At that time, Xu Jia, still full of spring breeze, in November 2020, Evergrande officially announced the failure of the Shenzhen real estate restructuring. Xu Jiayin brought a group of investors to continue to stand on the platform, but the rumors of a broken capital chain still echoed in the rivers and lakes. In the market’s anxious wait-and-see, Xu Jiayin attended the Tiananmen Square ceremony on the centenary of the Party, with a face full of enthusiastic smiles.
At that time, Sun Hongbin, chairman of China’s board of directors, did not cry and borrow money everywhere. He had already predicted in April of that year that the annual sales of commercial housing would exceed 18 trillion yuan. He optimistically looked forward to exceeding 20 trillion yuan in the future.
That year, People’s Daily said that the focus of current economic work was to “strengthen anti-monopoly and prevent the disorderly expansion of capital”, Guangming Daily said that it was necessary to “grasp the laws of capital behavior and prevent the disorderly expansion of capital”, Ma Yun was speechless after his speech at the Bund was heavily criticized. That year, Meituan was fined 3.4 billion yuan, Didi was fined 8 billion yuan, and Alibaba was fined 18.2 billion yuan. Ma Yun consciously faded out of the public’s view, and Zhang Chaoyang began to teach profound physics. One live streamer was pursued and fined 1.3 billion yuan in taxes, and a small celebrity was pursued and fined 900 million yuan in taxes. The education and training industry was rectified, and more than ten million people were looking for new jobs, and New Oriental switched to live streaming to sell goods.
That year, China’s GDP was equivalent to 76% of the United States, a figure that was later repeatedly mentioned by people, which was the closest moment of the Sino-US GDP in the past years.
That year, the Americans won the eight firsts of the anti-epidemic awarded by CCTV: the world’s first country to fail in anti-epidemic, the world’s first country to spread the epidemic, the world’s first country in turmoil during the epidemic, the world’s first country to abuse currency, the world’s first country to spread false information, the world’s first country with political division, and the world’s first country with origin terrorism.
In 2021, China’s film box office reached 47.3 billion yuan, twice that of North America. The domestic film “The Battle at Lake Changjin” grossed 5.78 billion yuan, and with the power of the mainland market alone, it almost surpassed “Spider-Man”, which had the highest box office in the global market.
That year, Huawei was like a lone hero in the jungle of the battlefield, and we considered it to be fighting against the evil world empire. Meng Wanzhou was taken back to China by a government charter flight, just like that scarred Soviet Il fighter, a glorious triumph. Facing the US chip blockade, people were full of confidence, and big Vs like Zhou Xiaoping vowed: containment will only accelerate the overtaking of domestic chips.
2021 was also the last year of population growth in China’s past time. The number of babies born this year was the last time it exceeded ten million in the past.
Then the plot twist of 2022 was abrupt and unexpected. Originally, it was suppressed, dragging, and tedious for 90% of the time, but suddenly, everything ended abruptly on November 30th, and the following December became a three-times-speed fast forward, just like watching a poorly made TV series, and the ending was hastily explained in the last few minutes. At first, many people were dumbfounded in the cold wind. But we are resilient, have great potential, and are full of vitality. Many people shook a few times and immediately straightened their hair and stood in a new posture to welcome the new situation.
The situation was like the clichéd phrases we used in our junior high school compositions: time flies, years pass. Two years have passed, and the years have changed, and dynamic zeroing seems to be a very distant past.
A lot has happened in two years. Sun Hongbin began to cry and borrow money everywhere, Xu Jiayin was supervised while lying in bed, and Vanke, the recognized top student in the class, was also about to fail the exam.
Outside the land transfer revenue rankings, well-wishers made a list of cities with land auctions and a list of unfinished buildings. In the crowded sales offices of 2021, now there are few visitors and few people. Even first-tier or new first-tier cities can’t hold on, Guangzhou is half-naked, Hangzhou is naked, and the high-frequency fiscal terms used by local governments are “tight days”.
Time flies, mountains and rivers turn, Li Ka-shing, who was criticized by everyone for not loving the country in the past few years, is praised for his accurate judgment, and Pan Shiyi, who has always been considered the least promising small real estate developer, is now praised for his foresight.
When ChatGPT was released, a group of big and small factories immediately followed suit and launched various large language models, lagging behind by half a step but still chasing hard. When Sora was released, the crowd became surprised and quiet, and the alternative products did not appear. The big shots still vowed: as long as you open source, we can copy it perfectly.
From 2021 to 2024, people’s confidence was like a balloon that was about to explode, and it slowly deflated.
How did all this happen? Everyone can answer, but it seems difficult to answer. From 2021 to 2023, this huge transformation did happen after all. Was it already foreshadowed before 2021, or did something go wrong in the middle of this process?
I am a math enthusiast and a physics enthusiast. I instinctively believe that if things do not conform to the laws of the Tao, it is naturally impossible to achieve good results in practice.
After 2022, I no longer watch all the accounts that once claimed that dynamic zeroing was a matter of national importance during the epidemic. Because, I think they are not kind enough. I have always insisted that the practice that my intuition makes my heart ache must not conform to scientific rationality. Therefore, we see that there must be a problem when pregnant women are blocked outside the hospital and cannot be treated, and we see that there must be a problem when children are separated from their parents for isolation. This is the correct logic of the survival and development of the ethnic group that humans have integrated into their thoughts and minds in the evolution of millions of years.
But is it really because of this? I’m not sure.
2024 has begun, and no one expected that this year would start with attacks on Mo Yan and Nongfu Spring, and patriotism has become a lively performance.
The reality is still very complex, and the years to come will be even more difficult. Many years later, when we look back at 2021, we may find that it was a strange high point. It was the eve of the downturn, but everyone was full of blind optimism. Many years later, we may never be able to return to that high point, and people will never be able to obtain such optimism again.
But strange things happened like this, maybe it’s related to you, maybe it’s related to me, maybe it’s related to everyone.
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