My son came back from a trip around China yesterday

He met a family while visiting the wall. There were six of them. The man told my son that he has his own business and that he is doing well. He deals in sea containers. He does business with Russia, Europe, and China. My son asked him what he thought the future would behold. The man told him that Europe didn’t matter in the world. It is seen as a large open-air museum. That the US  is rapidly losing its dominant position in the world and that there was no escaping China’s rise to power and with it Russia.

He said that every year an army of technology students was released to the world due to fact that all Chinese have access to its Massive Online Open Course platform XuetangX (MOOCs) that launched in 2013. It serves hundreds of millions of students from all over China. To offer online teachers more control when monitoring the pupils, three students created an artificial intelligence algorithm that was integrated into the MOOCs. It analyses the student’s facial expressions and shows the teacher where students run into difficulty and where they are extra interested in the material. This way the teachers can keep track of student’s behavior.

China’s growth is so great that China can invest in the future like no other country on the planet.

My son further noticed that there were cameras everywhere in the cities he visited. “They are literally everywhere, but the Chinese don’t care,” he told me. Because of the cameras and facial recognition algorithms, nobody dares to do anything illegal, and it is safe to walk the streets. You see children and women walking alone in the park at night. They are not afraid. Crime rates are low in China.”

Photo by Zhengfan Yang