Some western cities are truly impressive, for example Vancouver:
Let's take a closer look at them:
If you come from a typical developing country, Western cities will seem very impressive. The infrastructure and buildings are far superior to those in any developing country, with a few exceptions. Now, Vancouver has a population of 2.4 million people – whereas there are 64 Chinese cities with more than 1 million inhabitants, which puts things into perspective.
For this reason, the Chinese are often not very impressed by major Western cities, and there are only a few that can truly compete and wouldn't be described as "small" or something similar. New York is a prime example:
That's impressive even by Chinese standards.
I come from a developing country and when I first saw Western cities I was quite impressed, until I saw Chinese ones.
Here is the built-up area of Shanghai, and it is truly enormous:
It just keeps going and going; more than 20 million people live in New York and Shanghai.
Shanghai and the majority of Chinese cities have a high population density due to land scarcity.
Many will now think that Shanghai and Beijing are the only cities that look like this. But many "smaller" Chinese cities are also densely built and have modern infrastructure: