Think of China as Europe not some exotic country

When people talk about China, they often speak of it as if it were a country the size of France or Spain—a single, homogeneous entity with one culture, one language, and one way of doing things. It’s a bit like assuming all of Europe speaks the same language. China is far more complex than most people realise.

Here’s the thing: China isn’t a country in the way many people conceptualise “country”, a concept that took me some adjusting having grown up in a city-state like Singapore. It’s more accurate to think of China like Europe—a vast landmass containing the equivalent of dozens of distinct peoples, each with their own languages, cuisines, customs, and historical baggage. The only difference is that they happen to share a central government and united identity rather than an emphasis on individual uniqueness.

Scale of the misconception

Let’s start with the obvious: size. China is roughly the same size as Europe. Not ‘kind of similar if you squint’—actually the same size. China covers about 9.6 million square kilometers; Europe covers about 10.2 million square kilometers. The populations differ more with China at 1.4 billion and Europe at around 750 million.

Yet when someone says ‘I’m going to Europe’, you’d naturally ask where. Paris? Berlin? Amsterdam? But when someone says ‘I’m going to China’, people unfamiliar with China would often leave it at that, as if Beijing, Shenzhen, and Kashgar are interchangeable destinations. They’re not. The distance from Beijing to Shenzhen is roughly the same as London to Rome—and the cultural differences can be just as stark.

A continent in disguise

China’s provinces are more like countries than administrative regions. Guangdong Province, where I live in Shenzhen, has a population of 127 million—that’s nearly twice the population of the UK. Sichuan Province has 84 million people. Henan has 99 million. These aren’t mere administrative units; they’re massive regions with distinct identities.

The languages alone tell the story. Yes, Mandarin is the official language, but calling China a ‘Chinese-speaking country’ is like calling Europe an ‘Indo-European-speaking continent’—technically true but is as helpful as saying you live on Earth. Cantonese, spoken in Guangdong and Hong Kong, is as different from Mandarin as Spanish is from French. Shanghainese, Hokkien, Hakka—these aren’t dialects, they’re distinct languages that are mutually unintelligible. A Beijinger who speaks only Mandarin literally cannot understand someone speaking Cantonese without translation, any more than a Londoner can understand Dutch.

The cuisine is equally diverse. Sichuan food bears no resemblance to Cantonese dim sum. Xinjiang cuisine looks and tastes more like Turkish food than anything you’d find in Shanghai. The idea of ‘Chinese food’ is as absurd as the idea of ‘European food’—try telling an Italian that their cuisine is the same as Finnish food and see what happens.

Historical kingdoms & regional identity

China’s current borders contain what were historically separate kingdoms and empires. The Qin Dynasty (where ‘China’ gets its name) conquered and unified these regions around 221 BCE, but the regional identities never disappeared—they just got bundled together under a common government.

Here’s a thought experiment I often return to: if the Roman Empire had survived and evolved into a modern federal state, Europe today might look like China does. You’d have Italians, Germans, French, and Iberians all under one government, all speaking their local languages at home while using Latin in official contexts. That’s essentially what China is—except the ‘Roman Empire’ in question was the various Chinese dynasties that unified these disparate regions over millennia, all the while retaining the concept of a unified identity as the Middle Nation.

The governance myth

Here’s where things get really interesting, and where misconceptions reach peak absurdity. Many people imagine China as this monolithic machine where Beijing micromanages every province, city, and village—some sort of authoritarian puppet show where Xi Jinping pulls all the strings simultaneously. It’s a comforting narrative if you want to paint China as a dystopian nightmare, but it’s about as accurate as assuming Brussels dictates every decision made in Lisbon, Stockholm, and Athens.

The reality is far more nuanced. China’s governance structure is remarkably decentralized, particularly when it comes to economic policy and local administration. The central government sets broad strategic directions—think of it as the conductor setting the tempo and key signature—but the provinces are the ones actually playing the music. And much like an orchestra where the violins, cellos, and trumpets all have their own parts, each province interprets and implements central policies in ways that suit their local conditions.

Take Guangdong Province, where Shenzhen sits. It’s been pioneering economic reforms since Deng Xiaoping designated it as a Special Economic Zone in 1980. The province didn’t wait for Beijing to spell out every detail; it experimented, failed, adjusted, and eventually created an economic powerhouse that rivals entire countries. Shenzhen itself went from a fishing village to a tech megalopolis not because Beijing micromanaged every decision, but because local officials had the autonomy to try new approaches based on what they see and experience on the ground.

This mirrors how Germany’s federal states (Länder) or Catalunya operate with different policies from Andalusia within Spain. Some provinces focus on manufacturing, others on agriculture, still others on technology or tourism. Cities within provinces enjoy similar autonomy—Shenzhen operates differently from Guangzhou despite being in the same province, much like how London differs from Manchester. When conditions made neighbouring Dongguan more favourable for manufacturing, Shenzhen pivoted to become the world capital for innovation. It’s a laboratory of governance approaches, all working toward ‘common prosperity and national advancement’, but each finding their own path.

The phrase ‘common prosperity’ itself is telling. It’s not ‘identical prosperity’ or ‘uniform prosperity’—it’s common, as in shared, while acknowledging that the routes to prosperity will vary wildly between a tech hub like Shenzhen, an agricultural heartland like Henan, and a remote region like Tibet.

This decentralization explains why you can cross from one province to another and encounter completely different regulatory environments, business practices, and even enforcement of national policies.

Does Beijing step in sometimes? Absolutely. When the central government deems something critical to national interests, it will override local preferences—just as the EU occasionally overrides national policies with regulations like GDPR, or how the US federal government enforces civil rights legislation regardless of state resistance.

China operates similarly. When Beijing declared its zero-COVID policy, provinces had to fall in line—much like how EU member states had to comply with Brussels’ directives during the pandemic. The 2021 crackdown on private tutoring companies is another example. Beijing decided the education sector needed reform to avoid an increasing gap where the wealthy could pour money to give them an edge over less well-off schoolmates. The promotion of fairer education while reducing childhood stress and burnout essentially shut down an entire industry overnight. Local governments in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which had thriving education sectors, implemented the policy across the board.

But here’s the crucial point: these interventions are the exception, not the rule. Most economic decisions, urban planning, local regulations, and business environment policies are determined at the provincial or municipal level. Beijing sets the vision—‘become a technology leader’, ‘reduce carbon emissions’, ‘promote common prosperity’—but how Shenzhen interprets ‘technology leader’ looks very different from how Chengdu does it.

Climate zones & geography

The environmental diversity drives this home further. China contains deserts in the northwest, tropical rainforests in the south, and everything in between. Harbin in the northeast sees temperatures drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius in winter; Shenzhen in the south rarely drops below 10 degrees. That’s like comparing Oslo to Athens—completely different worlds requiring completely different ways of life.

Why this matters

Understanding China as a continent rather than a country isn’t just semantic pedantry. It fundamentally changes how you interpret Chinese news, politics, and culture. When you read about a policy change in China, it’s worth asking: which part of China? Which level of government is actually making this decision—central, provincial, or municipal? A regulation that makes perfect sense in Shanghai might be completely impractical in rural Yunnan.

It also helps explain why certain Western assumptions about China often miss the mark. Talking about ‘what Chinese people think’ makes about as much sense as talking about ‘what Europeans think’—which Europeans? The Swedish? The Greeks? The Romanians? They all have rather different perspectives, wouldn’t you say?

The governance structure particularly matters when evaluating China’s economic success or political decisions. What looks like a unified strategy from the outside is often a collection of provincial experiments, some successful, some not, with the central government picking winners and scaling them up. It’s pragmatic federalism dressed up as central planning.

The unity paradox

Here’s the twist: despite all this diversity, there is a cohesive Chinese identity. Just as Europeans can feel ‘European’ while also being distinctly French or German, Chinese people maintain both regional and national identities. The difference is that China managed to create political unity centuries ago, while Europe is still working on it.

This unity isn’t about homogeneity—it’s about a shared historical narrative, a common writing system (even if spoken languages differ), and millennia of cultural exchange. It’s rather like how English remains English despite enormous differences between British, American, Australian, and Indian English. The shared framework allows for regional variations.

Rethinking your mental map

The next time you hear someone say ‘China is…’, pause and ask yourself: which China? The tech-hub megacity of Shenzhen? The historical capital of Beijing? The Muslim-majority regions of Xinjiang? The Tibetan highlands? Rural Guizhou?

China contains multitudes. Treating it as a single, monolithic entity—whether in praise or criticism—is like judging all of Europe based solely on your experience in Paris. You might get some things right, but you’ll miss the extraordinary diversity that makes the place fascinating.

So think of China as Europe. It’s not perfect as analogies go, but it’s far more accurate than thinking of it as a scaled-up version of Britain or Japan. And once you make that mental shift, China suddenly becomes a lot easier to understand—precisely because you stop trying to understand it as one thing and start appreciating it as many things that happen to share a government.

Rather fitting, isn’t it? The more you learn about China, the more you realize how much there is to learn. A bit like learning about Europe, really. Or anywhere else worth knowing about.