This is apparently a different China than the one I've worked in for the last decade.

You may have a theoretically fast connection - but even then it's not particularly cheap (I pay less in Romania and Thailand for FTTH,) and the actual qualify of Internet bandwidth is beyond atrocious for any non domestic traffic (i.e. anything crossing the great firewall.)

Which is not to be negative about China, it's got a hell of a lot going for it - I'd live in China before I'd live anywhere in the US - but great Internet is not one of those things.