Although the show's famous production deal has remained in place during its run on FX (Louis CK gets a very small amount of funding for each episode in exchange for FX not interfering with his production process or having any idea what an episode is like until he finishes and sends the final product to them), it has seen two fairly major changes during the 3 seasons and counting so far. One change is that the amount per episode has been increased somewhat, from $200,000 in Season 1 to a range of $250-300,000 for Seasons 2 and 3. The other is that FX has been willing to outlay additional money for location shooting: episodes in Seasons 2 and 3 were thus filmed in Texas and California (standing in for Afghanistan), Miami, Boston, and the People's Republic of China.
Louie flies to Beijing to see the Yangtze River but the Yangtze flows through south China nowhere near Beijing which located in northeast China. Louie should have grabbed a flight to Shanghai or Nanjing.
The Season 3 finale filmed several sequences in China. While the show's deal with FX (a cut-rate budget in exchange for complete creative control for CK) didn't change, the network would sometimes allow for extra money to film outside of the New York City area. They granted $100,000 for the China filming budget.