All the more reason for AI to replace us! /s
China needs unions.
That have one. It’s called the CCP.
Didn’t you hear? China’s been one gigantic people’s union since 1949. That’s the whole point of Communism. As you can see, it’s working swimmingly well.
Oh I’m sure that’ll go perfectly well in China!
Maybe ask some students on how well that went when they protested on some big square there…
I’m aware. I still think they’re the country most in need of labor unions.
Tbf they did protest against the so-called “zero covid” policy and the government sort of gave in.
Was that before or after they welded a bunch of apartment complex doors closed?
People in China really need to do what their anthem says:
起来，不愿做奴隶的人们 (Arise, those who refuse to be slaves)
Typical day in America…except we can’t afford the actual hospital and die working from home
Nowhere near the same.
Labor protection laws are basically shit and have largely been eroding since FDR almost a hundred years ago, but we don’t have the 996 mentality here by a long shot.
Food pantries are everywhere. It’s not like latin america where starvation is much of an issue almost everywhere if you don’t have a job. No idea how the food situation is in China, but I can’t imagine them handing out free food to anybody.
ERs accept everyone, but all they can do is basic treatment of acute conditions. In civilized states like Massachusetts they have state sponsored health insurance like MassHealth which covers costs which is partially paid for by medicaid for the poorest people of any age.
Medical debt is incredibly hard to collect on too. Pretty much is the last kind of debt you should ever consider paying if your choice is between paying your mortgage, paying the tax man, or paying medical. Education debt is far worse and impossible to escape short of death though.
The healthcare situation is fucked in the US, but it’s mostly due to insurance companies, lack of regulation for pharma and medical devices, and wages overall.
In terms of jobs, it’s very rare in the US to see companies who want to see workers there over 40 hours a week in the shittiest of jobs which are typically paid hourly and eligible for overtime. In the blue collar world you make bank and they incentivize extra overtime with extra pay on top of overtime rate in the busy seasons depending on trade. In the white collar world it is rare to see anyone working much over 45 hours outside of a handful of toxic roles and upper leadership positions / highly compensated roles like management consulting.
Americans just don’t understand how good they have it, despite all the awful flaws thanks to billionaires owning politics. Yeah, it can definitely be better and we should ask for better… but when you start looking at the rest of the world, the overwhelming majority can’t comprehend our quality of life. Air conditioning? practically unheard of for more than half the world mostly living much closer to the equator where heat is literally killing people.
This comment is so frustrating 😅 one of the only concrete statements you make about Chinese policy is “i cant imagine them handing out free food to anybody”. Literally political criticism based on vibes.
You’re welcome to provide any information, instead of complaining and providing absolutely nothing.
I don’t understand why it’s on everyone else to research baseless claims you are making, but sure, whatever lmao.
So to even answer the question you have to specify what exactly you mean by food bank. Providing food for people who are impoverished takes many different forms. From individual meal based facilities like soup kitchens, to dry and preserved goods providers, to international warehousing of emergency food relief supplies.
So assuming the question at hand is, does the government of China provide its citizens with any kind of nutritional assistance? Yes, they do. The available facilities vary by region, city, and even district levels. Most of the development of large organized food relief organizations has been relatively recent, with the first to adopt a “food bank” label starting in Shanghai in 2015. Between 2015 and 2023 the Oasis public food bank setup facilities across China formalized as a national network of food relief facilities.
At the same time the government of China has worked with public enterprises in China including restaurant chains and grocery stores to implement “Surplus food programs” to reduce food waste and redistribute food to relief programs and facilities.
This was all information I found on my own with pretty basic cursory searches in about 20 minutes. There is far more public information out there and I would encourage you to use free resources to research subjects yourself before making foundationless statements like that.
Americans just don’t understand how good they have it
Yes.
Air conditioning? practically unheard of for more than half the world mostly living much closer to the equator where heat is literally killing people.
Well, not unheard of, but the way you over there use it is. Slight correction - yes. Turning it full on to have temperature 10 Celsius degrees lower than on the outside - no.
It’s not like latin america where starvation is much of an issue almost everywhere if you don’t have a job. No idea how the food situation is in China, but I can’t imagine them handing out free food to anybody.
Honestly almost everywhere outside of the golden billion countries starvation is an issue if you don’t have a job.
Regarding AC
Well, not unheard of, but the way you over there use it is. Slight correction - yes. Turning it full on to have temperature 10 Celsius degrees lower than on the outside - no.
I said half of the world, which is completely accurate. It is completely unheard of for a huge swath of humanity. The energy costs are INSANE to run a heat pump in 2026 prices outside of the wealthy elite globally. Let’s arbitrarily say top 10% or so of earners, which is something between 35k and 47k… hardly a princely sum in the US, given that the US median is something like 62k.
There are places in latin america that have air conditioning, obviously. It’s exceptionally uncommon based on my firsthand experience though outside of tourist areas like hotels and high end restaurants. There are wealthy areas in nearly every country on earth that are exceptions to the rule.
but we don’t have the 996 mentality here by a long shot
When I was in China I have memories of my mom taking me to her workplace when I was a kid (I think because nobody was at home, grandma was supposed to be watching us but I can’t remember why she wasn’t available for some reason), she worked in some electronic store doing sales.
I remember play some (probably bootleg) games on a portable DVD player and like you put this disc in it then you connect a controller and voila… you play video games on it…
I remember feeling so lonely just by myself in this sort of mall-like place with a lot of people walking by, while mom worked, barely had time to check on me… so I just played games alone by myself… I mean I don’t remember it vividly as in every detail, I was still like either like preschool/kindergarden age or 1st/2nd grade, but I remember the general vibe around there. I had an older brother but he wasn’t there so idk whete the hell he was. I remember the direction to my mom’s workplace (by now, I’ve forgotten it, but I used to just have a sense of direction)
But yea mom was so busy, dad had trouble finding a stable job, constantly job-seeking.
“Childcare” is just finding relatives, usually the kid’s grandparents, according to my mom, it’s said that my paternal grandparents, US permanent residents, refused to watch over us even during their short visit from the US.
Mom worked overtime a lot. Like I remember sometimes just being at home and mom and dad come home so late.
My aparment had this weird child-proof lock thingy that my parents could just lock in from the outside in case no adults was home since they didn’t want their kids to go wandering outside. (firehazard lol, jeez dad wtf)
ERs accept everyone, but all they can do is basic treatment of acute conditions.
Not sure how they are as of right now, but in China, for a long time, they’d require you to pay before getting ER treatment
Medical debt is incredibly hard to collect on too.
In China, they can go after family members…
Americans just don’t understand how good they have it
Lol I remember my family didn’t have internet until we left China…
I lived in a very slum-looking area of Guangzhou right next to the 白云山 (Baiyun mountain). I asked recently about the internet thing and my dad said they were just starting to install internet like very late, like around 2010 around when we left, my dad said it was expensive… so for us, we never got internet in China
Never got to experience the “golden age of internet” that most of y’all talk about… cuz I didn’t even get an internet at all.
Parents didn’t really use internet until like 2014 and smartphones became ubiquitious and then soon afterwards they installed Wechat. That’s like the only thing they use lol.
There’s a lot of like worker safety stuff that China just doesn’t have, also no independent unions and strike-action was uncommon and almost unheard of until we got to the US and then hear about strikes on the news so often it’s kinda a culture shock.
Food safety was so… meh…
Mom mom used to warn me about the food safety thing all the time, stories about people smuggling in milk formula from Hong Kong because there was so much fake milk in mainland. My mom didn’t trust the milk and she said she just breastfed me. Water needs to be boiled… When I found out that Americans just drank from the tap, that was sort of a culture shock.
So after I found out about that, I often drink from the tap cuz I’m often thirsty and didn’t wanna waste time boiling water, also didn’r like warm water… I mean why not, we’re in the US after all (as long as “Flint, Michigan” doesn’t happen its gonna be fine), my parents still have the habit of boiling water… I feel like they’re just wasting electricity lol…
The only thing I liked was the subways in Guangzhou had the platform safety doors… I remember when I first arrived in NYC, I often have fears about just falling into the tracks, cuz the lack of doors… but yea that’s like the safety doors only thing I really missed
What’s funny is your experience is similar to mine except my family was Hispanic and living in the USA. I went to work with my mom or dad s lot too, both before and after school, even up to my preteens.
We didn’t boil the tap but we didn’t really drink it either - it smelled weird (later testing showed it had some heavy metals and other hazardous chemicals - likely from the nearby refineries) - instead we went to this water well thing where we would out 5 gallon jugs of water (like the one in water coolers) and got water they’re for drinking.
We did get the internet sooner, at least I suppose. But for awhile my experience with the internet were those “free trial” discs the companies gave because internet was (and I hear still is) expensive.
I had a very similar childhood in the US.
I sat at a booth and played with coloring books while my mom worked in a restaurant’s kitchen, dad’s work was seasonal and very irregular. We didn’t drink the tapwater in our little town because it didn’t smell right and even came out discolored a few times; instead we’d drive to springs where a bunch of other people got their water too.
“Wealthy” white american here, child of a single parent. Third generation in the US. I went to work with said parent or family and was offloaded to childcare at YMCA or relatives or often just hanging out at the pizza place where said parent worked. I made a lot of pizza boxes over the years. I also got a lot of free pizza.
I rode the bus to school because it was cheap throughout childhood until basically high school when I could walk from my house. There were periods I walked to and from school though, even as young as 7 years old. I was most often one of the poorest families in an incredibly wealthy town. A town I can’t possibly afford to buy a home in today despite having a great job.
I didn’t have hot water in one of the houses I grew up in for over a decade. Never had to boil water though thankfully but one of the neighboring towns had a catastrophe ruining their water supply. Before I was born, my family lived in that town. We had an AC by the time I was a teenager but was instructed to never put it below ~78f with low fan speed or so. I’m totally fine today without AC and just fans… but once I got a good career I swapped to whatever AC temp I wanted, it’s the luxury I always wanted.
Modern QOL in the US is absolutely insane compared to 40 years ago, even with current difficult economy challenges.
When I travel I see conditions way worse than what we had then for most humans, but i’m not traveling to wealthy nations typically. I also don’t bother with shitty expensive resorts. Give me Lima any day (oh my god the food, best in the world imo.)
There are many that are not on the news
yea was about to say the only difference between this article and the US is that in the US it would be death in the office or at home not the hospital bed.
Except that the US requires hospitals to treat those who arrive in the ER¹ then they bill you to bankrupt you later. In China, you have to pay first before getting even emergency treatment. (Common trope in Chinese TV shows is a character gets sick and family can’t pay for an expensive emergency surgery and they somehow find a rich relative to pay for it)
(¹excluding chronic conditions like cancer, apparantly)
A random person dies by ordinary reasons - without sources - but he was Chinese, so therefore we just write it anyway…
Nonsense ‘article’…
How is poohie doing these days?
Lmfao, the fake communist would rather ignore the health risks of over work to blindly support a fake communist country. Tell me you’re Wumao without telling me you’re Wumao. 🤣🤡
wumao implies they get paid, western tankies just like to bootlick for free
We can’t confirm their status.
Wumao refers to posters who post unrelated content to disengage conversations around subjects that are critical of China. The term also referred to a phenomenon on chinese social media platforms, and alleged that the community party was paying people to make the posts. The majority of people engaging in that pattern of content are members of the communist party, party officials in any capacity.
I know what it means and I mean what it means
Is Lemmy a chinese social media platform? :o
Also, you’re using the term to describe someone who is not engaging in the behavior the term is meant to describe.
Lemmy.ML. You know exactly what I’m talking about, you’re choosing to be ignorant.
I genuinely did not know that, I had not checked what instance they were from.
You’re essentially saying theyre a paid disinformation disseminator? But thats not what wumao means. It also doesnt describe a phenomenon in western online spaces, but rather one on China’s social media networks. I’m not making a statement of agreement or disagreement with the idea that theyre a paid bad actor. I am calling out your usage of the term wumao.
You know what I’m saying, you’re purposefully pretending to be ignorant because you support them. Or, they are your alt. Few people here are confused what I mean, even if they disagree with me.
Wumao
today I learned…
