The nets were at foxconn in capitalist occupied Taiwan. You clearly have never been to China or researched China beyond just absorbing western headlines with no scepticism.
Yeah, I mixed up the location of the foxconn factory fair catch. Doesn’t change the core point though.
Those nets were a Foxconn-specific response to a cluster of suicides at one company, not a national symbol of “China.” If you actually look at the data, China’s suicide rate is 8.9 per 100k, ranking around 65th globally. That’s lower than the US (15.6), Canada (9.4), Australia (13.1), UK (9.5), Japan (14.7), South Korea (20.6) and much of mainland Europe.
China makes everything from cheap trinkets to (most likely) the phone you’re typing this on. It’s not a monolith. Yes, working conditions were harsh during the early offshoring boom, that was the brutal calculus of catching up. But that strategy lifted nearly a billion people out of absolute poverty. China now has the world’s largest high-speed rail network, metro systems that dwarf most Western cities, and excess overtime has been explicitly ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, with enforcement ramping up.
On the system itself: China is in the socialist transitional period. Contradictions remain because capitalism is still hegemonic globally, but the commanding heights (finance, energy, telecoms, heavy industry) are publicly owned. The state isn’t a neutral arbiter; it’s the tool through which the dominant class enforces it’s power, in China that is the masses (the proletariat). Harvard’s Ash Center has tracked Chinese public opinion since 2003 and consistently finds approval of the central government above 90%. Chinese people don’t view their system through a Western liberal lens, they see democracy as whole-process people’s democracy: elections, consultation, grassroots feedback, policy adjustment, all integrated. The NPC has nearly 3,000 deputies, including representatives from all 55 minority groups, hundreds of frontline workers (manual labourers) and farmers, and workers from every sector. That’s structural representation. You can critique labor issues without falling back on orientalist tropes that flatten 1.4 billion people into a caricature.
You’ve got a video clip and a worldview that fits on a bumper sticker, congrats. You don’t actually care about Chinese workers; you just need us to be miserable props in your moral drama so you can feel superior. When reality doesn’t match the trope, you double down instead of asking questions. Best of luck to you, I hope you overcome your orientalism.
🫡 Thank you for educating me about my government (that has 95+% support among the people even according to western institutes like Harvard). You a half Filipino American clearly understand it and it’s nuances better than me despite not being able to engage with any of the analysis I put forth. It is so gracious of you to shoulder the white man’s burden on their behalf. Again I salute you 🫡
FYI, as a post ages, there are diminishing returns to engaging, because the audience quickly dwindles. Somehow @Cowbee@lemmy.ml keeps going and never burns out—maybe he was bit by a radioactive debatebro—but most mortals need to pick their battles strategically.
I don’t mind engaging even without the audience if someone is directly replying to me. Best case it’s an interesting conversation worst case I get to laugh at the idiocy of your average bigot.
The nets were at foxconn
in capitalist occupied Taiwan. You clearly have never been to China or researched China beyond just absorbing western headlines with no scepticism.Removed by mod
Yeah, I mixed up the location of the foxconn factory fair catch. Doesn’t change the core point though.
Those nets were a Foxconn-specific response to a cluster of suicides at one company, not a national symbol of “China.” If you actually look at the data, China’s suicide rate is 8.9 per 100k, ranking around 65th globally. That’s lower than the US (15.6), Canada (9.4), Australia (13.1), UK (9.5), Japan (14.7), South Korea (20.6) and much of mainland Europe.
China makes everything from cheap trinkets to (most likely) the phone you’re typing this on. It’s not a monolith. Yes, working conditions were harsh during the early offshoring boom, that was the brutal calculus of catching up. But that strategy lifted nearly a billion people out of absolute poverty. China now has the world’s largest high-speed rail network, metro systems that dwarf most Western cities, and excess overtime has been explicitly ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, with enforcement ramping up.
On the system itself: China is in the socialist transitional period. Contradictions remain because capitalism is still hegemonic globally, but the commanding heights (finance, energy, telecoms, heavy industry) are publicly owned. The state isn’t a neutral arbiter; it’s the tool through which the dominant class enforces it’s power, in China that is the masses (the proletariat). Harvard’s Ash Center has tracked Chinese public opinion since 2003 and consistently finds approval of the central government above 90%. Chinese people don’t view their system through a Western liberal lens, they see democracy as whole-process people’s democracy: elections, consultation, grassroots feedback, policy adjustment, all integrated. The NPC has nearly 3,000 deputies, including representatives from all 55 minority groups, hundreds of frontline workers (manual labourers) and farmers, and workers from every sector. That’s structural representation. You can critique labor issues without falling back on orientalist tropes that flatten 1.4 billion people into a caricature.
Removed by mod
You’ve got a video clip and a worldview that fits on a bumper sticker, congrats. You don’t actually care about Chinese workers; you just need us to be miserable props in your moral drama so you can feel superior. When reality doesn’t match the trope, you double down instead of asking questions. Best of luck to you, I hope you overcome your orientalism.
Removed by mod
🫡 Thank you for educating me about my government (that has 95+% support among the people even according to western institutes like Harvard). You a half Filipino American clearly understand it and it’s nuances better than me despite not being able to engage with any of the analysis I put forth. It is so gracious of you to shoulder the white man’s burden on their behalf. Again I salute you 🫡
FYI, as a post ages, there are diminishing returns to engaging, because the audience quickly dwindles. Somehow @Cowbee@lemmy.ml keeps going and never burns out—maybe he was bit by a radioactive debatebro—but most mortals need to pick their battles strategically.
I don’t mind engaging even without the audience if someone is directly replying to me. Best case it’s an interesting conversation worst case I get to laugh at the idiocy of your average bigot.
The radioactive debatebro is my past reddit self… Trying to recover from that, haha.