I don't post anything positive about China on any account associated with my name. In the current zeitgeist it'd be career suicide and with all the frothing at the mouth in the public discourse with the US itching for a cold war - I honestly think in a few years it won't be safe to have that on your internet record
It's certainly much safer to be pro-China in the West than pro-West or pro-USA in China, if that makes you feel any better. So don't complain too much about how difficult life is for you as a supporter of the CCP.
OK if by "positive about China" you mean statements like "I like Chinese food" or "Chinese history is very interesting" then obviously this not an issue. I assumed support for the CCP and the broader Chinese political system was implicit in your concern about expressing something "positive about China". Otherwise I've no idea what the point you're making is.
Lord... That's such a simplistic black and white view of the world. You're either for us or you're against us. This is the toxic juvenile attitude that's so scary honestly.
One can express support for a particular action of their government, or try to share some common misconceptions about life in China without being a supporter of the whole system.
Youve really proved my point. You post anything positive and everyone assumes you're in a click farm jerking off to a picture of Mao Zedong. There is so much misinformation about China in the West - it's truely mind boggling. I used to not care - but lately there is so much warmongering in the West that it's gotten to be honestly scary and I dunno - it's harder to sit back and ignore it all.
Of course if I'm honest with myself - at the end of the day I know that my voice is just a drop in the ocean and doesn't matter
I think you're rather clearly attacking a strawman here. For you to speak of toxic juvenility for my apparent forbidding of praise for individual actions of governments, whereas I specifically used the term "broader ... political system"... it is rich because it feels like I'm talking to a teenager who thinks they're much cleverer than they really are just because they have an opinion. What you said simply doesn't make any sense in response to what I said, so I can't even begin to engage with it.
How is beating pets to death political posturing..? Someone thought it'd make them look good?
Most likely it was some misinformed overzealous local official. Pets from pretty early on in the pandemic have been known to catch corona. I think the question of if you can catch the virus from a pet is inconclusive (last I heard) - but obviously very unlikely
If you are trying to get to zero COVID so your city isn't shutdown and thousands of people don't loose their way of life then you're prolly quarantining sick people. No one to take care of their potentially disease spreading pets, so local official decides better safe than sorry
It's messed up, but it's totally not unreasonable for someone on the local level to make this kind of call in a high pressure situation with minimal guidelines and the safety of a city on the line
Ironically both articles come from a very typically western patronizing perspective
A lot of expats come to asia and get frustrated with many small cultural details. It's especially prominent when the person doesn't speak the local language (as this BBC corespondent... shocking). The general reaction is "why can't you just be more like the us/europe/etc." It's really miopic. There is always a larger broader cultural context for why things are the way they are. Things that have developed organically over generations and aren't exactly planned
Just a couple of examples:
"Hiring 6 people to do the job of 2 is sadly common in Japan, and it’s a big reason why Japanese people earn such low and stagnant wages.“
Yes, this is very common in Asia. They also will work extremely long hours. However the productivity (as also pointed out in the article) is much lower. People are a lot less stressed at work. This ties into other aspect of work culture.. where East Asian cultures have a lot less of a fixation on professionalism and it's more of "friends hanging out" at work. You go out to drink with the boss, and you sit playing on your phone at work sometimes. Okay, you might not like that yourself and you'd like to just do an intense 8 hours and clock out - but that's how things operate and a lot of people enjoy it. If your KFC has twice as many workers as it technically needs - do you work less and get paid less? Yes. That's the tradeoff
"I think an equally or even more important problem is corporate gerontocracy .."
This ties into some very fundamental cultural priorities about caring and respecting elders. Yeah you get a bunch of morons promoted b/c they're older and "more experienced" - but the flip side of the coin is that people generally really take care of the elderly. I took my grandmother to visit China once and she was blown away at how respectful and kind everyone was to her. Could you somehow have people care and respect elders and yet have CEOs that was 22yrs old? Maybe - but the two things are a bit at odds.
Living in Taiwan now, I can see the effect of westernization and it's a mixed bag (You have waves of US-educated Taiwanese reshaping the cultural landscape). It's very interesting to contrast with how things develop in China - which has gone for a more Japanese-style modernization and has been more selective about importing western ideas. I don't necessarily think the changes the writers want are bad (and I haven't really lived in Japan, so I wouldn't dare to have an opinion), but the way they're presented shows a very shallow understanding of what's really going on. At the end of the day you can't tweak one cultural irritant without affecting the whole cultural edifice.
Are we talking about the same Japan here? Karoshi (death from overwork), black companies etc is not just a Western news trope, and all the Japanese salarymen I know hate the work culture.
I don't know where people get the idea people are semi-enslaved in factories.. Having lived in China, in my second hand experience Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict. Somewhere between US and Europe. It's not really easy to fire people and people regularly sue their employers and win. The legal system is generally very heavily biased towards the little guy
I just feel really bad for these people. They probably left some country side life making peanuts to go make some real money for a while at a factory and like send their kids to college or whatever - and now westerners are like "no, you shouldn't do that. go back to your bucolic life of poverty. And btw we hate your government". Cool
From the initial reports it sounds like Foxxcon really royally screwed up and was not prepared logistically for a lockdown.
Another big part of this whole fiasco seems to have been conspiracy-theory style rumors and just a general freakout of the workers (which is kinda understandable given how policies are opaque and feel arbitrary)
"This young factory worker heard that the army was going to come in and take control so as to enforce a type of giant "living with Covid" experiment which involved allowing everyone in that part of Zhengzhou city to get sick."
In my experience.. even talking to educated middle class people.. these kinds of things are super common - even with all the social media controls. People believe all sorts of insane things b/c their sister's husband's cousin is in the army and told them blah blah. If in the US a double digit percentage of people believe that 9/11 was inside job - in the developing world the numbers are way scarier. It sounds like there was mass panic (again, kinda understandable given the mushroom management that's so common in Asia)
Born and raised in China, I stopped reading this after the first paragraph.
Laws are meaningless if they are never enforced or are simply ignored. Which happens all the time in China.
It is not easy to fire people. Sure, in normal situations. But when appropriate, government is going to ignore all these and do whatever necessary, and maybe even threaten to put you or your family in jail. Want to go to court? Good luck, the judges are going to stand with the government.
Another example: the constitution says that Chinese people have the freedom to speak, publish and demonstrate etc. Tell me how that has worked out.
The OP made a good point that applies to all poor countries I've lived in: those jobs are the only (even the best) way out for most people to get out of poverty, which they do to help their families/children/themselves.
Maybe you were raised in a family that did not need to go through such hard labor, but that doesn't mean your right in your view of your own world ;)
P.S. I was also born and raised in a poor country.
So I grew up in China and I can agree that the law is applied selectively. If you are a foreign corporation and have not paid the right bribes or in good books of the ccp official in your area in charge woe behold if you violate any labor rights. On the other hand if you're friends with the right people you can basically operate a slave camp.
That being said I do agree that our attitude of "lets shut down here cuz it doesnt work for us" does more harm than good. It's not like this will solve corruption. If anything, this will give Chinese people more reason to hate on USA and India, thus further cementing their governments power.
The point that “those jobs are the only (even the best) way out for most people to get out of poverty" stands. But the point that China has strict labor laws is laughable. The laws are indeed strict but seldom enforced.
This is true of most strict rules elsewhere: they're there but seldom enforced. Take speed limits, they're strict, but good luck enforcing them. All we do is we monitor from time to time and give tickets. Yet we could enforce this to the manufacturers, right? Why can a car go beyond the speed limit if it's strictly prohibited?
We cannot compare working conditions as is, but they're easy to compare when you take time into account: how where our labor laws a couple of generations ago? Not that different than poor countries today.
If the government is out to get you, then yeah you're screwed.
If it's you against a company - then you typically have more protections than I think the typical western reader would expect.
I personally know people that had issues firing others at their company as well as people that got compensation when fired. Sure there are loopholes and people still get screwed a lot, but on the whole companies are generally apprehensive to fire employees and it's not totally the wild west
In the current situation, it very much sounds like it's people vs. Foxconn and that in the end people got their compensation.
You can argue that the situation was instigated by government policies, but that's sorta besides the point
I'd say you are not seeing the world as it is. In the past, a job is for life, no one gets fired, and their children will take their position in the same factory, you get housing and everything. Now, if you are in state-owned enterprise and companies, you have a job for life unless you don't want it any more. In private sector, especially small companies, you may get screwed over. No, government will not try to fire you, you are nobody to them. You can go to labour court for these things, and normally you will get compensated for illegal termination. I am also only speaking in general, not cases.
> in my second hand experience Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict.
And yes, it's very strict. Lawful working hours are 40 hours per week. Lawfully firing a employee requires higher compensation than US.
Do you really believe above is enforced in China? Next time when you visiting China, ask them if familiar with this quote: laws in China are strictly legislated, commonly broke, selectively enforced. In fact, 996 is a norm and a company that does not require 996 will advertise that when recruiting. Layoff compensation for many people is ZERO because they don't even have social insurance or contracts signed. 100 Chinese Yuan per day, you get it when working and get nothing when leaving. (That's not the case for Foxconn though. I believe everyone working in Foxconn at least has a contract.)
> I just feel really bad for these people. They probably left some country side life making peanuts to go make some real money for a while at a factory and like send their kids to college or whatever - and now westerners are like "no, you shouldn't do that. go back to your bucolic life of poverty. And btw we hate your government". Cool
Thanks, I appreciate that. I (the OP) am that kid though. And I believe getting involved in labor-intensive industries can be a better thing than what it is nowadays in China.
I agree with the rest of your post. Like I mentioned, reasons of the protest are varied.
I mean I lived a sheltered life in the city and my friends were city folks, but I often hear people had issues firing bad employees. And on the flip side people new their rights and knew they couldn't just be left off on a random day.
Companies seemed always cautious with firing. Yeah there was tons of sneaky stuff and people not getting their contracts and lots of grey area stuff - maybe the enforcement wasn't great. But my point is that they actually have some mechanisms in place that do function when it's you vs a company (not you vs the government). So it's not fair to characterize the whole place as lawless
In this case from the news it seemed to have worked out exactly as it should legally. Foxconn messed up (or tried to get sneaky with paying people), they got slapped on the wrist by the government, everyone got paid
I hope their legal systems keep improving (it was way worse a decade or two ago) and less companies get away with screwing their employees. I'm skeptical other developing nations like India are on some other higher level with their legal systems.
I think your original post is extremely sensationalist - comparing factory work to pseudoslave labor in cotton fields - especially given you're from a background that benefitted from this (I assume your parents worked when the system was much worse)
The court system in India is notorious for delays and backlogs, to the extent that some companies don't invest there due to the difficulty of enforcing contracts.
This is what Westerners, who are used to rule of law, do not understand about authoritarian countries. Selective enforcement of laws is the preferred way to punish transgressors.
In Chechnya, the Kadyrovite kingdom, there is a crossroads with a traffic light that is always red. It never turns green. People routinely drive through that traffic light on red, because it can't be done otherwise.
Why is the traffic light even there? The side road connects to a Kadyrovite palace. If there is any accident with any vehicle coming from that palace, the normal driver on the main road is automatically at fault - because he disrespected a red light.
That's loads of bullshit. People don't really understand the 40 hours per week thing. You CAN work overtime, as long as you get overtime pay, and you should have 2 days off, if you work on those off days, you should get double pay. It is very common practice in factories, where you expect to work overtime to earn more money.
In office job it is very different, you hardly get compensation for overtime, but if you go to court you definitely can get the money. The real reason is that those jobs are best paid, a few times more than other people, so people typically only sue their companies after they are fired. Yes, sometimes people worry about not finding another job, so they will accept what's been forced on them.
the labour law was mainly for factory workers, there overtime needs to be compensated. For office workers, it is not clearly defined, because typically you are evaluated by works done, not by time as factory workers.
Who can honestly say they did not ever flaunt worktime laws (where they exist)? IT people do 60-80 hours, in the liberal-democratic country where there is a strict limit of 48 hours/week (and the average being around 39h). People wear that as a misplaced badge of honour - and often complain behind closed doors.
I've been living in Asia for 11 or 12 years now. There is definitely a strange culture of over-working.
Young people who live at home with their parents sometimes work late because they don't want to go home to their parents.
Alot of other people work late because they want to get noticed for promotions etc.
Some of it's self-inflicted. The first company I worked for in Singapore, the 'suits' as they are called (glorified sales people) would take requests from clients and commit at 6pm to deliverying the fixes by morning, then requesting the developers stay and do the work while they go home.
So there are definitely, 100% scenarios where it's not the company itself directly demanding employees to doing insane hours. But it does happen, China requires non-overtime hours to be capped at 36 hours. People are often not compensated for any extra hours they do.
Yeah, I think it's a scenario where you can probably sue and you can probably win - but then (just like in the US) you're known as the person that sues their employer and it's a black mark.
I haven't heard of people getting lawsuits about 996 thrown out in China - but to be fair I also haven't heard of people suing over that either.
>I'd like to invite everyone here to follow for instance CLW
Unfortunately, I think we're well past the days where you can simply say, "The WHO says..." or "the CDC says..." or "<some random NGO> says..." and expect anyone to believe it's some source of truth.
As we speak, we're literally in the middle of multiple supposedly trustworthy institutions being exposed for bending the truth or creating a narrative for political reasons.
There's a cold war with China in progress. In my country we're dealing with issues related to political influence by the Chinese. Even so, I'm trying to be careful that what I read isn't merely anti-Chinese propaganda, because I don't pretend we're not guilty of that ourselves.
This reads oddly like propaganda and flies against any and all of the evidence that we regularly observe, including the protests against working conditions that we are observing now
>This reads oddly like propaganda and flies against any and all of the evidence that we regularly observe
What evidence are you observing that has convinced you it's one way or the other?
I can go on Twitter and see some variant of the first comment and the second in almost every thread. What are you reading that you consider the "ground truth" that you can so easily point out the propaganda?
As a Canadian, I'm sure my sources are similar to yours, and I'm not really sure what the truth is. I assume it's somewhere in the middle. One thing I do know is that both "sides" are churning out propaganda at an unprecedented pace.
Wow, "are against the government", that's really some typical CCP talk seen in their smear campaign.
From what I can see people just want a bit of freedom and get their promised compensation. I doubt any of the workers has interest in overthrowing the government.
I'm not sure where you're from but for a good majority of the world, protesting against the government and wanting to overthrow the government are two very different things. I am talking about the former.
The sorry state the west has devolved into in the last 2 years.
It is not the law or the occasional protection. It is when it is not working, the threat as experienced by local that is the issue. Not to mention the overall issue of human suppression. It is not helping by producing and buying china.
Anyway, I think they moved is not because of this though. More because the unstable situation. And the invasion of Taiwan is inevitable. I will do it if I am in power. Not because I want to but I have to. That is the problem.
And if that happened, what you do. Like German or EU on Russia oil.
How many lesson you have to learn before you call yourselves …
My take is that most people use this as an excuse, no one cares about labors, if you really care about them, I would shift more jobs, they make enough money and leave factory, have a small business. I have relatives working in factories, it is the best thing happen to them.
People are afraid to say 'fk China' blindly so they have to say it under disguise of some moral ground.
This whole things looks more and more embarrassing. From the outside it just looks like the US is struggling to compete and so they create extrajudicial barriers based on "secret evidence" to block competitors.
The hypocrisy is that this is the exact anti-competitive behavior the US has been criticizing China for years.
It's possible these companies are doing nefarious things. In which case create a country-agnostic legal framework and take them to court and prove your case. If it's all super-secret-spy-stuff then just do the damn parallel construction and show all these secret backdoors you claim to have found.
If you don't like foreign equipment near military bases or whatever else, then make laws against it
After the Bloomberg microchips-embedded-into-motherboards fantasy stories you can't help but think all this is the product of some CIA director's overactive imagination and isn't based on reality. It does feed into the US frothing-at-the-mouth anti-China rhetoric of the past few years so people eat it up - but cutting out the judicial process and singling out companies/countries just looks horrible imho
> It's possible these companies are doing nefarious things. In which case create a country-agnostic legal framework and take them to court and prove your case. If it's all super-secret-spy-stuff then just do the damn parallel construction and show all these secret backdoors you claim to have found.
Are OTA software updates considered a “backdoor”? Because they essentially are one, even if the company is not doing anything nefarious yet.
Yeah I saw Minority Report. I know about future crime :) Now I'm imagining clones in vats at CIA headquarters telling them which companies will turn evil.
I dunno man, in the US you don't just ban people and companies for stuff they haven't yet done. Sure potential attack surfaces are important and you should think about stuff like that. But that's kinda my point.. you should make laws about that and regulate critical infrastructure. (maybe networking equipment shouldn't get OTA updates at all? Maybe that's too simplistic..）
Or just ban the PLA owned companies and go back to working on more important stuff. Keep it simple. No need to bend over backwards to help CCP owned and controlled companies (that are legally mandated to serve the CCP's requests) make a quick buck selling commodity hardware.
I think singling out China or the PLA is kinda the problem... Just any government/military controlled company from any country arguably is an issue. If you make it more country agnostic then it's going to be taken more seriously
I feel like I don't really have any moral problem with US passing laws to protect US interests, as long as the laws aren't super unreasonable or evil. They're, like, unfair to some people, but not.. really... morally wrong? The moral complaint about China isn't that they have anti-competitive laws, it's the Orwellian thought-suppression psy-ops stuff.
"it's the Orwellian thought-suppression psy-ops stuff."
I mean that's like a "bigger" issue. I think it's a completely fair to decide you should just not conduct business with companies under authoritarian regimes (see N.Korea Iran Myanmar etc.). If you wanna blacklist the whole country then okay.. but here it's some indefensible middle ground where you continue to do business with them, until it's inconvenient and some bureaucrat decided it's making you look bad so lets just ban some of their strongest companies to cripple them. We will do business with you as long as you only make low end widgets thankyouverymuch.
That might not be what's actually happening, but that's how it looks
I don't see why the middle ground is indefensible. We'll buy your widgets, but not if they're sophisticated enough to be backdoored and cause a national security issue? That seems okay to me.
B/c there is no sense of justice about it. It's just the arbitrary fickleness of some decision maker and it can't be appealed.
The US government alleges they (Huawei ZTE etc.) colluding to put backdoors in infrastructure equipment. The companies say "no we don't" and the US government just says "well.. we think you're lieing!" - and that's the end of the story. It's all just amateurish and undermines the rule of law and sense of fairness when dealing with America and the American market.
If there was some formal process where countries are semi-sanctioned and all thing made in some super long list of authoritarian countries was not allowed to be used in some other long list of "critical infrastructure" .. well at least there would be a sense of impartiality.
The way things stand.. it looks like Huawei's 5G and infrastructure technology got too good, it threatened the pseudo-monopolies of some big American companies with deep government connections, so the US bureaucrats curb-stomped them as best they could .. and now they can't even sell their laptops/cellphones in the US? It's just completely nonsensical, arbitrary and vindictive.
There is also just very little logic to it, b/c even if all the allegations about their tentacles in networking equipment are true and were proven to be true, why should I be prohibited from buying some completely unrelated consumer good - like a Huawei laptop, but an Apple or Lenovo laptop (also made in China) is totally fine? It's like the US government is in some state of war with these firms and is out to destroy them (based on no public evidence or accountability) - and the threat on US infrastructure seems to have devolved to be a convenient pretext.
Maybe the intentions of the US authorizes are good and pure and they have a good reason for all of this. But they way they're going about it is vindictive, authoritarian and undermines the impartial fairness of the American system
Well there is much more that goes on to make and uphold these decisions. It's not like one person somewhere arbitrarily made the call, it's a massive organization ostensibly overseen by Congress.
It's not just the US which has adopted this approach. Iirc Germany for example doesn't allow Chinese tech for telecom infrastructure over concerns about security.
