To clarify, I don’t believe in the surface level propaganda thrown in China’s way about “1984 dystopian society,” “Mao killed 60 million people,” “Xinjiang concentration camps” or things like that.
I’m curious about a few negative factors of China that have become widespread knowledge over the past decade or so by even the politically literate audience, and I want to learn how accurate these things are, how prevalent they are in today’s society in China, and how much it would impact the day to day life of someone living in China.
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Quality control, I have read stories about Chinese factories producing guns, steel, industrial goods, consumer goods, food products, far below acceptable or safe standards, leading to construction/infrastructure failure and severe health complications. There are also claims that smaller restaurants in China today still sometimes use very low quality ingredients that can result in serious health issues. How much of an issue is this?
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Population issue. The Chinese population trend is going in a unfavorable direction right now, and there are reports of young people not wanting to have children because of cultural and cost reasons. How much of an issue is this, and will China end up like Korea and Japan in another decade or two?
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Unemployment, it is a fact right now that Chinese people have a 20% unemployment issue due to an abundance of university graduates without sufficient jobs to match this supply. And this has caused internal competition to swell to unreasonable standards leading some people to straight up give up on their careers and become full time neets. Are there any positive trends or actions to resolve this issue?
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Education. The education system sounds terrifying in China right now, children as young as elementary schoolers having to sleep only 6 hours a night to finish their homework from school and tutoring services. I have also read that after the government banned tutoring of core classroom subjects, illegal tutoring services have become a thing. I would laugh at how this would be the most asian issue ever if I wasn’t so horrified by the situation. Is there any government effort to resolve this right now?
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Nepotism. From what I have heard and read, using connections to obtain positions and resources in China is still very common. How bad is this, and are there any reforms or policies tackling it?
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Mannerisms and emotional intelligence of the average person. There are frequent complaints about Chinese people being horrible tourists, being extremely rude, having the emotional maturity of a donut until at least the age of 30, and also taking advantage of anything free to disgusting levels (I have personally seen old Chinese ladies take out a container and fill it with ketchup from a restaurant where the condiments are self served). I understand the reasoning behind this, China in it’s current iteration is a relatively new country, and the education received by different generations varies massively in quality, with only really Gen Z on average obtaining a level of education that is on par with western populations. I just want to ask how bad this is in day to day life, and if it is tolerable.
Thanks for reading my somewhat long post, I’d appreciate any response, you don’t have to respond to all of my points, any point would be fine. I want to have a positive impression of China but these points are really bugging me right now.
Thanks for pinging me @GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml (sounds like what people on Zhihu, the Chinese Quora, would say).
Points 1/5/6 about quality control, nepotism and mannerisms are about the same thing, that is whether you can generalize a few bad eggs to the entire group. My personal experience isn’t going to be the same as someone next door, let alone someone from a different province, so the right place to look for answers is in statistics. I’ve heard the things you mentioned in these three points at least a decade ago, things have definitely become better is what I can tell you.
Point 2 about population, I’m part of the “young people who do not want to have kids”, I strikeout the want to because I don’t think people who don’t want kids really mean it. I’m not a population expert so I’ll pass on trying to estimate population numbers. Personally I think the cost of raising kids that some people mention mostly refers to the quality of education (which I’ll mention below in point 4), and cost of living.
Point 3 about unemployment. “20% unemployment” is bogus talking point cooked up by Chinese liberal economists, here’s the actual statistic they conjured this “data” from: http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202307/t20230715_1941276.html
Specifically, the surveyed unemployment rates of population aged from 16 to 24 and from 25 to 59 were 21.3 percent and 4.1 percent respectively
To anyone who can read, 21.3% unemployment refers to a narrow range of people from ages 16 to 24, but some liberals intentionally generalized it into the entire working population. Some economists went further and found a way to turn this 21.3% into around 50% unemployment.
Point 4 about education. Due to the large population of students and not enough resources to go around, there is definitely fierce competition among parents who want a better future for their kids. Note that I mention parents and not students, because I don’t think most kids have the mental capacity or experience to understand what a better future is. Some parents go the extra mile and pay for tutoring outside of school to try to improve their kids’ grades, this is understandable. But if all parents think like this, it’s just going to come down to who is rich enough to employ better tutors on the market. Families who are not as well-off won’t be able to compete if they also try to find tutors for their children. This is one of the reasons why tutoring for core subjects is banned, because the quality of education should not depend on how much capital a family can muster. There are also policies to reduce the amount of homework from school, can’t comment on the effects as I don’t have kids.
You don’t need to have a positive impression of China, you can come here personally to see for yourself if you haven’t, then form your own conclusions.
About points 1 and 5, are there any of the aforementioned statistics that could paint a quantitative response regarding the issue? I understand China is working to address these issues, I am interested in how effective these measures are and how much it has improved.
I understand the unemployment issue better now from some other comments and gave my responses there.
About point 2 and 4, correct me if I’m misinterpreting your response, but so far these issues are connected because although Chinese families might want kids, the educational costs attached make this impossible for some?
I agree that banning the tutoring classes was a correct choice, however the emergence of illegal tutoring services and their popularity does paint a rather frustrating truth about the difficulty to resolve this issue, that is the inherent competitiveness of Chinese culture amongst the parents of this generation makes this issue very complicated, which is corroborated by your explanation of the issue.
And if this is the case, wouldn’t this be a deadlock of parents not being able to afford raising children because of the educational costs, and the educational costs being so high because of the academic pressure parents put on their children? That sounds like a clusterfuck, does the CPC have any ideas on how to resolve this right now?
There are certainly statistics about overall quality of products from the manufacturing industry, but I think it’s too broad to be very useful. For example, from this year’s statistical communique (http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202302/t20230227_1918979.html):
The qualification rate of manufactured products[64] reached 93.29 percent.
[64] The qualification rate of manufactured products is the ratio of the samples that have passed the sampling quality test, the process of which follows certain methods, procedure and standard, to the total amount of the sampled products. The survey samples cover 29 sectors of the manufacturing industry.
For more specific statistics you’d need a more specific question. About nepotism, the campaign against corruption has some statistics but I don’t think there’s a way to quantitatively reflect on the issue of nepotism.
On educational costs, this is a manufactured need as public education from kindergarten to grade 12 is practically free in China, and university costs are almost practically free. Now private education is where things can become very expensive as you can imagine, this includes private schools and private tutoring.
Some parents think that expensive private schools offer better quality of education, or think that they are better alternatives to some low-par public schools, but I think they just cost more. Private tutoring isn’t just about core subjects, some parents may also want to enroll their kids into arts/tech/sports/etc. training classes, that’s where some of that imaginary educational costs come from too. Unless private education is banned, this non-issue of educational costs will still be a problem for competitive parents.
I didn’t go too much into the cost of living, but the cost of housing may be the main concern for parents who want to enroll kids into schools in the mega-cities (e.g. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen), but this is also a nuanced topic.
Could you say more about the cost of university? How much would it cost a Chinese citizen to get a degree, for example? Does it depend on the province or course?
Just to add a little more context to the public/private school divide in China.
- Private schools are generally run separate from Gao Kao training in public schools. That is, a student in a private school is usually studying to go to a university outside China. There are some exceptions like the universities that have joint partnerships with Anglosphere universities, like Duke Kunshan, NYU Shanghai, and Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool, that mainland students can enter with or without Gao Kao scores.
1a. There are also private schools that are inside public schools that give the students both a graduation certificate from a local public high school and a more international education in programs like the IB, A-levels (Cambridge, Oxford, Edexcel, etc.), AP, among other bespoke curriculums.
- A student who does not complete the Gao Kao is not eligible to work for the government. There is some sort of stamp that the students get upon graduation from public schools that is needed for their civil service application. If you don’t do the Gao Kao, you can’t get the stamp.
2a. In order to be eligible for the Gao Kao, the student must have also passed the Zhong Kao (The public high school entrance exam)
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While the tuition for university may seem like not much to a person used to the costs in the west, it can be burdensome to many locals in the PRC. Here’s a few (articles in Chinese) examples of students losing all their tuition, sometimes leading to unfortunate results.
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There are also schools that students without a local Hukou (household registration) can enter, but I’m not familiar with that side of education.
4a. A parent can get a new Hukou for their child by buying an apartment in a new city, and other options depending on the municipality.
4b. There is talk of some Hukou reforms in large east-coast cities, but we’ll have to wait and see what exactly changes
I guess I’ll need to do more research on the manufacturing and nepotism issues, thanks for giving me a starting point with the links you have provided.
About the manufactured cost of education. I completely understand the argument if we’re talking about extracurricular topics. However if we are talking about core curricular topics, if private tutoring is a thing, even if only existing in the realm of illegal services, what is stopping teachers from moving part of the curriculum behind a paid wall? And then with the competitive nature of Chinese culture and the Gaokao system, wouldn’t that inevitably spiral into it being necessary to enroll your kids in these financially predatory programs just to keep up and have a chance of getting into a good university?
I know you’ve qualified it, but I’d be cautious of this kind of thing:
the inherent competitiveness of Chinese culture amongst the parents of this generation…
Seems like the kind of framing that could lead to some problematic conclusions/questions.
I have friends who say this about their parents (they are international students or have settled down in a different country after obtaining citizenship).
What would you respond to that? I would think about disqualifying the ‘Chinese culture’ part of it as it can be a bit universal, but I wouldn’t want to invalidate their experience. So I’m a bit lost on how to interpret and inverse and it.
People in the west usually forget India exists. Most people don’t know anything about the awful shit that happens there, because India isn’t the enemy right now. Though as a major part of BRICS, the US is probably going to start talking about how “evil and vile” Indians are soon enough. :/
makes me wonder if this’ll become a wedge issue in aus as we’re trying to pivot extracted resource exports from china to india
I have a feeling that our government will insist that those damn Orientals just kiss the ring already. Then gets a massive shock when SE Asia doesn’t bow down and do whatever the enlightened white nation says.
How do comments of these two’s quality have so many upvotes? Is this some lemmy.world psyop brigade lmao?
I can answer a couple of these. The whole population decline thing is largely overblown
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108900118
- https://asiatimes.com/2023/07/chinas-demographic-doomsayers-cite-the-wrong-data/
Meanwhile, the whole youth unemployment rate statistic is very deceptive as well because it counts from the age 16. While child labour is becoming normalized in US, kids are going to school in China. It’s also worth noting that this is comparable situation to most European countries https://www.statista.com/statistics/613670/youth-unemployment-rates-in-europe/
Thank you for the articles, if this was reddit I would give you a delta on the population point lol. Looking at a less simplistic economic model does show that the west exaggerates China’s population issue.
For the unemployment issue, that makes a lot more sense, so in actuality China has a “youth unemployment rate” (measured from 16-24) at ~20%, not overall unemployment. I’m really curious about this statistic, is there data to see what percentage of this comes from people below the age of typically receiving a bachelors degree (<=22) vs 22-24? And is there data comparing this to US or other western demographics? That would be very interesting.
I can’t answer most of these, but on the 1st and the 6th:
1: The “Chinesium” is just a common trope amongst western nations that holds no real basis in reality. There isn’t anything about China that causes things to be less effective or break more easily. The issue is “higher up” the chain, as companies producing products for profit will cut corners, and would much rather people blame “China” for the problem than the inherent contradictions of capitalism. I’m not saying there aren’t shoddy products made in China, just that shoddy products are made everywhere due to the nature of capitalism favouring profit above all, including quality.
And as for restaurants, go to any small “hole in the wall” restaurant anywhere in the world and you’ll find similar levels of poor quality control. Hell, a lot of multi-national companies will have terrible health and safety standards, so even a fast food or restaurant chain isn’t exempt from this either.
6: This is another common trope in the west, anti-China sentiment is very common. But this is just confirmation bias. If people have an idea that Chinese tourists are “rude” and they see an asian tourist, they will assume they must be Chinese, because Chinese tourist == rude. They ignore all the Asian and Chinese tourists who aren’t rude, because well, you’re not going to remember an interaction with a random nobody, but you will remember an interaction with someone who ruins your day with their shitty attitude.
As for the old ladies being…“overly frugal” like that, it is important to remember that modern China is very young, only 70ish years old. And food insecurity was a common issue there in some places up until quite recently. If you have an older relative who grew up during the great depression (or your parents remember one), you’d probably see something similar. People who grew up in an environment where they didn’t always know where their next meal was coming from will tend to be extremely obsessed with making sure they always have food, even if they are 50-60 years older and haven’t had issues with food in that time.
And as far as emotional intelligence goes, this goes back to point #1. We’re more likely to remember a rude or unpleasant person than a neutral one. So I’m sure there are plenty of people in China with the emotional intelligence of a doughnut, but there are also plenty who are much more emotionally aware than that. Same as with any country.
Basically, be very wary of anything trying to claim that “Chinese culture is like this” or “Chinese culture is like that” because they aren’t a monolith. It’s a nation of 1.4 Billion people. There are probably more “doughnut minds” in China than there are people in my entire country, but at the same time, there are probably more kind and decent people there than my entire country as well. The news isn’t going to push an article about “regular people behaving normally.” They push the exciting, the thing that gets clicks. Saying “Expert believes Chinese culture encourages bad behaviour.” Is far more eye catching than “China is just a regular country with regular people.”
Fair enough, with 1.4 billion people I guess you could find any subgroup with any number of negative characteristics that you want to see.
I guess besides keeping an open mind, it will be necessary for me to visit China myself in the future to gain a satisfying answer to some of these subjective questions. As there’s really only so much I can do to sift through the overwhelming amount of biased information about China here in the west, even if I’m trying to maintain an objective research process.
Even with visiting a place, you’ll only get a tourist’s perspective of the places you visited, and not the whole country. I would heartily recommend traveling though, really helps you connect with other people from around the world and it is always a fantastic experience, even if you don’t always have the best time.
But don’t worry too much about being “objective” either. You’re biased, I’m biased, everyone has their own biases. What’s important is that you try to be aware of your biases and your blind spots and try to compensate for them (Which it sounds like you’re absolutely doing). The most subjective analyses of a situation come from those who have convinced themselves that their own biased viewpoint is the only unbiased one.
Well said. I think it’s ok to lean into our own perspectives and they can certainly be quite effective in understanding things in a potentially novel way. I’d still be wary against relativism though.
For an ‘objective’ understanding, there would need to be a thorough systematic scientific analysis. The first of which wouldn’t necessarily be enough, but which would improve through subsequent studies. It would need to be systematic because numbers and figures without sufficient context can be misleading.
You may have heard individuals claim that EVs are worse for the environment due to the nickel, cobalt, lithium, etc. While it is true that the procurement and refinement of the materials are awful ethically and environmentally, pointing at a point in the sequence of events a given thing encounters is not enough to make a meaningful conclusion. What is done is called a ‘Life Cycle Analysis’ where the material is tracked and understood at every point along the sequence. This can then be used as an evaluative standard against oil-derived fuels which have also been studied this way.
I don’t know if there would be enough resources available from the interested parties to conduct something so thoroughly. Typically internal data or external data are combined and filtered to create some kind of approximation. This works well enough, but it’s not something I would consider satisfying. In this area I am a layperson, I don’t have a good way to understand what is in these reports properly in context and what they mean.
For a given molecular compound or protein, let’s say in a cell, I can look at its metabolic properties, the DNA, the mRNA, how it may differ from organisms within the same species, across species, phyla, etc. This allows me to zoom in or zoom out so to speak and at any level have the appropriate context and tools to analyze it. If this is done piecemeal it becomes significantly harder, and much less accessible. Though certainly it can be done. The other thing is that there may be emergent or otherwise unknown confounding factors that slip between the cracks when the comparisons are not made holistically.
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“I have read stories about…” whose stories?
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“there are reports of…” whise reports?
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Who came up with the “20% unemployment” statistic?
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The government banning private tuition om core subjects is part of a huge platform of education reforms, but you only ever hear about ‘banning’ and negative consequences. Do you really think they just banned tuition centers and won’t do anything about attempts to evade the ban?
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“From what I have heard and read” come on now. From what I have heard and read China is one of the few places where this kind of corruption gets punished.
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Can you not see how this is just pure racism?
Apologies if my tone comes across as a bit harsh, but I find all of these points being framed as credible talking points insulting. The way China is constantly being held up against these vacuous economic and cultural benchmarks that other people aren’t subjected to.
It’s like “I’ve heard stories about how some people in China get really drunk in the evening and sing loudly and come to work with a hangover; what is the government doing about this?”
Or “There are reports that many couples in China get divorced after having children, forcing the children to be raised by single-parent families. Is the government doing anything to prevent relationships from souring?”
This is an internet message board, apologies if my choice of vocabulary doesn’t meet the standard of a research paper, but you seem to have glanced over half a sentence of every point I wrote and then attribute the worst version of that topic possible onto me.
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If you deny the matter of fact that Chinese goods have received an overall negative international reputation for being disproportionately low quality until at the least the last 20 years, then you would just be wrong. The posts below have done a good job responding to why this is a necessary transitioning step towards industrialization, and statistics do indeed show an improvement of this trend which is great.
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??? https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/05/key-facts-about-chinas-declining-population/ https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/population https://www.worlddata.info/asia/china/populationgrowth.php Are you denying that birth rate is an upcoming issue for China to face? Again the question of discussion here is whether this is a significant enough issue to harshly impact China’s economy and growth, or whether other factors such as China’s transition to a more skilled and educated workforce will be enough to offset this, not if this issue exists or not, which it most certainly does.
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According to links below, the Chinese national bureau of statistics. The age range they picked to measure from was the problem, not the number itself which is true.
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At this point I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, or if you are just trying to be as condescending as possible. If it wasn’t explicit enough, I am in favor of the bans over paid tutoring of core subjects because it gives an unfair advantage to richer families… As for illegal tutoring services, I don’t think the Chinese government will do nothing about them, that’s why I’m asking in one of the only pro-China english forums if anyone knows what specifically they are doing…
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Again I didn’t formally state this point in the style of a thesis because I didn’t think anyone would deny the matter of fact that China, or at least sinospheric countries, have historically suffered uniquely significant amounts of nepotism. Xi’s anti-corruption campaigns were a welcome start to addressing the issue. However anecdotes can prove at least the continued existence of corruption in China, my question was to try to quantify the extent of which it still existed at, if there are any ongoing current actions tackling it, and how the situation compares to western countries (which admittedly have been getting worse in this regard over the years).
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No?? Racism would be saying “Han people are inherently ugly because they have squinty eyes.” That’s not at all similar to what I said. What I did was I identified a behavioral pattern amongst a group of people from a shared cultural group, based on my own experiences, friends experiences, that match existing stereotypes about said group; which while not being sufficient to dictate an absolute conclusion, should at least justify having the desire to inquire about such behavior no? Especially since I am asking a community where said ethnic group has a positive reception, which should imply I am trying to learn instead of reinforcing prejudices in an echo chamber, I seriously don’t see how my question can be perceived as anything more than somewhat insensitive in delivery.
I won’t respond to the end of your post which is just a splattering of non sequiturs.
First of all, that’s not what infantilizing means, infantilizing means I give off the impression of assuming a group of people are dumbasses based on the way I’m treating said group. In fact I would say the way you’re posting, typing out some elementary school explanation of stereotypes which implies you assume I’ve never heard of these talking points, after reading everything I wrote, is actually being condescending.
Explicitly stating something and then proceeding to ask a question quantifying to what extent these circumstances are true, within a space where the group of people have an overwhelmingly positive reception, is about the least offensive way you can talk about cultural stereotypes, especially one which is overwhelmingly reinforced by me and my friends personal experiences.
In a purely philosophical sense if you want to ignore all normative arguments, context, and reality then sure, you can say all stereotypes are the same nonsense and reaffirm existing biases. In reality, some stereotypes are more real than others, and sometimes stereotypes are completely accurate (not implying this one is), it depends on what we’re talking about so it helps to actually focus on the topic of discussion (in this case mannerisms of Chinese people), instead of rambling off a bunch of general talking points to a generalized version of the topic of discussion, and then loosely attributing it back to what I said.
In this case the actual Chinese people below have confirmed that some of these stereotypes do disproportionately exist in Chinese culture amongst the older generation, the explanation that these people act the way they do after having experienced famines and poor education when China was still industrializing is understandable and makes sense. Actually quantifying a stereotype and explaining why they exist is so much more effective at resolving prejudices than acting like a caricature from some 2016 SJW video now don’t they?
I stand by what I said. What I posted was at most slightly insensitive in wording. And based on the countless responses below from actual Chinese people which lead to friendly and productive conversations that gave me a better understanding of these issues, it seems like my message was not interpreted negatively at all by almost anyone who it actually pertains to. In fact it’s funny how the only people who my wording actually offends are non-Chinese people.
