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.
For point 1, knowing a bit about QC and manufacturing with regard to China and history, I can provide a little anecdotal info. Yes, China has had issues with alleged “poor quality” products, but this is a problem in every country that newly industrializes. At first, countries that are new to the game provide a competitive price in labor compared to countries that industrialized earlier. Hell, you can go back over 100 years to Britain and you can read about complaints of British people that goods (textiles, etc) made in Germany are poor quality. Germany has since shook that reputation, and generally among the West is seen as a country with a high level of QC. Same thing with Japan. After WWII, Japanese goods were seen as poor quality, and it wasn’t until the 80s/90s that Japan (specifically electronics) was seen as high quality and now still do quite well in that industry despite their years of economic stagnation. Even the USSR had issues with QC for various reasons throughout its existence.
My point is, that yes, China had a reputation of poor quality due to its late entry into mass industrial manufacturing, but it’s a range and is shaking off that reputation it had in the 90s/early 2000s. Of course there are tons of cheap quality goods available online to consumers, but you get what you pay for. Many manufacturers have to worry about the bottom line. There are many high quality products coming out of China, electronics, trains, furnishings, you name it. It’s all about specification and getting what one pays for, essentially. So next time you hear someone talking about ‘poor quality Chinese goods’, get them to show proof or else it’s just Sinophobic bullshit lol.
Here’s an article: https://insight-quality.com/quality-of-products-made-in-china/
Thanks for the explanation and article, it explains a lot. I understand more high quality goods in China are coming out, this in undeniable. I do want to ask, is it still the case today that China makes both very high and low quality goods? Or is the quality floor moving upwards?
It seems like your standard to have “a positive impression of China” is only if it’s somehow perfect and free from problems. Sure, the country has got issues. Like all countries do. And it’s got a ton of positive points too, more than many countries in the world in fact. The world is a harsh place full of problems.
Item 6 is downright offensive. How “bad” are the rude people in any culture? Pretty bad. But do they represent the whole culture, even discounting the better-educated younger generation? No. There is high culture, the educated class, the warm hearted “real” people who may not have the most polished manners. There are normalized standard of politeness that everyone enjoys and upholds.
Why not consider how well the the Ugly American Tourist trope reflect the US as a whole. The infamous drunken Brits on all-night bashes trope, the Australian bogans trope. All kinds of folks from poorer countries who are “cheap” out of habit trope. And so on.
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 understand some of the criticisms, but the population thing isn’t a big deal. They have the largest population on Earth in a country smaller than the US (barely), they’ve been working on the One Child Initiative for a while and the population is trending downward. I think it’s safe to say people would criticize the CPC a lot more if the One Child Policy was an abject failure. The Western Media is against One Child Policy because they can fear monger about it. They exaggerate the punishment of breaking it( a small fine) and propagandize around that issue because it’s an easy Catch-22. If China’s One Child Policy is successful, shit on the policy for being evil and causing a downward trend in population growth, if it’s unsuccessful, shit on the policy for being carried out poorly and call them backwards.
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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.
