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.

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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/

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.”

1. “I have read stories about…” whose stories?

2. “there are reports of…” whise reports?

3. Who came up with the “20% unemployment” statistic?

4. 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?

5. “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.

6. 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?”

ping @qwename@lemmygrad.ml

On my phone so I’m just going to briefly chime in.

Population shrinking is indeed an issue but a few things are often ignored that should be noted. China is still urbanizing - 17% of the workforce are farmers compared to 2-3% in the advanced capitalist economies - so the urban workforce issue is less pronounced. Additionally, the newer workforce is much more educated than the earlier generations. China graduates something like 8x as many STEM students than the US, and will have nearly 2x the PhDs in a couple of years. Finally, there is a big push to automation.

The overworking of students is being combated. China banned after-school tutoring somewhat recently and there was a big hubbub about it online when it happened.

Corruption is also being combated. It’s kind of Xi’s whole deal and is why there’s so much support for the central government now.

Manners question is kind of weird… From what I’ve heard on Twitter, Chinese citizens are much more trusting of each other now than a couple decades ago. I saw a graph showing the Chinese are some of the most trusting people in the world.

Found the data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attitudes?tab=map

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.

Quality control

Also interested, e.g. abundance of cheap fake “high-capacity” 8GB flash drives that claim to be 256gb or something

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

Can you provide a source for that number?

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/

To anyone wondering whether this user is acting in good faith or not, this user just called me a monkey.

Sorry everyone, I checked this user’s account request due to a few reports and they should have never been let in. We deal with several account requests every day and only 1 or 2 admins actually go through them, so errors will happen once in a while. They’ve been banned.

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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it may be more productive to make seperate posts on these matters. many people have shared factual and nuanced, sensitive approaches to these topics. unfortunately all i have are my vibes based on what ive heard or seen.

1. many locals trust foreign brands more. unknown local brands are often thought to be risky. but i dont see a real danger, i mean, people dont seem to be dying or whatever. i dont see lab test results of random products either but if those exist it would add to this topic. also the limited scandals over the years, if anything, led to crackdowns and more safety.

2. no idea about those untrustworthy demographic scare mongerers. I think a lot of old people mainly care about becoming a grandparent. that is a big thing. however most families seem to stick to 1 kid, wealthier ones may have more these days.

3. workers think there is a ”situation”, layoffs and finding new jobs is thought to be hard lately. no idea if this is based in reality. a lot of businesses are turning over, closing, a lot of empty stores around the city, these past years.

4. my ”feels” is that competition is due to zhongkao and gaokao, where there is no ”good enough” and every point matters. this leads to at least some people not letting their kids sleep properly, micromanaging their eating, doing everything for the kids so they can focus on studying. of course this doesnt apply to everyone and i cant say how big this trend is, but it seems big to me. people say if you get into a good university (caused by good gaokao), you do not really have to do anything then, and you will graduate and get a good job. if you go to a lesser school, you get lesser jobs. so cramming and overstudying are a practical way to try to ”win” in an incentive structure like that, i think.

also, rightly or wrongly, a lot of money is spent on private, legal or illegal tutoring. often by their school teachers secretly, apparently. also by expensive foreign teachers. some hope to study abroad someday, but others hope to just hedge their bets and try to give their kids an edge by doing lots of different private classes.

5. nepotism. i can’t speak to nepotism, but there still are people and companies that seem to have magical abilities when it comes to getting things approved and not getting cracked down upon. it is out there. i cant quantify it. not my expertise. some laws everybody breaks, so when they get enforced on you, it often has a direct cause i e. someone specifically wanted you to pay. but that is a perception that others will have different experiences of. of course.

6. of the average person. generalizations are dangerously unfair, and also we tend to notice the people who stand out, not the average. i will say that some children are not raised in a developmentally appropriate way. like, having their teeth brushed, butt wiped for them, food shoved in their mouth for them as they walk around or worse, watch addictive phonr apps. many kids do not decide what to do in terms of their homework. their job is to copy it down, their parents must see it and take it out for them and make them do it. this plus lack of free time and sleep could create a 20 year old or 25 year old even that is baffling to your sensibilities, whilst others could chalk it up to cultural differences, lack of the education of the grandparents (who often dominate their adult children and the raising of the grandchildren), exceptions not everybody etc.

there is also something like, not the bystander effect. something else. when someone is unusually annoying or loud or rude in public, usually i see people just try to ignore it or move away quietly. the person gets no pushback or feedback. so that one exception, never learns. and they tend to get noticed more by foreign eyes than all the polite people that blend into the background. there is very little fear of being chastized in public by anyone, so this allows some individuals’ behaviors to drift quite far. just a pet theory.

i hope this is fair. probably not.