#but in this economy? i gotta do what i gotta do

[probskay]

I dis some light reading on Chinese property law and the state of their property development. Be wary of my sources. While their information may be accurate, the opinions of China and its government are often less than charitable.

Communist movements in China caused extreme difference between property law in the United States compared to China. For starters, back in the 1930's the Chinese Communist Party worked on abolishing private property entirely, and private property was effectively in a state of limbo up until a constitutional amendment was passed in 2004 stating that private property rights were to be protected under all circumstances. In that same constitutional amendment, also put into place their own version of eminent domain, allowing them to purchase private property for government use if such a need arose.

However, while those protections for private property were created, Chinese land is still lawfully required to remain in the possession of either the Chinese state or a Chinese collective. No foreign investors allowed! If you want to own in China, you've gotta be a Chinese citizen.

(gleaned from insights from the Property Law in China Wikipedia page)

So, we get into Chinese development companies. I didn't do the research to figure out what legal precedent allows them to exist, so let's just not worry about that for now. They do exist and that's what matters.

Back in 2021, the biggest Chinese development company, Evergrande, announced that they were defaulting to the tune of $300 billion USD (which was still only half the debt of the 2008 Lehman Brothers). Other development companies were soon to follow.

After a history of high-risk borrowing and development, the companies' methods of attempting to generate profit just simply couldn't be kept up with. Back in 2016 there were reports of ghost towns built by developers and abandoned by citizens. (Inside China’s ghost towns: ‘Developers run out of money’, Aljazeera)

Evergrande had only existed since 1996 (China Evergrande’s Founder: From Rags to Riches to Under Investigation, New York Times), meaning that this era of development and collapse had been going on for around 25 years before it finally collapsed. Meanwhile, the U.S. has had development companies like The Durst Organization since 1915 (The Durst Organization, Wikipedia).

(source that also gave a bunch of info: A Peek into China’s Property Crisis: How It Happened and What It Suggests About China’s Domestic Economy & Xi’s Legitimacy, International Relations Review)

It seems to me that China has simply not had landlord companies and development for quite as long, they've had far less power to enact the kind of widespread housing exploitation we've had in the United States due to various power shifts thanks to Communist movements and laws, and lastly their developments were primarily focused on building new properties that were often abandoned rather than just recycling properties that already existed.

If any of these properties are from ghost towns, decay happens swiftly when a building is abandoned by humans. I've seen first hand how swiftly a home with shoddy architecture can fall to the elements. If these properties are not abandoned, then age paired with long term economic neglect may be to blame for the decay of the homes.

Either way, the struggles that the impoverished Chinese experience do not seem that much different than our own. Exploitation by rich landlord companies, a government that seems largely indifferent to their struggles, and a lack of savings to just put some cash into fixing things when they break. Neoliberal capitalist real estate dystopia hellscape

to be honest those all photos from china are just... so much of a different types of posts comparing to any other place you posted. why they live like this?

I'm not that familiar with China. It's pretty confronting to see how many people who have helped power the world's global consumer engine are forced to live (just as it has been confronting for me to see the circumstances in which many people in the US are forced to live). I might be reading too much into it, but I think you can see echoes of recent history and how, as late as the 80s, the majority of people in China lived in extreme poverty, and I guess much of what you see in these photos is the lingering infrastructure and grime from that period and the rapid transition away from it. There's also the fact that it's a massive and very complicated country, and that in the west we don't often have a clear window into that complexity. Jia Zhangke's film A Touch of Sin has some interesting insights.

[autobahnmp3]

need to get a job

[definetelynotavampire]

self shipping myself and the rich guy from bsd

[accursedvoid]

“Oh but they’re struggling creatives who need the money more” okay then why didn’t they join another streaming service rather than making their own and forcing everyone (of those that even can) to buy into yet another fucking streaming service

[robinsnest2111]

it's looking more and more likely that just submitting to my parents' will and becoming a hollow empty shell to do their bidding is the easier way to exist

[isa-ah]

on the one hand i want to try for a second wind to stay up and get really into something but on the other hand im sleepy and im pretty sure my husband went to bed without me so i honestly might as well

[bdrmhymnz]

i am battling the urge to change yanwan back to her og fc because im way too broke to be spending money on gif packs

[emily-mooon]

While all of you are out there dealing with petty fandom discourse, I’ll be in my little corner being silly with the moots and making 5 billion headcanons about my OTPs

[backonmystarwarsbullshit]

no because the executor is like so funny to me. like. palpatine just lost the death star, the thing hes been planning for DECADES and then he just. gets vader a new amazing super star destroyer??? shouldnt the empire be like in massive debt???? how are you supposed to pay for a ship the size of manhattan after your lives work has just been destroyed???

[girlcockholmes]

when you literally live in a world that wasnt made for you 😆🔫

[foxgirlmoth]

.

[luxraydyne]

wait, dude, wait. aini was supposed to be cosmic horror??

girl, seriously? i dunnooooo i’m not really feeling it fellas

[medicinemane]

At least even when I was a teenager and identified as communist, I was still never a soviet apologist

(And as I got older I came to dislike the USSR more and more and more, also seeing that soviet apologism kinda tended to fuck things up for western communists cause they'd be so busy running defense for people who didn't like or care about them, that actually getting policies passed to help western workers came second to being a tankie)

(Straight up, while I was volunteering in Quebec, one of the people I stayed with had this book by her uncle about being a Canadian communist, and he basically pinned soviet apologism as the whole reason he left the party cause they were more interested is doing PR for the kremlin than they were interested in like... unionizing in Canada)

Anyway, tankies suck, soviet apologism suck, and I'm glad to be able to say that even when I was a communist I didn't fall into that trap... like thank fuck for that, you know?

[kerosene-saint]

pov I'm literally gonna ask for maybe two things for Christmas cause I still feel guilty about last Christmas since I was gifted expensive things by my parents and our house needs repairs

[kimmkitsuragi]

also gonna be soooo insane for a minute re:prev post. not me looking at the helsinki gp like 👀 and going hmmmmm 👀

[kaedeakeshisworld]

I am ranting so that's that

First born/eldest child syndrome is really scary 😬

(also me while Reading them articles I fucking am in that situation topped with being an immigrant, fml fr)

I know what's left do to now shadow work but I keep dreading it so much 🥲