#once again before non-chinese tankies come for me I must stress that I AM NOT CALLING MY OWN COUNTRY INHERENTLY EVIL

[justaboutsnapped]

Hey, I saw your post about people being nice to "guests in the house" (which is honestly such a great way to put it). Could you explain more?

I've seen a lot on TikTok hearing about how China is amazing and has all these things ahead of America (which I don't completely disbelieve, but the perfection is concerning) so I'm just wondering if you know how much of what's being said is true.

Honestly the thing I hate the most is when western people who haven’t (and will never, because even if you go live in China you will not experience the same China as underprivileged Chinese people) experienced what it’s like to be Chinese speak over us and either tell us this country is irredeemably evil or Big Communist Wonderland (what communism? this country is super capitalist lmao).

I’m too tired to link a source for every single thing here, you simply have to take my word for it, as someone who has family and friends in China and observe current happenings on Chinese social media all the time), but a lot of the amazing things in China ARE true (more accessible & fast public transportation, lots of convenient things, ambulances not costing an arm and a leg etc.), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t downsides/hidden costs of things.

For instance, food delivery in China is super fast and super cheap, with a lot of stuff to choose from, which is good! But the delivery apps are incredibly exploitative (not saying food delivery isn’t kind of a problem in general due to capitalism), they actively punish delivery people for slower trips–I’ve even seen a thing trending about a year or two ago on how they’re timed and your own record can be used against you). If you search the key terms on weibo you see tons and tons of posts about this: https://s.weibo.com/weibo?q=%E7%BE%8E%E5%9B%A2%E5%8E%8B%E6%A6%A8. Here's an actual news article: https://www.163.com/dy/article/GC7M3EUI052184FQ.html

The same thing goes for a lot of stuff - it's insane to claim that everything Chinese ever was made in a sweatshop but inhumane labour conditions are very widespread. Beyond Temu and Shein which the west knows about, a lot of big companies have extremely unethical practices that arise from loopholes in the labour laws. Big tech companies are notorious for firing people right before ten years or so so that they don’t have to sign a permanent contract with their employees (sorry idk what the exact term is in English), they also have absolutely batshit insane work hours which is by no means legal but they’ve never gotten actual trouble for it because people are desperate and hey, everybody is doing it.

I would say healthcare in China in general is more accessible and cheap, but the flipside is because of the huge population there are simply Not Enough Doctors. I watch a bilibili channel featuring a group of Chinese ex- (the ones who quit did so because of how taxing it is) and current doctors, they talk about the pros and cons of the Chinese healthcare system a lot. The Chinese government is recently also pushing Chinese-made medication & medical equipment which is much cheaper (& therefore accessible), however their quality pale in comparison. It's becoming increasingly difficult to purchase more effective foreign drugs at public hospitals.

Above pictures (feel free to translate yourself):

this is a nurse on xiaohongshu talking about how the chinese-made syringes are poor quality (they broke), and how the new celecoxib (pain med I think) isn’t at all effective. More screenshots of comments sharing their experience

Two people talking about their negative experience with new Chinese hemodyalisis machines

And I won’t even attempt to get into the Chinese education system & how oppressive it is. In the ideal world country-wide entrance exams can ensure that everyone, no matter the rich or poor, have the same opportunity to get into good middle/high schools or universities, but I’m sure everyone can see the problem with mass standardised testing (e.g. the fucking ablelism). Rich people also get many. more opportunities to study outside of school so the equal opportunity thing isn’t even true. Not to mention, in order to vie for the top universities, a lot of parents enroll their children in extremely strict (called "military-style") schools where the hours are much longer, you aren’t allowed any personal freedom, and a lot of abuse at the hands of teachers occur. These schools are especially common in less-affluent provinces with bigger populations, as it’s objectively harder for these people to get into a good school compared to say, Beijing (known for having much easier exams than other regions lol). No sources here because this is also a thing that can be easily researched (by going on Chinese social media, if you are suspicious of traditionally western-biased news sources).

Ethnic minorities are also experiencing intentional assimilation, I have family from Inner Mongolia, I know the Mongol schools there are increasing the erasure of Mongolian from the curriculum. Same applies elsewhere. And the discrimination against ethnic minorities are pretty significant lol.

Another person in the reblogs of my xiaohongshu post has asked about the condition of Chinese queer people, so I’m not gonna elaborate here, but just know it’s real fucking bad. Recently I’ve seen asks for help on weibo by friends of Trans women who essentially got kidnapped by their families and sent to conversion "schools" (think American military-style boot camps) where there's a lot of physical/sexual abuse and even shock therapy.

As for government bs in general the covid lockdown was certainly an era lmao. Bolted doors QR codes as a method of mass-control forced removal from homes etc etc oh and how can I forget power-tripping sanitization personnel beating the left-behind pets of people forced into quarantine areas to death. Tons of accounts of people sick with things other than COVID left to fend for themselves (many died). Wuhan was obviously bad but Shanghai was also really really really really bad. And before people come for me I don’t agree at all with how the US and a lot of western countries handled things either.

This post is kind of all over the place because I’m rambling what I can remember as I wait for my screenprints to dry. Ultimately I just want to say that it means a lot to us Chinese people if others would look into things and help us remember the unsavoury things that the government will try to bury. Every day tons of call out posts get taken down, etc. a good majority of the population will happily pretend nothing ever happened and call us traitors 🤷 Already revisionism surrounding the covid era is happening so.