> The group is at a critical point now, having ~100 Whatsapp members. From what I've seen this creates a chilling effect where you inevitably end up with cliques and social cooling.
I'd like to see an analysis of how and when group chats get so big they start to die.
> Anything considered too politically sensitive in the west (you know what I'm talking about)
Actually I don't. Can you give an example of something censored by Google in the west the same way Russia openly censors it's anti-war voices domestically?
Also GPD per capita is a terrible measure of standard of life considering 40k in Louisiana when you need to pay for most of health care education etc. isn't that much.
The average life in these countries is undeniably better, even if poorer on paper.
This is not just true of CEOs. As a precocious chief sysadmin of a small local ISP at age 19, I was allowed to fully administer things no sane company would allow a 19 year-old to touch: sophisticated ADSL aggregation equipment, BGP-speaking border routers, mission-critical core routers, ATM equipment, and so much more.
Not everything I did with this power was smart. A lot of my understanding of what that stuff is was learned "improvisationally", and major local customers, including the county government, paid the price. But what I did do was very successfully parlay this experience into a big-kid job (and a mega pay rise) in the big city, which then begat more such jobs. I doubt I could have rocketed that high, that quickly, if the small-town ISP weren't willing to let ambitious but inexperienced people like me screw up, in exchange for paying them semi-student wages.
Great public transit. Affordable housing. Huge variety of delicious food. Low crime. People who care enough about the social good to wear masks in crowded places during a pandemic.
600m people in China live in poverty despite claims of the CPC eliminating it. Traveling around China you see this. Showing off main cities is not proof that people don’t live in poverty.
Low crime is simply not true. Most crimes are not reported or swept under the rug as local statistics are reported back to the central government and no one wants to look bad. But wow if you have Weibo you can see some pretty horrible stuff daily before it’s deleted. Nothing worse than seeing 2 woman hacked to death with an axe because of road rage. Cheap food in China comes with a lot of trade offs such as quality. Many shops recycle left over hotpot for the following day. Gutter oil is a real thing. Fake meats or meats from other animals is a real thing.
Irrelevant argument because how rich people (subjects we're talking about) live in rich areas (i.e. main cities) =/= how poor people live in poor areas. Frankly average Chinese poverty in T4+ villages is pretty quaint compared to seeing junkies everywhere. It's more humbling, not disturbing. Of course you can find statistical outlier crimes on social media, but daily life is not filled with the levels of social decay and shithole experiences in western urban areas that PRC diasphora frequently makes comparisons to on social media. It maybe a bubble, but it's a cozy bubble that rarely gets pierced in daily life for the well off.
One of the benefits to China is the low drug use. But you’re blind if you can’t find insane amount of homeless people in Beijing or shanghai. Or that most people there are struggling. If you want to live with tunnel vision then it’s an amazing place to live. (Shanghai cos I didn’t live in any other city. Only travelled)
Lots of people are struggling but you won't find many truely "homeless", you'll find a lot of migrant/informal workers who has homes in rural areas slumming it in the big city to save $$$ so they can remitt more back home. Most with remotely sound mind / physically able can scrounge up $500 rmb for a shared bunk in a T1 shitbox. It elicits a different kind of sadness vs actual homeless. Generally state makes effort to "dump" the truly homeless due to feeble body/mind back with family. Not to be crass, local govs has been doing a very comprehensive job keeping "riff raff" out of sight out of mind etc... it's just a different type of experience/problem vs addicts and unsound people getting in your face downtown or stinking up transit every day. I'm not saying Chinese cities don't have their seedy side, or that a lot of regions still trigger developing country feels, but they are largely avoidable for the privileged - don't even need tunnel vision when local gov NIMBYs it for them. Like functionally PRC apartheid / hukou society, but major cities don't feel like your customary actual apartheid rich middle eastern city full of poor migrant workers everywhere. Or even many part of North American where it's painfully obvious some minorities are doing all the low end service work.
Who said there was no homeless? The reply was in context of major cities where one will very rarely see true urban homeless in major urban areas where well off spends there time. The migrant workers naive expats thinks are "homeless" are generally not - they have homes, they're just willing to occasionally slum it while working "abroad" - it's like saying backpackers who camp on side of road to save $$$ are homeless. They're manifestly not the same thing. Hence quotes.
Truly homeless exist, but statistically and visibly much less problem, because typical local gov very proactive/interventionist in moving them off streets... truely urban homelessness is like... not a really a social option... no right to be homeless. VS in west where homeless don't get cleaned up unless for the occassional politically motivated reasons. In PRC it's default, homeless get detected fast -> get moved into local shelter system where system ids them and tries to guilt trip family into caretaker roles -> can come with modest stipend to cover costs.
Drive around at 2am. I haven’t lived in China since pre-covid but back then you would see in the early morning police coming to wake them up and move them along. But middle of the night you can drive around see people sleeping under bridges, doorways, alleys, tunnels. Never somewhere permanent. As there is an image to maintain in the cities.
I think a good chunk of America had their "Soviets seeing an American supermarket" moment on Red Note when they got to see what city life is actually like in China from the perspective of regular people.
Instagram is Instagram for rich kids, I know. But like I am ostensibly also a rich kid (probably) by your metric. And I have a very nice looking aesthetic social profile, I know how it translates to what real life is. At this point, that's just basic media literacy.
You are missing my point. The average Red Note influencer is not the average Chinese citizen. I guess you could say the same for IG, but not one is holding up rich kids on IG as the typical American.
Try actually traveling outside the US. It's eye opening. The rest of the world has been developing and the US has been backsliding. It's impossible not to notice.
Kind of seems like you are avoiding my point, or throwing up a straw man to argue against instead (with a dig at US for good measure).
Of course there are more rich people in China today than there were in decades past. That doesn't mean a rich kid of Red Note is good representation of the average Chinese, who is still poorer than the average Mexican, and trending in the wrong direction.
Public bathrooms are getting much better in China. There's been a very noticeable improvement recently, I think tied to a government inspection program.
Granted I was mostly outside of the urban core of tier 1 cities, but most places I went people were constantly smoking in bathrooms, had to BYOTP, and floors were often covered in urine. In some second tier cities like Harbin it was basically squat toilets everywhere, even in the airport lounges.
When did you last visit? I have seen a very big change in just the last year. Most bathrooms have soap and toilet paper now, at least in my random sampling of tier-1 and tier-2 cities.
Smoking is still ubiquitous, though. "禁止吸烟" signs are just completely ignored.
Public bathrooms can be disgusting in many first world countries.
I wonder if the true mark of civilization will eventually be clean public bathrooms. It cannot be that hard because some select countries have managed to do it. Too few though.
Cultural, if I’ll be honest. Until kids are taught and indoctrinated in school that public cleanliness is net good for everyone, hard to see it change.
Good to know. I've heard bad things about public restrooms (from travelers I know) about both China and India, though this information may be outdated.
I was worried about Vietnam, but this is encouraging. I always wanted to visit.
(Don't worry, I understand what "on average" means, and I also understand it varies from location to location).
Honestly, no real data just working with a lot of Chinese on a daily basis. It’s not like they don’t talk about their daily economical or political struggles. Everyone weighs pros/cons, and less and less people have been moving out. Pandemic broke their spirit, but from what I’ve heard, the benefits of living in the US are getting slimmer and slimmer every other day.
Top talent, whom the government advices to not to go to the states aren’t living in the slums, or areas where there’s nothingness. They don’t live like in Ordos or something.
Meta, OpenAI employees aren’t living in Bakersfield. Google NY employees aren’t living in Clifton or something. Very dumb comparisons, obviously, but when you have a good comp in China, your quality of life is just great. There just isn’t that much of a reason to move.
Another note, it's correct that some people want to live in the states. But there's a nuance. From my personal observations, a good chunk of them don't want to live anywhere in the US, but they want the American passport/green card. It's just a hedge for the worst case scenario and to have an escape route if something bad happens. Like life in Tokyo is pretty decent if you're in top percentiles. But most people understand problems (like demographics), however until it becomes an actual issue, it's still preferable to live here.
If you leave major cities in California you see a lot of empty space that's mostly brown-grey dust, with occasional small towns where everyone is very poor and came from Mexico. Your point?
Yes and I see a lot of YouTube videos about all the poverty in California, I see exactly none about the extensive and overwhelming poverty of rural China (and when I mean rural I mean 20 min outside Shanghai).
That's the point. And who trying to lie about eliminating poverty in China (or making the US look much worse), and why are people repeating that lie?
I did. When I lived in China and traveled outside of Shanghai it was eye opening. People living in slums with no running water or toilets. No trains. No buses. No taxis. The nicest people ever but makes you realise that the whole eliminating poverty claim is utter BS.
They were talking about people with good paying jobs living in big cities, not China in general. There are people living in extreme poverty in first world countries, and rural areas are always different to big cities.
I'd like to see an analysis of how and when group chats get so big they start to die.