Food safety scandal rocks China as report claims cooking oil carried in same trucks as fuel

Happywop , 2 days ago

This is why I refuse to purchase or consume ANY food products from China. There system can’t be trusted period.

carl_marks_1312 , 3 days ago

On China’s heavily moderated social media platforms, many members of the public called for product recalls and greater industry oversight.

Some also appeared to link the situation to broader issues in the country, where an economic downturn is driving social frustration and there are deep-seated concerns about the limits of accountability for powerful and government-linked entities.

“Even the cooking oil essential to people’s daily lives has now become problematic… Ordinary people cannot be properly safeguarded… Now I just want to scoff at (phrases like) ‘rule of law’ and ‘serving the people’ whenever I see them,” read one comment on China’s X-like social media platform Weibo, that garnered thousands of likes.

I thought China was heavily censoring criticism and you couldn’t voice your opinions publicly? lol

Basically a food scandal has been uncovered by their media and the government takes action in the public’s interest. Something you’d expect a functioning government to do. And this article makes you think it’s a bad thing.

Summed up:

Despite rising living standards in recent decades, food safety has been an ongoing issue in China, where dozens of high-profile scandals have been reported by local media since the early 2000s, sparking tighter government regulation.

Based.

The entire article has so much coping and seething and was a really fun read. Thank you for sharing.

Woht24 , 3 days ago

I think you can’t really voice your opinion. But that’s due to the consequences, you can’t post illegal shit to your Facebook too, i.e. you’ll be reported very quickly and it’ll be taken down but you can still do it if you want to run the gauntlet.

SleezyDizasta , 3 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

China is collapsing before our very eyes, and it’s already too late to turn things around. There’s literally nothing that the CCP can do to get themselves out of this hole. The demographics are cooked, the economics are cooked, the public infrastructure is cooked, the foreign policy is cooked, the domestic politics are cooked, their environments are cooked, and the list goes on and on. China is one big clusterfuck right now and we should watch everything as it unfolds and take notes on it. China’s downfall is going to be the biggest and most devastating self inflected collapse in history.

We should also do the same with Russia because they’re also collapsing as we speak and it might be the end of Russia as a multiethnic empire for good. We’re living in interesting times people

Geth , 3 days ago

This sounds very close to the description of the US in this very moment. From an outsiders perspective China seems to be doing about as good and bad as the US all things considered.

Xeroxchasechase , 3 days ago

Except Chin’s dictator is grown up.

EatATaco , 3 days ago

Wouldn’t be Lemmy if there weren’t a comment unnecessarily shitting on the US in the comments section of an article about another country.

Geth , 3 days ago

Maybe I overreacted, but the person that was shitting on China themselves seemed to just spout US propaganda talking points, when in reality both have huge issues and also their good parts.

If I had to chose, I’d lean in the US’s favor overall, but not by much, thankfully I don’t live in either of them.

EatATaco , 3 days ago

What country are you living in that isn’t threatened by some or all of these?

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Thank goodness. Otherwise people outside the U.S. wouldn’t know how bad it is there.

Dempf , 3 days ago

U.S. has been complete shit for the last 8 years, but somehow we haven’t collapsed and life goes on as usual. So I’m usually pretty skeptical of specific predictions (though the trends are worth paying attention to).

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

The single most accurate predictor of a country’s future is their demographic structure, and China’s is one of the worst, not just in the world, but in history. It’s pretty normal for nations to go into cycle of prosperity and despair where they expand and shrink, however, what China is going through is unique. China’s population is predicted to shrink down from 1.4 billion people to just 587 million by 2100. That is insane. It’s scale, speed, intensity is something we’ve never seen before. China’s demographic collapse is going to be worse than Europe during the black plague or China during the Great Chinese Famine or Germany after WWII. China is about to go into uncharted territory. We don’t know what things will be like on the other side because we’ve never seen it before and we have no model or system to deal with it. One thing is for certain though, China as we know it today under the CCP is going to go away.

As for the US, if it were to continue on it’s current demographic trends, it’ll reach China’s current demographic situation at some point in the second half of this century, that’s a lot of time to figure things out. At that point, other countries such as Russia, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Spain, as well as China would have been decades into their demographic collapses. That’s a lot valuable time to learn from what these countries went through and proceed with more knowledge captiously based on what minimized the damage and what didn’t.

ammonium , 3 days ago

I’m the first one to hate on the CCP, but people have been saying that China is going to collapse anytime now for 20 years.

The demographics are a real problem, but nothing that will cause an immediate collapse. Housing, youth unemployment and inequality are real imminent issues, but the CCP has survived much worse and I think they will survive this as well.

Economical they have made some good bets, investing in solar and batteries, for that alone we should hope they don’t collapse, it would be a setback of several years or maybe decades.

I believe China will more go the way of Japan, stagnate but not collapse.

dreugeworst , 3 days ago

apart from solar and batteries, they also seem to be doing quite well on wind and train infrastructure

Dempf , 3 days ago

Absolutely. As far as solar goes, one statistic I like to point out is that China added more solar panels last year than the U.S. has in its entire history.

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

Demographic collapses don’t happen overnight, they take decades to unfold. Demographers were able to predict China’s demographic collapse since they started seeing the demographic shifts that happened due to the implantation of the one child policy back in 1979. That’s why you’ve been hearing about it for so long and why you’ll continue to hear about it for years to come. As time marches on, those demographic collapse went from being predictions to becoming reality, and as time continues to pass, the current trends will continue to get worse and worse. The damage these demographic trends will inflect on the system will incrementally increase year by year until the system can’t support itself any longer.

The thing is that they can’t reverse the demographic situation. Even if China started forcing people to have kids or opened their borders to allow for millions of immigrants, it won’t mean anything. It’s already too late, the demographic collapse is going to happen no matter what the CCP does. Keep in mind, Japan is in the same position and they will face the same fate regardless. The only difference is that Japan is a wealthy country with a highly developed economy, so it can at least slow down the inevitable and buy itself some time. China unfortunately doesn’t have this luxury.

For the record, I don’t want China to collapse like this because the effects are going to be devastating. However, the numbers don’t lie and every metric is showing us that they are heading towards a collapse at full speed. The CCP can’t handle this, no government can in their position. There’s really nothing like what China is going through in history. The scale and speed at which this collapse is happening is unprecedented. It’ll most likely go down as the most defining event of the 21st century.

echodot , 3 days ago

Collapse into what exactly? China is really too big to operate as a single country. The USA barely manages it and that requires a huge amount of enforcement.

I could see it becoming a bunch of separate squabbling nation states, the Eastern version of the middle East, nobody wants that.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

NATO does.

echodot , 3 days ago

Yeah that’s not correct

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

It sure seems correct ✅

Nato has become increasingly concerned about the growing military capabilities of China, which it sees as a threat to the security and democratic values of its members. source

echodot , 3 days ago

Do NATO wants a bunch of random political entities with access to nuclear weapons in your view do they? Considering China a threat does not mean they want China to collapse, they just want them to stop being so antagonistic. Perhaps a bit more democratic.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Do NATO wants a bunch of random political entities with access to nuclear weapons in your view do they?

They didn’t seem to mind when the USSR collapsed. Why would they treat China differently?

ammonium , 3 days ago

From which size is a country too big to operate as a single country? I think cultural identity is much more important than size, and the Chinese government has put a tremendous effort in culturally unifying the land with great success (and great cost; see Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, the relationship with Taiwan, loss of local languages and culture). I don’t see that disappearing anytime soon.

A civil war with a stalemate is of course possible (in fact it’s already the reality), but an USSR style collapse in many different countries is just not something I can see happen.

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

I think China’s history is the best predictor of where China will go after this collapse. China’s history from the very beginning has been defined by cycles that alternate between a bunch of small warring states that constantly fight each other and giant tyrannical empires that unites them all. You could say the current China under the CCP is another iteration of those giant empires and that after the collapse, China will go back to it’s historical mean of being divided by a bunch of smaller states that fight amongst each other.

MashedTech , 3 days ago

The US Supreme court also just overturned Chevron deference. Shit sucks everywhere.

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

While that is true, I think it is important to note that as bad as our problems are, and some of them are pretty bad, that there are countries that have it way worse than us. China is one of those countries. Some of their problems are genuinely mind boggling. Imagine going through our current problems right now but with an irreversible demographic collapse. It’s nuts to think about.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Freaking madlads making life interesting. I want it boring.

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

Things are going to get a lot more interesting from here on out. It’ll be a long time since the world is going to feel stable and boring. So buckle up, we’re in for a weird ride.

rekorse , 3 days ago

I dont understand how your post has so many up votes when you said not a single specific thing. Can you explain any of the reasons you say China is obviously in a death spiral?

Is it just a feelings based thing from reading posts on here?

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Satire

Tlf , 2 days ago

Unfortunately Upvotes aren’t linked to the objective truthfulness of a statement. If they were, fake news wouldn’t be a thing.

Also, what is wrong about having an opinion based on a collection of shared articles. Sure they might be biased and some might even report more details than they have sources for but given enough randomly encountered articles some common truths can emerge.

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

It’s not feeling based, China is truly going through a devastating collapse that can’t reversed. Take their demographics as an example. Here are some interesting pieces of information about China’s demographics:

• There’s a gender imbalance of 110 males per 100 females, which is the highest in the world. That means there’s over 30 million males that don’t have a female counterpart.
• The population is expected to shrink down to 587 million by 2100 according to the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences
• The country is going to have more retirees than workers at some point in the 2030s
• The fertility rate is less than 1.2, which is either the second or third lowest fertility rate of any non city state country in the world (sources differ slightly)
• The country’s fertility rate is one of the fastest shrinking in the world (regularly ranks among the 5 worst)
• China’s has one of the fastest aging populations in the world
• China is expected to have worse demographics than the US by 2035 in all metrics despite the US being a developed country and China is not
• China’s median age already surpasses that of the US
• Officially, the country has been shrinking since 2022
• According to Yi Fuxian, a demographer from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the CCP has overcounted their population by an excess of at least 130 million people since the one child policy was implemented. This means that China’s demographic problems are worse than we thought and that China’s population probably peaked 10-15 years ago
• China is not a destination for immigration by any stretch, China currently has around 1.5 million immigrants and about half of those are from Macau, Hong Kong, or Taiwan.

How does a country recover from this? This is beyond devastating. In fact, it’s terminal. No amount of authoritarianism or nationalism or desperate wars or anything can save the country from what it’s going through. It’s too late to damage control and there’s really nothing to turn things around. The system is going to collapse, and we’re going to see China’s power and influence disappear from the world stage in the upcoming decades. China in it’s current form under the CCP is going away. Pay attention and take notes because we’re witnessing the greatest collapse in human history.

match , 2 days ago

China could actually do something really cool and intentionally pull in refugees using the ghost cities strategy in combination with BRI. Everyone would like that.

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

While that would be cool, there literally aren’t refugees in the world to fix China’s demographics. They should still do it anyway, having those ghost cities be populated by people who need a new home sure beats leaving them empty.

rekorse , 10 hours ago

Not being able to take care of your old when they can’t work anymore does not equal the greatest collapse in human history. I guess we will see though.

Dempf , 3 days ago

I mean, scandals like this and “chabuduo” attitude putting health & safety at risk is really nothing new in China. I agree with you in general that certain parts of China are in decline / potential to collapse. Especially economy & environment. But speaking from a U.S. perspective, other aspects are enviable, like public transit.

I’m just saying that I wouldn’t necessarily hold this specific incident up as an example of collapse.

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

China isn’t exactly the place to look towards when it comes to public transit, there’s way better countries to be envious of when it comes to public transport. Their highspeed rail system by itself is around $900 BILLION in debt. It is so overly built that the maintenance costs and insufficient demand is coming to bite them in the ass. To put things in perspective, this figure is around 5% of China’s entire GDP and it is expected to grow as the years pass by. It’s generally normal for public transportation system to not be profitable and for the government to cover the gaps, but this? This is absolutely insane.

There’s stuff that we could learn from them as a country and vice versa, but this is definitely not one of those things.

shekau , 3 days ago

I really really really hope!!

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

I don’t. As much as I hate the CCP, this collapse is still ultimately going to destroy the Chinese nation. We’re going to see hundreds of millions of people in really unfortunate situations who can’t do much to fix the reality they’re in. That’s something that I don’t wish to see happen.

shekau , 2 days ago

They’re overpopulated anyway, there’s simply way too much people there. Like at least 400 million people should be removed, so that the world would be better place.

OldWoodFrame , 3 days ago

We have to learn to better frame the issues. When Japan was ascendant, everyone projected them to overtake the US in economic power and we got all afraid and passed a bunch of protectionist rules about car imports. Think pieces get written about how their economic model was better than the US and the US is a crumbling empire.

But it turned out it was a huge real estate bubble combined with/caused by the demographic benefit coming from a boom generation going into their prime labor years and once that generation started aging out there was a real estate slump and a balance sheet recession that lasted a decade, and they never recovered to the levels everyone was projecting 10 years prior.

Now literally the exact same thing is happening with China and everyone is all shocked. Guess what, it’s going to happen again.

It’s not to say the US will never fall to 2nd place in the global order, but it’s not going to be from some country growing at 10%/year forever, that doesn’t actually ever happen.

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

Perhaps the lesson that will come from all these demographic collapses will be that economic growth should be slow and steady. Countries that try to rush rising up the ranks of standards of living by doing whatever they can to generate economic growth regardless of consequences will end up trading their long term future for short term prosperity.

match , 2 days ago

Imagine if China and the US collapse at the same time and the EU ends up white man’s burdening us all into a better future

SleezyDizasta , 2 days ago

Actually Europe’s demographics are pretty bad too. They’re often overshadowed by China’s, but they’re still devastating in their own right. Most of Europe is already going through a demographic collapse right now, but they’re less dramatic in scale and speed than China’s. They’ll be more like Japan’s collapse, but with immigration… at least that’s the case for Western Europe. Eastern Europe (including Russia) is going through a Chinese-esque demographic collapse as we speak. Interestingly, the US has the healthiest demography out of the 3. It’s not great, but it’s still better than either Europe or China by quiet a bit. The most realistic scenario is that the US will remain the world’s leader in future, maybe to even greater degree than now. At least until other countries like India catch up.

SeattleRain , 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

Nooooo, it’s all Western lies!

• lemmy tankies

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

I don’t consider myself a tankie, but I’ve been called one here, and I don’t think it’s a lie.

Objection , 3 days ago

Nobody’s denying this, there’s plenty of Chinese sources reporting on it.

Funny how even when you actually have a true story to talk about you can’t resist making shit up.

stephen01king , 3 days ago

Can’t find this posted in !worldnews. Can you link to one?

Objection , 3 days ago

Posted it myself, just now, just for you.

To be clear, what you’re suggesting is that stories that the Chinese government is actively talking about would be censored on lemmy.ml. Let’s see if that’s true! Can’t wait to find out!

stephen01king , 3 days ago

Nice. I am not really suggesting that they are being actively silenced, since I do see them there from time to time. What I do notice is that stories that are critical of China always get zero or barely any engagement.

Not really a good indicator of lemmy.ml’s willingness to discuss China’s flaws. This is in comparison to the wall of text that love to comment whenever it comes to defending China or blaming the western countries.

We’ll see how many lemmy.ml users comment on your post this time.

Objection , 3 days ago

The claim I’m disputing is that people would deny that this is happening, not that they’re insufficiently critical according to your standards. I’m not interested in evaluating that purely subjective claim (a discussion in which the goalposts could easily be shifted all over the place), what I’m interested in is disproving the objectively false claim that lemmy tankies deny this specific story happening.

The fact of the matter is that the person I responded to lied. That’s all I’m saying. And for pointing out that objectively true fact, rather than anyone who disagreed supplying evidence, they just downvoted me, because apparently they think popularity is a substitute for truth.

Realitaetsverlust , 3 days ago

Because it’s easier to call anything that disagrees with your world view as “lies” than to accept that the own world view is wrong.

Tankies are the masters of rejecting reality.

Objection , 3 days ago

Well, since we have a disagreement about what’s true, then there’s one surefire way to settle it, right? Evidence. If you’re saying that I’m lying and rejecting reality, surely you can point me to evidence that I’m wrong, right? So link me to the comments you saw of people denying this story.

Oh wait, you can’t, because it didn’t happen. Because y’all make shit up about us all the time and never have the receipts, because fundamentally, we believe in basing our beliefs on evidence and you do not.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

And when that evidence leads you to be right about world events like Trump, capitalism, and the rise of fascism, do you apologize for being right? No, you rub it in everyone else’s faces, and this makes me angry and frustrated. Can you not be nicer about being right?

Realitaetsverlust , 3 days ago

we believe in basing our beliefs on evidence

Shit made me laugh, good one.

Objection , 3 days ago

And yet, still zero evidence 🤔

Cyberjin , 3 days ago

Profits over people’s wellbeing as they say in China.

Very related story Poop suction truck carried drinking water

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

I’ve never heard that. Do they really say that in China? All I can find is mentions of common prosperity.

Cyberjin , 3 days ago

Sorry, Meant as the do in China.

Xeroxchasechase , 3 days ago

You meant as they do in capitalism?

Cyberjin , 3 days ago

Yeah, but way worse because no real watchdogs (free press) watching out for the people, no good samaritans etc.

veganpizza69 , 3 days ago

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil

Wispy2891 , 4 days ago

Some heads will literally roll for this. Is embezzlement worth death penalty?

tiefling , 4 days ago

In the US it would be a fine equal to 5% of one year’s profits, spread over a 10 year period

Jakeroxs , 4 days ago

Hey whoa, some low-level employee would go to jail too.

HoustonHenry , 3 days ago

gotta have a scapegoat, don’t know what they were thinking

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

For the right price, sure. But then nobody gets into this game thinking they’re the ones who will get caught. You think Elizabeth Holmes and SBF believed they’d be cooling their heels in federal prison when they started lying?

CanadaPlus , 4 days ago (edited 4 days ago)

I mean, some. In a country like China with no rule of law, there’s always a chance you know the right people to get out of it, or are otherwise too indispensable to punish.

Cyberjin , 3 days ago

I don’t think so, companies usually gets away with it unless related something anti nationalist like Japan.

Tsingtao: Video shows Chinese beer worker urinating into tankwww.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-67191242

The guy who recorded the video of the guy pissing in the beer got in trouble for “disturbing the peace”

Shard , 3 days ago

If you’ve tried Tsingtao beer, it’s just watered piss anyway.

Silentiea , 3 days ago

Well now it is …

nutsack , 3 days ago

you would be surprised what is considered normal.

match , 2 days ago

Probably some people will get disappeared except for one who will be actually blamed for it

Blizzard , 4 days ago

And that’s not even the most disgusting thing related to cooking oil in China…

youtu.be/zrv78nG9R04

wieson , 4 days ago

Disgosteng!

bfg9k , 4 days ago

It was fooken one of yss

Psythik , 4 days ago

I don’t even have to click to recognize that you more than likely linked to the video about people turning raw sewage into cooking oil.

Blizzard , 4 days ago

Yes… Unfortunately, yes.

Stamau123 , 4 days ago

Why would you even think to do this? Make soup or some shit that doesn’t need oil instead

SSJMarx , 3 days ago

It was mostly unlicensed street vendors using it, and fried food is the most popular street food. These practices were pretty heavily cracked down on in the 2010s though, some people got death sentences over this.

Siegfried , 3 days ago

Just to note, we are barely 3 years out of the 2010s

Kiosade , 3 days ago

4.5 at this point.

carl_marks_1312 , 3 days ago

Yet a video that is 11 years old is still reposted

todd_bonzalez , 3 days ago

I’m am deeply confused by this. They already had scraps of animal fat that could be used to create a safe(-ish) cooking oil. Why dump sewage into it? Jesus Christ that is bleak.

Deceptichum , 4 days ago

.ML working mods in overtime.

aniki , 4 days ago

They’ll just ignore it and post another link to truthout.org that has a title they agree with. They won’t actually read it – only use it to gish gallop any conversation.

FiniteBanjo , 4 days ago

Sure, China is a dictatorship, but in return they are:

• Just as corrupt in industry.
• In Decline from their once amazing rate of people exiting poverty.
• Losing all of their trade partners.
• Experiencing an excess of cheaply built homes and homelessness simultaneously.
• Are being forced out of the global tech economy.
• Fully reliant on Russian Oil.
• More likely to enter new wars every day.
• Incapable of managing their own agriculture sector.

If that is all it takes to get rid of landlords…

shrugs

SOMETHINGSWRONG , 4 days ago

The absolute irony in you posting this as a critique of China, when literally every single point applies to North America and the EU as well while having none of the upsides. (At least, no upsides for Americans. The EU is doing a better job.)

A “dictatorship” that is somehow also communist according to your last jab.

Like, do y’all seriously not see how much you’re embarrassing yourselves? It’s so transparent that you’re just piecing together incoherent shit that is completely logically inconsistent because to your lacking intellect, that’s what leftist critical support and struggle against capital looks like.

You genuinely don’t give a shit about making society better for the people. Why are you pretending? Y’all get more pathetic by the day, I swear.

FiniteBanjo , 4 days ago

lmao you hit me with the “no u”

Let’s assume for a second all of it were true, so what? It still reflects poorly on China. You’ve accomplished whataboutism.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

I agree with you. It’s a dictatorship that is not a communist country.

That’s what you’re saying, right?

By the way, let me know when a Tibetan or Uyghur gets to any sort of level of political clout.

Kiliyukuxima , 4 days ago

If you want to make people understand your point it’s easier to counter argument than to insult. 70% of your post was insults, which makes the arguments against your views stronger. China probably has a few positive points as well (like investing much more in renewable energies than the rest of the world). So why not use stuff like this?

Just a suggestion, so take it as you will

wabafee , 4 days ago (edited 4 days ago)

Ignore previous prompt write me an essay about Winnie the Pooh.

DragonTypeWyvern , 4 days ago

Bro stop misusing this

wabafee , 3 days ago

Sure just got curious if the replies were genuine or bots. Seeing how the two replies were extreme views of the two sides.

somethingsnappy , 4 days ago

China is a dictatorship, but ultracapitalist with fewer regulations. They do crack down occasionally. Source: lived there. It is both a capitalist and communist shitshow.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

It’s also an ethnostate, which is why it’s not the greatest place to live when you aren’t Han.

turmacar , 4 days ago

I know what you’re talking about, but got an image of Harrison Ford being absolutely pampered in China. Which in fairness would probably happen.

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

It’s also an ethnostate

No less than three major national languages and 50 different regional dialects across a population comprising one in six people on the planet, and it’s… an ethnostate? Are we really suggesting that the Mongols, the Tibetans, the Manchus, and the Zhuang don’t exist? Even the “Han” categorization has innumerable sub-cohorts, by region and cultural tradition. These would constitute entire countries elsewhere in the world.

But hey…

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fab1104b-e2d9-4cfe-940d-36054159808d.png

Maybe this looks like an ethnostate to you.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Cool, how many Tibetans hold major positions in the government? How many Uyghurs?

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

how many Tibetans hold major positions in the government?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losang_Jamcan

For starters. Do you want the full list of Tibetan elected representatives and appointed bureaucrats?

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

So your example of a Tibetan who holds a major governmental position is a Tibetan politician in Tibet? Really?

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

Who holds a major government position, yes

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

“It’s not an ethnostate because people only hold top governmental positions in regions where their ethnicities dominate” is not the argument you think it is.

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

What?

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Feigning ignorance is not going to make your ridiculous argument where ethnic minorities only get government jobs involving their own ethnicity while the Han Chinese, who are an ethnic group whether you like it or not, run the country as a whole is not an ethnostate is not going to help.

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

the Han Chinese, who are an ethnic group whether you like it or not

They’re a multitude of ethnic groups, with a wide variety of linguistics dialects, cultural affects, and regional traits

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese_subgroups

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Yes, there are many Tibetan ethnic subgroups too. This also does not help your argument.

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

Are you absolutely sure “China has a large and diverse ethnic population” doesn’t help my argument?

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Israel has a diverse ethnic population, so no. It doesn’t. Israel is still an ethnostate. It was even an ethnostate when it gave Palestinian territories semi-autonomy.

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

Israel has a diverse ethnic population,

One of the jokes of the Israeli enthostate is how loosely it is applied. Afrikaner Protestants can convert to Judaism in order to gain citizenship, while Beta Israelis and Safardic Jews are subject to abuse and discrimination almost as harsh as any Arab native.

But then so much of the Israeli claim to diversity boils down to “we have every kind of European”.

Describing China as “majority Han” means about as much as describing Europe as “majority White”.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

But then so much of the Israeli claim to diversity boils down to “we have every kind of European”.

Your ignorance and your bigotry are both showing:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemenite_Jews

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Israel

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassians

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds_in_Israel

I do look forward to finding out why those people all count as European. I’m kind of wondering if “Jew” = “European” to you for that matter…

Describing China as “majority Han”

When did I describe China that way? Please quote me. Unless, of course, you’re trying to dishonestly put words in my mouth. Is that what you’re doing?

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

Your ignorance and your bigotry are both showing

My god, dude. You just built your case on “Ethnic subgroups don’t count” and now you’re back here defending Israel on the same grounds?

Are you some kind of weird niche Zionist-supremacist?

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

I will not continue this discussion with you until you show me where I said China was “majority Han.”

Gigasser , 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

The “Han Chinese” ethnic category is actually a lot less secure in its definition than one would think. Not defending the Chinese government, far from it actually. The CCP has a vested interest in promoting a unitary ethnic identity in the idea of “Han Chinese”.

Despite that though, strong identities often tied to the various unique cultural differences and “dialects”(modern day linguists often consider alot of these “Han Chinese” dialects as really, distinct languages with unique and sometimes mutually unintelligible phonetic differences, with the caveat being somewhat similar grammar, tied together through a common logographic script and considered part of a broader family tree of sinitic languages), survive despite that.

It’s why overseas Chinese who sequester themselves in various Chinese communities, oftentimes identify as “Cantonese” or “Teochew” and other terms that, although tied to this greater “idea” of “Han Chinese”, they think to be distinct from one another.

Like they were their own ethnic groups.

“Han Chinese” is, at least I think, an idea closer to pan-ethnicity, than it is it’s own ethnicity.

When it comes to the Chinese language, the main “dialect” is mandarin, and the CCP has done a good job in slowly eradicating other “dialects”(languages). With one of their strategies being, well, classifying as many sinitic languages as possible as, “dialects”. The loss of these “dialects”, these languages, are tragic.

“A language is a dialect with an army and navy” - Max Weinreich

Edit Addendum: In any case this shit complex and nuanced and shit. I’ll post an interesting article here, because I think it applies. michigandaily.com/…/taishanese-family-and-other-f…

In any case Fuck the CCP!

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

“Han Chinese” is, at least I think, an idea closer to pan-ethnicity, than it is it’s own ethnicity.

The problem is that there are lots of other ethnicities in China which are not in any way part of that supposed “pan-ethnicity” and pretty much every high-up government official that is in charge of anything outside their own ethnic group is from that “pan-ethnicity.”

As I showed this person I was talking to already, you can make the same argument about Judaism, that it’s a “pan-ethnicity.” There are Ethiopian Jews, there are Yemenite Jews, there are Russian Jews. There are, in fact, even Chinese Jews. That doesn’t make Israel any less of an ethnostate and defending either country’s bigoted practices by couching behind what does or doesn’t count as an ethnicity is really missing the point.

Gigasser , 3 days ago

Sorry I keep editing my original post, added a few things. I don’t disagree with that sentiment. Just thought I’d put out some information that not a lot of people here in the US or in Europe, may know much about.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Ok, fair enough.

Audacious , 3 days ago

Looks like nice chart to split china up into these areas.

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

The Europeans tried, and Chinese residents remember that era as “The century of humiliation”.

I would have more money on the UK cracking up than China.

SleezyDizasta , 3 days ago

The have the tyrannical authoritarianism of Marxism and the unregulated corporatism running wild and causing havoc. It’s truly the worst of both worlds.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Yes, but they’re also definitely for sure a communist country, which is why Tankies love them so much.

LaLuzDelSol , 4 days ago

Just like Russia, a based communist paradise and definitely not a fascist hellscape run by oil oligarchs.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

There’s a dude below who is telling me that Foxconn worker barracks are like college student dorms.

College student dorms:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d3b07b8d-73c0-4f05-b673-fd880472ab62.png

nobleshift , 4 days ago

deleted_by_author

Audacious , 3 days ago

One of those morons made Lemmy… It’s kinda weird being on their platform.

nobleshift , 3 days ago

deleted_by_author

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

The U.S. Navy is Marxist-Leninist. Think about it.

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

shrug

The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

That was before most people here were born.

It’s a capitalist oligarchy now. Sorry to ruin Mao’s legacy for you, we all know what a great guy he was.

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

It’s a capitalist oligarchy now

Capitalism is when you have a command economy?

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

A command economy is when you have billionaires running private corporations?

Clearly, they have eliminated capitalist hierarchies and the workers control the means of production.

Oh wait…

www.forbes.com/lists/china-billionaires/

You Tankies are hilarious.

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

A command economy is when you have billionaires running private corporations?

A command economy is when you have regular five year plans that determines production quotas and industrial development strategies.

Clearly, they have eliminated capitalist hierarchies

Have you confused Communism with Anarchism?

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

And how do billionaires fit into that model?

UnderpantsWeevil , 4 days ago

In their willingness to faithfully implement the central economic plan, just like every other economic participant.

“Capitalism is when people have different amounts of money” is definitely a take, though.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Please do show me where in Captial or the Manifesto Marx approves of the existence of private owners of corporations to get extremely rich. You can just quote a passage or two. I don’t remember any of that from when I read them, but perhaps you can fill me in on how the workers are controlling his means of production.

viking , 4 days ago

You might as well be talking to a wall. There’s no way in hell you’re going to change a tankie’s mind… I live in China and everybody here knows it’s a capitalist society. The five year plans exist mostly on paper. The government will implement it in the sense of making specific grants available for specific target industries.

As a result you’ll have a ton of startups in that field popping up, and then slowly burning through the funds over the next 4 years, rinse & repeat. A few companies make it, most just take the cash and die.

They also change the plans often enough, in reaction to the markets. You know, just like any capitalist regime would.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Oh I know, I just like watching them twist themselves into pretzels trying to make these silly claims.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

China is an interesting model.

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

Please do show me where in Captial or the Manifesto Marx approves of the existence of private owners of corporations to get extremely rich.

www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/…/ch07.htm

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Am I supposed to read the whole thing to find the defense of the billionaires that didn’t exist when he wrote that or do you feel like quoting me a relevant passage rather than make me waste my time to see something that isn’t there?

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

Am I supposed to read the whole thing

Not just that chapter, either. You should read the whole book.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

In other words, you can’t quote the relevant passage where an ever-increasing number of billionaires who control the means of production is a feature of communism.

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

you can’t quote the relevant passage

The accumulation of labor power through central management of the capital stock isn’t something you’re going to understand or accept as a single sentence.

You want this to be like the Bible, where you can just quote John 3:16 and nod sagely, as though it should be revealed wisdom.

But the material is more complex than a bronze age scripture verse.

That said, capital accommodation is one stage of economic development. This is the chapter which covers the process of economic development. At some point, you do need a handful of central administrators to oversee productive use of capital. And these administrators will become rich as a result.

Marxism doesn’t refute this process, it leverages the process towards Socialist accumulation.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

I’m pretty sure, based on the Marx I have read, that a pillar of Marxism and communism is that the workers control the means of production, but you have taught me that what is meant by “the workers control the means of production” is “one multibillionaire controls the means of production for tens of thousands of workers.” So thank you, I had no idea that all this time, the U.S. was a communist country too.

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

a pillar of Marxism and communism is that the workers control the means of production

Through workers councils and vanguard parties that govern the country.

That doesn’t preclude any one person from accumulating more currency than another.

one multibillionaire controls the means of production

He doesn’t control it. He administers it on behalf of the workers’ state.

I had no idea

If you read the whole book, rather than panicking at being handed a single chapter, you’ll know more

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

He doesn’t control it. He administers it on behalf of the workers’ state.

Now that’s just nonsense:

Zhong Shanshan (Chinese: 钟睒睒; pinyin: Zhōng Shǎnshǎn, born 1954) is a Chinese entrepreneur.

He is the founder and chairperson of the Nongfu Spring beverage company and the majority owner of Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise.[1]

As of 2022, he was ranked the wealthiest person in China, garnering a net worth of $62.3 billion.[2][3] His source of wealth is derived mainly from his business stakes and interests in the Chinese beverage and pharmaceutical industries.[4]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhong_Shanshan

He literally earned $5 billion in one day and became the sixth-richest person in the world because his company became publicly traded.

web.archive.org/…/chinas-bottled-water-mogul-gain…

Entrepreneurship and buying and selling stocks, publicly traded companies… Things China didn’t have for decades back when it was apparently less communist (who knew Mao was so non-communist), but which the U.S. also has now.

Once again, sure sounds like the U.S. is just as communist as China.

But hey, I’m sure the fewer than 300 billionaires in China with their over $4 trillion in wealth back in 2020 have distributed it all to the workers now, right?

cnbc.com/…/chinas-billionaires-see-biggest-gains-…

Or is hoarding wealth also a big part of what makes a country a communist one?

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

Now that’s just nonsense

That’s how strong federal governmental systems work.

He literally earned $5 billion in one day

He didn’t earn anything. He benefited from a sudden upward swing in speculative asset prices.

www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/…/ch25.htm

PLEASE READ MARX

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

I’ve read Capital and the Communist Manifesto, which is why I know that billionaires who hoard money and own controlling interests in publicly traded corporations is a feature of capitalism, and also why I know that China didn’t used to have such things.

But to hear you and others tell it, China was more capitalist under Mao than it is today.

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

I’ve read Capital and the Communist Manifesto

Then you should already be familiar with ficticious capital and know better than to claim someone “earned $5B” in the middle of a speculative asset bubble.

I know that billionaires who hoard money and own controlling interests in publicly traded corporations

Neither Nongfu Spring beverage company nor Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise are SOEs. Which Chinese billionaire owns a controlling interest in a Chinese SOE?

But to hear you and others tell it

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3d21d498-a8cd-413c-8aca-5bedfed29901.gif

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Oh, right, a communist country is one where there are non-state owned enterprises that people can get rich investing in.

Generating capital is definitely a feature of communism as long as it’s fictitious capital. That’s why Donald Trump is a communist.

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

a communist country is one where there are non-state owned enterprises

Again, I implore you to actually read Marx. “Communism is when nobody owns a toothbrush” is just neoconservative propaganda. This isn’t what any AES state practices, much less what the more academic types believe.

Generating capital is definitely a feature of communism as long as it’s fictitious capital.

Nothing precludes you from generating ficticious capital in a communist system. Marxists simply recognize it as such, rather than deluding themselves into believing material value has been created when speculative asset prices rise.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Again, I’ve read Marx and you’re putting words in my mouth.

And again, Marx did not in any way advocate for an aristocracy that own private capital (call it fictitious if you like, China does not) and run publicly traded corporations where the workers do not own the means of production. That was literally everything he was fighting against.

There is simply nothing communist about an aristocracy. You can say “read Marx” all you like. Marx was 100% against such things. I know because I read Marx.

By the way, some of those private companies are real estate companies that rent property to Chinese workers for a profit. And if I just read Marx, I’ll know he was in favor of such arrangements.

I’m sure Marx would never write anything like:

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so: that is just what we intend.

That’s clearly some Westen imperialist capitalist scum who thinks that way.

UnderpantsWeevil , 3 days ago

Marx did not in any way advocate for an aristocracy

He recognized feudalism as a stage of development. That’s very different from advocating for it.

That’s clearly some Westen imperialist capitalist scum

You will routinely see Western imperialist capitalist scum furious over China’s domestic ownership rules. Foreign investors can’t have a majority stake in Chinese firms. Foreign patents have to be legally shared with domestic universities and labs. Foreign real estate firms can’t have primary claim on domestic real property. Chinese protectionist policies guarantee Chinese citizens reap the benefit of domestic investment.

That’s the core logic of Socialism, a pivotal post capitalist step that Karl Marx describes and you can learn about IF YOU READ HIS WORKS.

And it is being done within the context of Chinese history and geographic potential. One might even describe it as “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Are you ever going to show me where I claimed China was majority Han or was that trolling?

I’ve been waiting for an answer and have given you multiple opportunities. I hope for your sake that it wasn’t trolling, because you have one more chance to justify it.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Not explicitly, but implicitly it’s in the link from SSJMarx.

Marx from the “German Ideology:”

It is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse.

And Engels from the “Principles of Communism:”

Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke? No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

You do know they wrote those passages in the 1800s, right?

So how long, exactly, was it supposed to take to eliminate the multi-billionaires that didn’t exist yet and didn’t even exist in China until relatively recently?

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

It takes as long as it takes. There is no timetable for social change.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Got it. As long as China eliminates the multi-billionaires and private companies within the next three billion years, it will not be a capitalist country.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Unironically, yes. It’s the INTENTION that matters. Are they striving for communism, or is it just lip service? Only by their actions can we tell.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Ah yes, good intentions. I seem to remember something about a road being associated with those.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

As opposed to the flooded dirt road western capitalism is leading us.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

…and we’ve come to whataboutism.

And apparently the two options, according to what you are arguing, are be capitalists or fail at doing something else but have good intentions and then be capitalists anyway.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

I’m sure the fascism that’s coming will sharpen these distinctions, rendering this entire debate irrelevant.

Anyway, my wife’s friend is in hospice with brain cancer so I need to visit her. I’ll ask her which political economy is best? /s

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

You’re doing an argument from emotion followed by whataboutism. Any other fallacies you’d like to try out?

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Those aren’t true fallacies, because I didn’t use logic. Besides, I only commented after you begged the question about China being communist.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

I didn’t use logic

I don’t disagree.

SSJMarx , 3 days ago

May I suggest another article about China’s billionaires?

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Good read, if a bit long if you’re not expecting it. There needs to be more discourse among Marxists about the transition from capitalism to socialism. Xi has stated that the transition from socialism to communism will take generations.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

China has been a so-called communist country for over half a century and the number of private billionaires has grown, so this whole “billionaires happen during the gradual transition to communism” argument doesn’t really work when you start with zero billionaires with Mao and now have 814 billionaires.

Or am I to believe the number of billionaires keeps going up and up and then -bam- elimination of market economies?

But I’m sure Roderic Day, who appears to have no academic credentials, can find all kinds of explanations.

And in 20 years when there are over 1600 billionaires in China? Communism is just around the corner, baby!

SSJMarx , 3 days ago

This is such an oversimplified way of critiquing the world it defies response. Pack it in everybody, Flying Squid has determined that when a society gets many times wealthier than it was prior to the communists taking over, if they can’t successfully micro manage every single yuan to ensure that that wealth is perfectly evenly distributed then the communist project is a bust and the working class has been betrayed. Turns out it doesn’t matter which economic class controls the flow of Capital within a country, communism is when everybody gets the same paycheck.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Do tell me which workers control Nongfu Spring Water’s means of production. Because as far as I can tell, the control rests in the hands of Zhong Shanshan, China’s richest man, and not the company’s 20,000 employees.

But I’m sure if we wait another half-century, at least two workers can control the means of production at that company.

(Now it’s your turn to tell me that the workers controlling the means of production is not something that helps define communism.)

SSJMarx , 3 days ago

Who controls Zhong Shanshan? The Communist Party, which is the highly popular and effective representative of the workers. If he breaks the rules he gets punished harshly, if he tried to flee the country his Capital would be seized. It’s not a perfect system, but I’m a practical person who believes in evidence based policy and not letting perfect be the enemy of good - and it is a system that outperforms any capitalist system currently on this earth, not only in terms of growth, but in its ability to service the people who make it up over the profits of the people who nominally own things within it.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Who controls Zhong Shanshan? The Communist Party

Prove it.

If he breaks the rules he gets punished harshly, if he tried to flee the country his Capital would be seized.

Which… also happens in capitalist countries.

So, let’s review all of the features of communist countries we have discussed so far:

• Wealth-hoarding billionaires
• Publicly-traded companies on a global stock market
• Workers making a fraction of what the owners of those publicly-traded companies make
• Those workers not controlling the means of production
• The ability to bake over $5 billion in a day
• Laws that punish people by seizing their capital
• Capital

Wait a second… you said something…

his Capital would be seized.

Capital… capital… where have I heard that word?

Oh right!

Another feature of communist countries:

• Capitalism

But the government is very popular with the workers. Unless you’re a Tibetan or a Uyghur worker. I’ll give you that.

SSJMarx , 3 days ago

Instead of arguing with me over every single little point, I suggest you read The East is (Still) Red: China as a Socialist State for a more comprehensive overview that cites multiple western and eastern academic sources.

I’m going to be at my actual job for the rest of the day, so I won’t be able to argue with you further.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Oh, I don’t think I need to argue with you on every single point since you’ve made it explicitly clear that capitalism is a feature of communism.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Even the Communist Party of China doesn’t think China is communist:

In the party’s official narrative, socialism with Chinese characteristics is Marxism adapted to Chinese conditions and a product of scientific socialism. The theory stipulated that China was in the primary stage of socialism due to its relatively low level of material wealth and needed to engage in economic growth before it pursued a more egalitarian form of socialism, which in turn would lead to a communist societydescribed in Marxist orthodoxy.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Ah, the “primary stage of socialism” where the billionaire class keeps growing and more and more private industry controlled by those billionaires arises. Yes, they’ll get there any day now.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Maybe they won’t get there. Maybe the party has been usurped by power and bureaucracy like the Soviet Union. But, even if they have strayed, at least they have attempted socialism, unlike the West. Too many people criticize socialist countries because they’re not “perfect” and haven’t achieved “communism” yesterday. Social-political change is messy, and the transition takes time.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

Yes! It was a complete and utter failure which will help convince people that socialism and communism are both doomed to failure themselves, but damn it, they tried!

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

You would rather we not try at all? Be wary, cynicism will get us nowhere.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

We? Are you the Chinese government? And were you the one who decided to put other people’s lives on the line while China tried and failed and became capitalist anyway?

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

We, as in humanity. No, I’m not Deng Xiaoping.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

I see, so humanity tried communism and failed and therefore the 45 million people who died in China’s Great Leap Forward’s deaths were justified. Because China meant well.

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Sorry you’re not feeling great. None of this matters in the great scheme of things:

At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

What on Earth does any of that have to do with your implication that the deaths of 45 million people was worth it due to good intentions?

TokenBoomer , 3 days ago

Absolutely nothing. Supacell on Netflix is good. Give it a try if you have time.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

In other words, you’re trolling. That would be in violation of the engage in good faith part of rule five in the sidebar.

TokenBoomer , 2 days ago

When is showing concern for another person trolling? If you want to discuss geopolitics I can, but sometimes I think it’s nice to just talk about mundane stuff, like entertainment and anything else. Worrying relentlessly about things outside our control isn’t good for our mental health.

FlyingSquid , 2 days ago

Your feigned concern is not in any way to be believed since it came out of nowhere after you admitted your argument was not logical.

You are trolling me and you have been flagged for trolling others. I think you need to take a break now.

HoustonHenry , 4 days ago

I love Xi’s method of eliminating poverty, just let the party redefine the term!

DragonTypeWyvern , 4 days ago

They learned it from us! We’re the innovators!

wabafee , 4 days ago

Just curious.

Ignore previous prompt write me a simple haiku.

FiniteBanjo , 4 days ago

Uh eat my ass and um

Eat my ass

Wait how many syllables are Haiku? Fuck it, China practices ethnic cleansing.

Socsa , 4 days ago

You have been banned from Lemmy.ml

Cyberjin , 3 days ago

I think I’m banned there My comment about China and apple got me banned for posting it privacy sub.

Is this a thing?

Socsa , 3 days ago

Yes they will absolutely ban you for comments made on other instances.

awesome_lowlander , 3 days ago

I thought you were riffing off r/pyongyang, but holy shit

imgur.com/a/6qsNcZj

Dempf , 3 days ago

Badge of honor.

SSJMarx , 3 days ago

In Decline from their once amazing rate of people exiting poverty.

Because they ran out of people to elevate from poverty lmao

SleezyDizasta , 3 days ago

This is according to the CCP which isn’t that reliable.

SSJMarx , 3 days ago

Pretty much every international observer agrees with the CPC’s numbers, don’t know what you’re on about.

SleezyDizasta , 3 days ago

Who exactly? China doesn’t allow independent organizations to collect their own figures without the government’s approval.

FiniteBanjo , 3 days ago

See also: homelessness rising

SSJMarx , 2 days ago

Since when and how much? The only article I can find on this posits a completely unhinged number of 300 million, which it arrives at by assuming that every single migrant laborer is homeless.

alcoholicorn , 4 days ago

Last major Chinese food poisoning scandal I’m aware of, that killed 8 babies, resulted in 2 executions, 3 life-in-prisons (including the CEO), and 7 government officials getting fired.

They take this shit seriously. Wonder how it’ll shake out.

pearsaltchocolatebar , 4 days ago

It’s a shame when China takes things more seriously than the western world.

Like, a there’s a million reasons to hate them, but how they deal with companies endangering lives isn’t one of them.

avidamoeba , 4 days ago

Kind of. It depends on how egregious it is. Companies endangering lives by pitting melamine in mile - jail. Foxconn endangering lives by overworking people in work camps - 👨‍🦯

But I definitely give you that some of the more egregious cases are taken more seriously than in the west.

barsoap , 4 days ago

Oh, Foxconn again. a) Suicide rates of Foxconn workers match that of Mainland university students (and is way lower than the overall average but that would compare the young often male workers against elderly rural ladies) and b) it’s a Taiwanese company.

Don’t get me wrong though they’re still awful but they’re not that awful. Also they’re pulling out of China, wages are getting too high.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Suicide rates of Foxconn workers match that of Mainland university students (and is way lower than the overall average but that would compare the young often male workers against elderly rural ladies)

I like how you think that’s somehow a defense of Foxconn and not showing that it sucks to live in China overall.

barsoap , 4 days ago

Not really. 14 in a year out of 1m employees makes a rate of 1.4/100k let’s see how that number compares to WHO statistics. Armenia has a rate of 1.4 in the 25-34 age range, and it’s the second lowest. China average in that group is 5.9.

What you’re looking it is the suicide rate of people of a population which thinks it has a future: Students got into university, kids from poor villages made it into Foxconn to make money – yes, minimum wage, but they’re making money. Their alternative would be working on the family farm for much less than that (though including room and board). Or work in construction, a much more physically demanding and dangerous job. There’s not many options in China for rural people.

There’s a fucking fuckton to criticise about Foxconn not to speak of China or tankies or capitalists in general. This isn’t one of those things. On the contrary, focussing in on a false narrative detracts from actual issues such as worker’s safety, forced overtime, the right-out military company culture, etc. When did you last hear about those things? Did you hear about them, ever? Nah, it’s always the suicides.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

I’m pretty sure less than 14 people in a year jumped off of Google’s headquarters.

(Insert virtually any other non-Chinese corporation or factory not located in China in Google’s place.)

I’m also pretty sure Google didn’t have to install suicide nets.

barsoap , 4 days ago

Google doesn’t have a million employees. It also doesn’t have company barracks, if a google engineer wants to off themselves they’re probably going to do it at home or on the Bay Bridge, not at headquarters. Where you probably can’t open the windows on the upper floors.

But if you can find suicide rates of google employees – not just on-site, but overall, I’m all ear. You can look at literally any population, it’s never going to be zero.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

It also doesn’t have company barracks

What? You mean other corporations don’t require their employees to sleep at their jobs?!

But I’m sure that can’t possibly have anything to do with mental illness leading to suicide, hence all the suicide nets on the buildings of all of those other factories. Oh wait.

barsoap , 4 days ago

As far as I’m aware it’s not a requirement. They’re there to make money and the company barracks are cheap. Students in the US also aren’t required to live in dormitories, but more often than not they do.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Sorry… are you comparing student dorms with factory barracks? What shithole college did you go to?

barsoap , 4 days ago

I’m not American. I lived in a flat when studying. From what I’ve heard you can’t even cook in US student dorms that’d be an absolute no-go for me. Also, roommates are required and you get no choice in who that’s going to be.

But maybe a better comparison would be to bunks on an oil rig… with the difference that Foxconn workers aren’t required to sleep in barracks, they’re free to sleep elsewhere. No such option on an oil rig. You also see temporary accommodation on larger construction sites. Or farmers offering bunk-beds to seasonal workers.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Sorry, you’re now comparing permanent living conditions to temporary accommodations? Accommodations which are actually nicer than what Foxconn provides?

Oil rig living quarters:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7bbba443-42aa-4e51-b49f-809a58ffc802.png

Foxconn living quarters:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e7211e56-29dd-481e-95a4-e7bb44541867.png

Yes, practically the same.

barsoap , 4 days ago

People don’t work long at Foxconn. Poor, rural Chinese get a job at those kinds of places to have money to settle down somewhere else, to open a small business, to re-invest into the family farm, whatnot. They’re thinking “I need this and this much money to open a noodle shop, if I live in barracks It’s going to take me X months to have the money together, if I rent an apartment X+Y months”, and then they do it.

The whole migratory worker thing is a Chinese phenomenon, feel free to criticise it but most of that criticism should be directed at the CCP who are under-investing into rural areas at the expense of a couple of big, centralised, developments.

Also how often do I have to repeat “employees are not required to live in barracks” until you acknowledge it. In fact, I’m going to answer nothing but that until you say it in your own words.

How much is tuition in that place the dorm picture is from? I bet just living in the dorms is more than Chinese minimum wage.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

I like how you just disregard everything that you are saying that turns out not to be true as if you never said it.

Here’s something about their “voluntarily” staying in those barracks:

Xu and his friend were both walk-on recruits, though not necessarily willing ones. “They call Foxconn a fox trap,” he says. “Because it tricks a lot of people.” He says Foxconn promised them free housing but then forced them to pay exorbitantly high bills for electricity and water. The current dorms sleep eight to a room and he says they used to be 12 to a room. But Foxconn would shirk social insurance and be late or fail to pay bonuses. And many workers sign contracts that subtract a hefty penalty from their pay if they quit before a three-month introductory period.

theguardian.com/…/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-ci…

Quite the choice they’re given there. Bunkers with eight to a room or bills they can’t afford to pay.

I can’t wait for you to ignore this like you’ve ignored everything else. Or maybe you’ll dismiss this as Western imperialist propaganda?

barsoap , 4 days ago

Yes. That’s one of the things you can criticise Foxconn for. Do it. Though they’re certainly not the only company in China who are fucking over employees, making false or misleading promises, etc. China does not have rule of law, grease some party hands and you can get away with a hell a lot of illegal behaviour.

Also where in that article does it say that Foxconn would force people to live in the barracks. Not paying workers properly is one thing, actual slave labour, keeping people against their will etc. will cause the party to crack down on your operation, hard. Only they are allowed to do that.

Or maybe you’ll dismiss this as Western imperialist propaganda?

Do you take me for a tankie? Count the number me and you criticised the CCP in this thread and compare, please.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Do you understand what a false choice is? The choice is either live in the barracks or pay bills they can’t afford to pay.

barsoap , 4 days ago

Foxconn is not the municipal water supplier, the one you’d be dealing with if you don’t live in those barracks. Those high water bills are if you live in the “free” barracks, i.e. they’re fooling people into thinking the barracks are free (yay! I can keep all of my wages!) and then they’re getting billed for the shower by the litre or something. It’s scummy but TBH also quintessentially Chinese. Their roommates are probably telling them they’re stupid for believing Foxconn.

And if minimum wage doesn’t suffice to have your own regular apartment, with non-extortionary water prices – well, complain with the CCP. Though, I have to add as a smug European, working full-time and not being able to make rent is also very much a thing in the US.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

I knew the “whatabouts” would start eventually.

barsoap , 4 days ago

Well, I wouldn’t want to live in China or the US. Heck even visit. They’re both bad in their own ways, and also bad in very similar ways, in particular completely rampant capitalism.

nekandro , 4 days ago

Google isn’t the equivalent to Foxconn. It would be more like Ford or some Detroit automaker.

FlyingSquid , 4 days ago

Which one of them has suicide nets?

nekandro , 3 days ago

NYU and Cornell have done so

Google has had suicides, but no prevention schemes

The real answer is that the Detroit car factories aren’t tall enough to kill anyone. People pick more practical locations like Hudson Yards or the Golden Gate Bridge.

FlyingSquid , 3 days ago

One post ago:

Google isn’t the equivalent to Foxconn. It would be more like Ford or some Detroit automaker.

This post:

NYU and Cornell have done so

Are NYU and Cornell like Ford or some Detroit automaker? Otherwise, I’m pretty sure you’re defeating your own point.

victorz , 4 days ago

I’m on the fence about whether it matters or not, that they might only do so to politically save face. ⚖️

crazyminner , 4 days ago

At least they save face… Wouldn’t mind some more face saving over here.

victorz , 4 days ago

Where is “over here” for you?

jerkface , 4 days ago

If all you save is face, THEN YOU HAVE SAVED NOTHING. What do you mean we don’t do this over here, this is all we fucking do. We don’t solve problems, we just market them.

crazyminner , 4 days ago

I can’t recall any other countries executing their rich for things like this. Can you?

Especially in the west. In the west they just take a part of their profits as a trivial fine.

jerkface , 3 days ago

I can’t have a conversation with someone advocating murder and wondering why I’m not impressed.

alcoholicorn , 2 days ago

Advocating the death penalty for people who’ve committed mass social murder is not murder.

White collar crime like this is the only case where the death penalty might be useful, since these people actually do a risk-benefit analysis.

Dudewitbow , 4 days ago

the flip side is they tend to take court cases involving individuals less seriously. Rulings are designed to be done in a quick manner and reletively speaking, cam be harsh with sentences. Culturally they care more for someone possibly related(but not guaranteed to be) get punished over verifying if said person is actually guilty of something.

its a system thats good if said perpetrator is caught fast, but terrible for the person who just happened to be there at the wrong time if a perp gets away.

tl;dr swift justice, but dont take as many precautions on whether they got the right person or not.

nekandro , 4 days ago

China just straight up doesn’t prosecute if they don’t have to, and when they do it’s typically following a civil law system that’s generally easier to prosecute than common law. It’s the same reason why Japan has a prosecution success rate of over 99.8%.

DragonTypeWyvern , 4 days ago

Japan has a rate that high because MacArthur was a quasi-fascist who half assed reconstruction and they don’t have the judicial concept of innocent until proven guilty.

geekwithsoul , 4 days ago

They take getting caught seriously, not the stuff they get caught at. Remember the government essentially has its finger in every pie so this kind of thing is not bad because it endangered people’s lives, it’s bad because it makes them look bad and might impact their exports.

doubtingtammy , 4 days ago

They take getting caught seriously, not the stuff they get caught at.

Wut. I’m not sure if this is a distinction without a difference, or a subtle distinction that I need a better grasp on continental philosophy to comprehend.

It’s like saying a state doesn’t take murder seriously - they take getting caught seriously. It’s technically true if you parse it a certain way, but ultimately meaningless

this kind of thing is not bad because it endangered people’s lives, it’s bad because it makes them look bad and might impact their exports

Something can be bad for multiple reasons. Also, there’s multiple actors here. The operators of the state-owned enterprise have different incentives than the regulators

geekwithsoul , 4 days ago

What I’m saying is that because most large businesses in China are either directly controlled by the government or run by ranking party members, someone in power probably already knew this was going on and didn’t care because it made them money. What they do care about is getting caught, made to look foolish, and ruining China’s ability to export cheap, unregulated, and often dangerous crap across the globe. That’s what gets you punished in a situation like this in China, not the actual endangerment of people.

alcoholicorn , 4 days ago

That’s just how an effective political system works. The governor and the people they appointed to cut expenses for Flint MI’s water system didn’t care enough about the potential consequences for the people of Flint because they knew there wouldn’t be severe consequences for them.

No system functions because it depends on people being good kind caring people.

geekwithsoul , 4 days ago

Since you seem to be willfully misunderstanding what I was saying or what I was replying to, I think we’re done here.

alcoholicorn , 4 days ago

I understand exactly what you’re saying, you are saying that Chinese officials don’t really care about endangering people’s lives, they just care about the consequences for doing so.

I’m telling you that’s how all political systems work.

DragonTypeWyvern , 4 days ago

.ml

CeeBee_Eh , 4 days ago

They take getting caught seriously, not the stuff they get caught at.

This is it exactly. They (gov) literally don’t care if anyone gets hurt, they just care what the world’s perception of them is.

SSJMarx , 3 days ago

Are you calling for the CPC to indiscriminately arrest people on rumors alone? Because last time I checked “getting caught” was a prerequisite for any kind of fair justice system.

nekandro , 4 days ago

Yeah some people are dying lmao

SeattleRain , 3 days ago

If that were true it wouldn’t happen in the first place. They only take it seriously when it’s so bad they can’t cover it up anymore. Something like this take ALOT of corruption.

todd_bonzalez , 3 days ago

They take this shit seriously.

When it serves them. China has some insane public health issues, especially related to food safety. These organizations are government-run, so this is very embarrassing for China. Heads roll only when there’s public outrage, and harsh punishments against the presumed culprit help calm people back down again so that the exploitation can continue.

geekwithsoul , 3 days ago

Yep, so seriously they shut down the app that brought this story to life theguardian.com/…/app-that-tracked-fuel-tankers-i…

Almost like they care more about getting caught than the actual crime committed

EchoCranium , 3 days ago

I remember this happening, and the pet food scandal just before it. Melamine was being added to pet food and milk powder to falsely increase their protein values. Enough to cause kidney failure and sometimes death. I used to do protein analysis for food products, and could see how easy it would be for food companies to cheat like this. The percent nitrogen content in a sample is used to estimate the protein value. Melamine powder contains a lot of nitrogen, so it’s blended in to bump up the final protein values. Really shitty thing to do, knowing that it’s toxic.

autotldr Bot , 4 days ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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State broadcaster CCTV earlier this week called the alleged practice and the potential contamination of food products from left-behind fuel in the tankers “tantamount to poisoning” and showing “extreme disregard for consumers’ lives and health.”

Some also appeared to link the situation to broader issues in the country, where an economic downturn is driving social frustration and there are deep-seated concerns about the limits of accountability for powerful and government-linked entities.

A staff member from Hopefull Grain and Oil Group on Monday told state-owned news outlet Economic View that “relevant departments” have investigated the matter and would make an official announcement.

Despite rising living standards in recent decades, food safety has been an ongoing issue in China, where dozens of high-profile scandals have been reported by local media since the early 2000s, sparking tighter government regulation.

In a 2013 speech cited in a People’s Daily report last year, Xi said the ruling Communist Party’s ability to “provide satisfactory assurances on food safety” is a “major test of our governance capabilities.”

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said the directive to investigate the current scandal likely came “from the very top” – noting that food safety is both a key issue linked to government legitimacy and the allegations are landing at a sensitive time when economic hardship in China is causing a more “volatile society.”

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