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Question about negative elements of China

To clarify, I don't believe in the surface level propaganda thrown in China's way about "1984 dystopian society," "Mao killed 60 million people," "Xinjiang concentration camps" or things like that.

I'm curious about a few negative factors of China that have become widespread knowledge over the past decade or so by even the politically literate audience, and I want to learn how accurate these things are, how prevalent they are in today's society in China, and how much it would impact the day to day life of someone living in China.

  1. Quality control, I have read stories about Chinese factories producing guns, steel, industrial goods, consumer goods, food products, far below acceptable or safe standards, leading to construction/infrastructure failure and severe health complications. There are also claims that smaller restaurants in China today still sometimes use very low quality ingredients that can result in serious health issues. How much of an issue is this?

  2. Population issue. The Chinese population trend is going in a unfavorable direction right now, and there are reports of young people not wanting to have children because of cultural and cost reasons. How much of an issue is this, and will China end up like Korea and Japan in another decade or two?

  3. Unemployment, it is a fact right now that Chinese people have a 20% unemployment issue due to an abundance of university graduates without sufficient jobs to match this supply. And this has caused internal competition to swell to unreasonable standards leading some people to straight up give up on their careers and become full time neets. Are there any positive trends or actions to resolve this issue?

  4. Education. The education system sounds terrifying in China right now, children as young as elementary schoolers having to sleep only 6 hours a night to finish their homework from school and tutoring services. I have also read that after the government banned tutoring of core classroom subjects, illegal tutoring services have become a thing. I would laugh at how this would be the most asian issue ever if I wasn't so horrified by the situation. Is there any government effort to resolve this right now?

  5. Nepotism. From what I have heard and read, using connections to obtain positions and resources in China is still very common. How bad is this, and are there any reforms or policies tackling it?

  6. Mannerisms and emotional intelligence of the average person. There are frequent complaints about Chinese people being horrible tourists, being extremely rude, having the emotional maturity of a donut until at least the age of 30, and also taking advantage of anything free to disgusting levels (I have personally seen old Chinese ladies take out a container and fill it with ketchup from a restaurant where the condiments are self served). I understand the reasoning behind this, China in it's current iteration is a relatively new country, and the education received by different generations varies massively in quality, with only really Gen Z on average obtaining a level of education that is on par with western populations. I just want to ask how bad this is in day to day life, and if it is tolerable.

Thanks for reading my somewhat long post, I'd appreciate any response, you don't have to respond to all of my points, any point would be fine. I want to have a positive impression of China but these points are really bugging me right now.

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57 comments
  • Thanks for pinging me @[email protected] (sounds like what people on Zhihu, the Chinese Quora, would say).

    Points 1/5/6 about quality control, nepotism and mannerisms are about the same thing, that is whether you can generalize a few bad eggs to the entire group. My personal experience isn't going to be the same as someone next door, let alone someone from a different province, so the right place to look for answers is in statistics. I've heard the things you mentioned in these three points at least a decade ago, things have definitely become better is what I can tell you.

    Point 2 about population, I'm part of the "young people who do not want to have kids", I strikeout the want to because I don't think people who don't want kids really mean it. I'm not a population expert so I'll pass on trying to estimate population numbers. Personally I think the cost of raising kids that some people mention mostly refers to the quality of education (which I'll mention below in point 4), and cost of living.

    Point 3 about unemployment. "20% unemployment" is bogus talking point cooked up by Chinese liberal economists, here's the actual statistic they conjured this "data" from: http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202307/t20230715_1941276.html

    Specifically, the surveyed unemployment rates of population aged from 16 to 24 and from 25 to 59 were 21.3 percent and 4.1 percent respectively

    To anyone who can read, 21.3% unemployment refers to a narrow range of people from ages 16 to 24, but some liberals intentionally generalized it into the entire working population. Some economists went further and found a way to turn this 21.3% into around 50% unemployment.

    Point 4 about education. Due to the large population of students and not enough resources to go around, there is definitely fierce competition among parents who want a better future for their kids. Note that I mention parents and not students, because I don't think most kids have the mental capacity or experience to understand what a better future is. Some parents go the extra mile and pay for tutoring outside of school to try to improve their kids' grades, this is understandable. But if all parents think like this, it's just going to come down to who is rich enough to employ better tutors on the market. Families who are not as well-off won't be able to compete if they also try to find tutors for their children. This is one of the reasons why tutoring for core subjects is banned, because the quality of education should not depend on how much capital a family can muster. There are also policies to reduce the amount of homework from school, can't comment on the effects as I don't have kids.

    You don't need to have a positive impression of China, you can come here personally to see for yourself if you haven't, then form your own conclusions.

  • I can't answer most of these, but on the 1st and the 6th:

    1: The "Chinesium" is just a common trope amongst western nations that holds no real basis in reality. There isn't anything about China that causes things to be less effective or break more easily. The issue is "higher up" the chain, as companies producing products for profit will cut corners, and would much rather people blame "China" for the problem than the inherent contradictions of capitalism. I'm not saying there aren't shoddy products made in China, just that shoddy products are made everywhere due to the nature of capitalism favouring profit above all, including quality.

    And as for restaurants, go to any small "hole in the wall" restaurant anywhere in the world and you'll find similar levels of poor quality control. Hell, a lot of multi-national companies will have terrible health and safety standards, so even a fast food or restaurant chain isn't exempt from this either.

    6: This is another common trope in the west, anti-China sentiment is very common. But this is just confirmation bias. If people have an idea that Chinese tourists are "rude" and they see an asian tourist, they will assume they must be Chinese, because Chinese tourist == rude. They ignore all the Asian and Chinese tourists who aren't rude, because well, you're not going to remember an interaction with a random nobody, but you will remember an interaction with someone who ruins your day with their shitty attitude.

    As for the old ladies being..."overly frugal" like that, it is important to remember that modern China is very young, only 70ish years old. And food insecurity was a common issue there in some places up until quite recently. If you have an older relative who grew up during the great depression (or your parents remember one), you'd probably see something similar. People who grew up in an environment where they didn't always know where their next meal was coming from will tend to be extremely obsessed with making sure they always have food, even if they are 50-60 years older and haven't had issues with food in that time.

    And as far as emotional intelligence goes, this goes back to point #1. We're more likely to remember a rude or unpleasant person than a neutral one. So I'm sure there are plenty of people in China with the emotional intelligence of a doughnut, but there are also plenty who are much more emotionally aware than that. Same as with any country.


    Basically, be very wary of anything trying to claim that "Chinese culture is like this" or "Chinese culture is like that" because they aren't a monolith. It's a nation of 1.4 Billion people. There are probably more "doughnut minds" in China than there are people in my entire country, but at the same time, there are probably more kind and decent people there than my entire country as well. The news isn't going to push an article about "regular people behaving normally." They push the exciting, the thing that gets clicks. Saying "Expert believes Chinese culture encourages bad behaviour." Is far more eye catching than "China is just a regular country with regular people."

    • Fair enough, with 1.4 billion people I guess you could find any subgroup with any number of negative characteristics that you want to see.

      I guess besides keeping an open mind, it will be necessary for me to visit China myself in the future to gain a satisfying answer to some of these subjective questions. As there's really only so much I can do to sift through the overwhelming amount of biased information about China here in the west, even if I'm trying to maintain an objective research process.

      • Even with visiting a place, you'll only get a tourist's perspective of the places you visited, and not the whole country. I would heartily recommend traveling though, really helps you connect with other people from around the world and it is always a fantastic experience, even if you don't always have the best time.

        But don't worry too much about being "objective" either. You're biased, I'm biased, everyone has their own biases. What's important is that you try to be aware of your biases and your blind spots and try to compensate for them (Which it sounds like you're absolutely doing). The most subjective analyses of a situation come from those who have convinced themselves that their own biased viewpoint is the only unbiased one.

      • For an 'objective' understanding, there would need to be a thorough systematic scientific analysis. The first of which wouldn't necessarily be enough, but which would improve through subsequent studies. It would need to be systematic because numbers and figures without sufficient context can be misleading.

        You may have heard individuals claim that EVs are worse for the environment due to the nickel, cobalt, lithium, etc. While it is true that the procurement and refinement of the materials are awful ethically and environmentally, pointing at a point in the sequence of events a given thing encounters is not enough to make a meaningful conclusion. What is done is called a 'Life Cycle Analysis' where the material is tracked and understood at every point along the sequence. This can then be used as an evaluative standard against oil-derived fuels which have also been studied this way.

        I don't know if there would be enough resources available from the interested parties to conduct something so thoroughly. Typically internal data or external data are combined and filtered to create some kind of approximation. This works well enough, but it's not something I would consider satisfying. In this area I am a layperson, I don't have a good way to understand what is in these reports properly in context and what they mean.

        For a given molecular compound or protein, let's say in a cell, I can look at its metabolic properties, the DNA, the mRNA, how it may differ from organisms within the same species, across species, phyla, etc. This allows me to zoom in or zoom out so to speak and at any level have the appropriate context and tools to analyze it. If this is done piecemeal it becomes significantly harder, and much less accessible. Though certainly it can be done. The other thing is that there may be emergent or otherwise unknown confounding factors that slip between the cracks when the comparisons are not made holistically.

    • Can confirm, my grandma was born and raised during famines, I’ve never seen someone haggle so much over fast-food, that’s a good point to bring up tbh

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • It seems like your standard to have "a positive impression of China" is only if it's somehow perfect and free from problems. Sure, the country has got issues. Like all countries do. And it's got a ton of positive points too, more than many countries in the world in fact. The world is a harsh place full of problems.

    Item 6 is downright offensive. How "bad" are the rude people in any culture? Pretty bad. But do they represent the whole culture, even discounting the better-educated younger generation? No. There is high culture, the educated class, the warm hearted "real" people who may not have the most polished manners. There are normalized standard of politeness that everyone enjoys and upholds.

    Why not consider how well the the Ugly American Tourist trope reflect the US as a whole. The infamous drunken Brits on all-night bashes trope, the Australian bogans trope. All kinds of folks from poorer countries who are "cheap" out of habit trope. And so on.

    1. "I have read stories about..." whose stories?

    2. "there are reports of..." whise reports?

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

    4. The government banning private tuition om core subjects is part of a huge platform of education reforms, but you only ever hear about 'banning' and negative consequences. Do you really think they just banned tuition centers and won't do anything about attempts to evade the ban?

    5. "From what I have heard and read" come on now. From what I have heard and read China is one of the few places where this kind of corruption gets punished.

    6. Can you not see how this is just pure racism?

    Apologies if my tone comes across as a bit harsh, but I find all of these points being framed as credible talking points insulting. The way China is constantly being held up against these vacuous economic and cultural benchmarks that other people aren't subjected to.

    It's like "I've heard stories about how some people in China get really drunk in the evening and sing loudly and come to work with a hangover; what is the government doing about this?"

    Or "There are reports that many couples in China get divorced after having children, forcing the children to be raised by single-parent families. Is the government doing anything to prevent relationships from souring?"

    • This is an internet message board, apologies if my choice of vocabulary doesn't meet the standard of a research paper, but you seem to have glanced over half a sentence of every point I wrote and then attribute the worst version of that topic possible onto me.

      1. If you deny the matter of fact that Chinese goods have received a negative international reputation for being disproportionately low quality until at the least the last 20 years then you would just be wrong. The posts below have done a good job responding to why this is a necessary transitioning step towards industrialization, and statistics do indeed show an improvement of this trend which is great.

      2. ??? https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/05/key-facts-about-chinas-declining-population/ https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/population https://www.worlddata.info/asia/china/populationgrowth.php Are you denying that birth rate is an upcoming issue for China to face? Again the question of discussion here is whether this is significant enough to harshly impact China's economy and growth, or whether other factors just as China's transition to a more skilled and educated workforce will be enough to offset this, not if this issue exists or not, which it most certainly does.

      3. According to links below, the Chinese national bureau of statistics. The age range they picked to measure from was the problem, not the number itself which is true.

      4. At this point I'm not sure what you're trying to say, or if you are just trying to be as condescending as possible. If it wasn't explicit enough, I am in favor of the bans over paid tutoring of core subjects because it gives an unfair advantage to richer families... As for illegal tutoring services, I **don't **think the Chinese government will do nothing about them, that's why I'm asking in one of the only pro-China english forums if anyone knows what specifically they are doing...

      5. Again I didn't formally state this point in a thesis because I didn't think anyone would deny the matter of fact that China, or at least sinospheric countries, have historically suffered uniquely significant amounts of nepotism. Xi's anti-corruption campaigns were a welcome start to addressing the issue. However anecdotes can prove at least the continued existence of corruption in China, my question was to try to quantify the extent of which it still existed at, if there are any ongoing current actions tackling it, and how the situation compares to western countries (which admittedly have been getting worse in this regard over the years).

      6. No?? Racism would be saying "Han people are inherently ugly because they have squinty eyes." What I did was I identified a pattern amongst a group of people from a shared cultural group, based on my own experiences, friends experiences, that match existing stereotypes about said group; which while not being sufficient to dictate an absolute conclusion, should at least justify having the desire to inquire about such behavior no? Especially since I am asking a community where said ethnic group has a positive reception, I seriously don't see how my question can be perceived as anything more than somewhat insensitive in delivery.

      I won't respond to the end of your post which is just a splattering of non sequiturs.

  • For point 1, knowing a bit about QC and manufacturing with regard to China and history, I can provide a little anecdotal info. Yes, China has had issues with alleged "poor quality" products, but this is a problem in every country that newly industrializes. At first, countries that are new to the game provide a competitive price in labor compared to countries that industrialized earlier. Hell, you can go back over 100 years to Britain and you can read about complaints of British people that goods (textiles, etc) made in Germany are poor quality. Germany has since shook that reputation, and generally among the West is seen as a country with a high level of QC. Same thing with Japan. After WWII, Japanese goods were seen as poor quality, and it wasn't until the 80s/90s that Japan (specifically electronics) was seen as high quality and now still do quite well in that industry despite their years of economic stagnation. Even the USSR had issues with QC for various reasons throughout its existence.

    My point is, that yes, China had a reputation of poor quality due to its late entry into mass industrial manufacturing, but it's a range and is shaking off that reputation it had in the 90s/early 2000s. Of course there are tons of cheap quality goods available online to consumers, but you get what you pay for. Many manufacturers have to worry about the bottom line. There are many high quality products coming out of China, electronics, trains, furnishings, you name it. It's all about specification and getting what one pays for, essentially. So next time you hear someone talking about 'poor quality Chinese goods', get them to show proof or else it's just Sinophobic bullshit lol.

    Here's an article: https://insight-quality.com/quality-of-products-made-in-china/

    • Thanks for the explanation and article, it explains a lot. I understand more high quality goods in China are coming out, this in undeniable. I do want to ask, is it still the case today that China makes both very high and low quality goods? Or is the quality floor moving upwards?

      • No sources outside of being chinese myself (although I grew up and live in a western country), but i feel that it's about the same as most countries right now.

        A lot of what you see as poor quality chinese products on the internet are, of course, budget options, which also appear in other countries with equally low levels of quality I'd say.

        In specialised fields such as mechanical keyboards, chinese products can often be equal to contemporaries, if not slightly higher quality.

        All in all, i think the quality floor can be quite low, BUT the ceiling has risen much higher than before, especially in technological areas. And the floor probably isnt much lower than in other countries, mostly affected by really bad copycat products, which i think are being phased out anyway by huge companies such as xiaomi which can offer decent qulaity but cheap phones. There are some areas where they (xiaomi, that is) can beat out other flagship models for cheaper prices, although i think thats quite rare tbh. The privacy issues and selling of data to the chinese government (and also the other things mentioned in your post) is a separate issue to what's being asked, so i won't consider it for now, but of course, it's always a factor. Up to the consumer how much weight they put into it ig.

        Tbh, i dont have any evidence, but this is my personal opinion. I hope this helps you a little regardless of the lack of actual solid data, sources etc.

        As a warning, i haven't been back to china in ages, and most of what i do know is second-hand from relatives, so a bit of bias is probably in there (except the mechanical keyboards but thats mostly known inside those communities also). But still, ig it can represent how a very very small portion of the residents feel :).

        E: Addidng on for some other points mentioned.

        Nepotism im not too sure about, but my family does indeed put quite a high value in making connections to move up in businesses. To be fair, i assume the same is true for most of the Western world, including the uk where i grew up, but i might just be a bit cynical.

        Point 6 feels unfair, as a few others have mentioned. I feel there may be a few more rude tourists from china than average but not by much, its probably more to do with those weird psychological biases people have where they are told to look out for sth (e.g. oh, be careful of chinese tourists, i hear they are shitty) and then tend to notice it more. Although, as a personal anecdote, since i have grown up in the uk and go to uni there, i do tend to jotice that the chinese foreign students do stick with each other more than other foreign students. As in they will walk together in a group and tend not to talk to other british or other students, whereas students from other countries tend to socialise more with other groups. Could be biased, but that is my personal experience. Its always a bit funny when i can understand them chatting shit about other people using chinese, although I'd assume most people would do that anyway as i sure as hell do in english regardless lmao.

        Sorry if my formatting and grammar are shit and if my mostly second-hand and anecdotal evidence didn't really help. I just thought I'd add my ideas in while i saw this on my phone.

  • Quality control

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

    it is a fact right now that Chinese people have a 20% unemployment issue due to an abundance of university graduates without sufficient jobs to match this supply

    Can you provide a source for that number?

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

  • I can understand some of the criticisms, but the population thing isn’t a big deal. They have the largest population on Earth in a country smaller than the US (barely), they’ve been working on the One Child Initiative for a while and the population is trending downward. I think it’s safe to say people would criticize the CPC a lot more if the One Child Policy was an abject failure. The Western Media is against One Child Policy because they can fear monger about it. They exaggerate the punishment of breaking it( a small fine) and propagandize around that issue because it’s an easy Catch-22. If China’s One Child Policy is successful, shit on the policy for being evil and causing a downward trend in population growth, if it’s unsuccessful, shit on the policy for being carried out poorly and call them backwards.

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