In China hard work doesn't pay off for these people

Hey everybody, welcome to China Insider, today we're going to talk about a topic related to the lower bottom class, or the lower end population as they're called in China. What that means is hundreds of millions of people in China who basically work as minimum wage jobs, delivery drivers, migrant workers, people, actually this term was used by CCP officials, it's quite discriminatory if you think about it, as they officially categorize this population as those that are considered the worst of the worst, right? But it's a discrimination in itself, it's a derogatory term, but why would people still use it? Well, because it precisely highlights this artificially created class system for the benefit of the party. Okay, so we're going to talk about that. Now, I recently made a short video of this girl who sells bread at this stall with her mother. And this story really touched my heart because I hear her story. Now, some people might think that, well, why is the interviewer trying to make her cry and asking her all these questions? So I'll tell you a bit of the context for this. The interviewer, he has a blog on Douyin, which basically he goes around and he talks to different people from all walks of life to try to highlight and to give them a stage to paint their story and to understand what people are going through in China. So he came across this girl and her mother was divorced and she has two daughters. One of them is also disabled. So this girl, she's 19 now, but she had to drop out of school at a very young age. So she couldn't go back to school. Clearly, you see that this is not the life she wanted to live, but it's unfortunately the life that she has to deal with. So I came across this video, which I'll talk about the details in a bit, but I want to talk about two other videos. So this one is another mother, also divorced with three kids, who has two children. And she works for a fried rice stall, or she owns this. And one night she tried to go to the night market to boost her sale, to make a little bit more money for the family, and then they confiscated her table. So she got very angry and she in fact got angry and it caused her health to deteriorate. She even got sent to the hospital. This third video is a woman who works as a construction worker. For about 120 yuan a day, which is about 17 US dollars after it's converted. Now, she said something which I thought was very interesting. She says that hard work does not mean success. Now, that's kind of different than what we think, right? We think that hard work will eventually contribute to success or it will lead to success. Why is she thinking the opposite, right? And that's really the context for the bread girl as well. Here's the thing, right? When we consider a child's education, we say that K to 12, you know, after you graduate high school, do you want to go to college, trade school, or community college, or not go to any college at all? That's your choice, right? But for her, she didn't even get to make that choice. She simply had to drop out because that's the pressure that was put on her to help out her family. So you're asking where is this social support system in place? Is there any social support? Well, not really, because what happened was China for the past 40, 50 years adopted the so-called let half of the country get rich first idea. So the idea was justified because they say that as long as we alleviate the poverty of half of the country first, the other half will be elevated to follow. But that's not how reality works. And in fact, what it's done is it created this class system where the top part, which is, you know, half of the country got richer, whereas the bottom half essentially got left behind. Now, there's a lot of other stuff like where you live matters. Obviously, who, you know, matters a lot in the CCP system, because the only way to the path to success, that's the only way possible in China is if you are a Communist Party member. And because not everybody is a Communist Party member, a lot of them don't have access to that. Now, when it comes to the bread girl, which also the part that touched my heart is that she says, you know, when even if she gets married, she's going to come back and help her mom because there's nobody else to, you know, where is the program for the disabled child? Usually they will receive some sort of income support. Or what about anything like an educational system support that can put her back into school and things like that. So those don't really exist for everyone in China. The truth is they're stuck. It's very rare to find people who can climb out of this class system in China, even if they feel like it. So now, obviously, there's exceptions, like if you get famous, you know, or if you somehow, I don't know, won the lottery or found oil in your backyard, things like that. Those are the exceptions. For the most people in China, they're really stuck in that. Whereas in America, we think about things like the American dream, right? Everything's possible. You have paths to success. There's different ways. In China, it's very different because if you really think about it, even the billionaires, when they are successful, they still have to listen to the Chinese Communist Party. There's no free thinking available for them. And if they stray a little bit, well, look at Jack Ma. He disappeared for a while. He came back. He's no longer this loud, you know, vocal critics of the party anymore. More recent example, Ren Zhiqiang, a businessman who was critical of the COVID handling in China, he got sentenced to jail. So even if you're rich, you're only serving at the, you know, you're serving the parties, right? You're at the behest of the party. You're not really a rich person because the government can just take away your wealth whenever they want to. That's why all the billionaires in China still serve the party or are loyal to the party. Another point is that the CCP shows or propagandists, they often talk about this idea that America is all about individualism, very individualistic thinking, right? That everybody's for themselves in America, that China is collectivism. Everybody's successful. Well, that's simply not true because what they've done is they've used half of the country as the stepping stone for the success of the other half. Now, some of these problems don't really like they're not exposed that much back, maybe like 10, 20 years ago, because clearly half of the country was on the trajectory to be successful. But then one guy comes in and he decides to shut the country down for three years. And obviously, things started to go backwards, right? So even if you were from the countryside, you saw a temporary success, maybe a 10 year success. You thought that you were finally going to move up the social class. Boom, in comes a political change, a political movement, and you go right back to where you started. And that's the reality for a lot of people today, too. I want to say that China is perhaps even more individualistic than the United States. There's literally a mantra people follow by, which is, if not for thyself, then heaven will punish too, which basically means that even if you're, you know, if you're not going for things for yourself, then even the heaven will try to punish you. And I also came across these two videos, which I think also is a good point to bring up. So the first video is a woman who lost her job, got fired because she has hearing problems and she was seen, you know, wandering the streets. And so this blogger found her, got her a hotel and even got her a new job. Second video is this man. He collapsed out of hunger because he was from another city. He came looking for jobs and people were helping him out, buying him food, etc. So I'm not saying that everybody in China is cold hearted like that, you know, 100%, but on a broader trend, it's exactly what it is. Now, people may be thinking, well, there's poor everywhere around the world. There's homelessness around the world, right? There's rich people around the world. How is this different? Well, if you know the context for where things came from, then this is actually a big problem. Back in the 80s, they started doing the reform and opening up. And then what happens is that they say, you know, those who will get ahead is going to create a much bigger economy so that those who are behind can benefit and move forward as well. But what really happened is, I guess, you know, contrary to socialism and communist preaching, which is that, you know, everybody's equal, right? It doesn't work like that in real life. And, you know, with the introduction of so much wealth, people started to focus on individual wealth rather than collective wealth. And despite, you know, them using the socialist system as this idea that, you know, China is supposed to create welfare for all, there's really no welfare at all. There's no support system for the homeless people. There's no support system for poor people. You know, you have to pay a lot of money to go to the hospital. So a lot of that basic stuff, you know, educational support, things like that don't really exist. So that's bound to raise a big problem, which is that the resentment at the bottom level is so much higher than ever before. Because let's think about this, right? You work really hard and you, you know, you work long hours and somebody who didn't work as hard as you, they begin to get promoted because they knew somebody in the system, something like that. People don't develop happiness for that, right? They develop anger, jealousy and resentment. And so, and that's where we see a lot of those extreme anger, extreme hate, you know, a lot of these random attacks in China, because people are really like the entire country is like a big pressure cooker. It's bound to explode at some point. And then other people, you know, like that woman said in the video, they understand that hard work doesn't mean success at all. What they're trying to do is just get by. That's why many young people in China started to adopt this mindset of lying flat, lying flat, which they know that no matter how hard, how difficult things are or how easy things are, their lives are never going to change for the better because the systems are not in place to ensure that their hard work is validated, right? Because it's very different from what we see it. You know, if you have the ability and if you are a hardworking person, you have the ability to succeed. Many of them in China don't think that way anymore. I actually came across this viewer's comment, which I thought was such an interesting observation. So I'll read it to you. Says, I've seen a lot of Chinese people like that. They work overtime for minimum wages and they say that they're proud of their hard work. All I see is exhaustion. Does the government force them to say that and live that way? So that's a very interesting observation. And my thought on it is it is true. But at the end of the day, I think a lot of them just simply think that hard work equals getting by because they realize that, you know, there's no way they can be successful because if you really think about what success in terms of hardworking has done for China is that China became the world's biggest factories. Their wages didn't go up a lot, but they just produced a lot of things, right? And even at a low wage, there was still a lot of people wanting that job because just there's so much competition in China for even a lower paying job because there's so many people. There's so much misery in the country right now and people don't have time to think about that stuff. But when you look at where the bottom class really is, I think it's a reflection of much bigger issues than, you know, people having a job. It's something that fundamentally needs to change. And it's an issue that's really beyond individuals. But where society in China is at now is a reflection of where things went wrong, which is that by chasing wealth and by chasing the wealthy growth of the other half of the country, you screwed over the other half, which I think in no country would you call that a success other than China, which because, you know, they call it they say that they alleviated extreme poverty, which I don't think actually happened. But yeah, that's where things are. So enjoy the content today. Leave like, comment with your thoughts on this particular issue and subscribe to our channel. Also, check out DavidZang.net for our merch like this one, the hat for tofu drag specialist DavidZang.net. All right. That's it for today. See you next time.