Is it simply over-correcting in response to western anti-communist propaganda? I’d like to think it’s simply memeing for memes sake, but it feels too genuine.
Is it simply over-correcting in response to western anti-communist propaganda? I’d like to think it’s simply memeing for memes sake, but it feels too genuine.
This is bullshit based on vibes. I’ll state it again: The PRC is socialist because public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state. The PRC is not a gig economy, 996 is a problem but doesn’t mean it isn’t socialist, and the NPC is controlled by the proletariat.
Yep, the PRC is governed by the proletariat.
Repeating again how I categorized socialism: The PRC is socialist because public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state. When I said China has worker protections, that was a response to your cope about “996” and other nonsense, not a way to say China is socialist.
It isn’t a requirement to be socialist, and I never said it was. It took several comments for you to understand that my source was an economist’s review of a work of fiction and not the work of fiction itself, and now you keep pretending I’m defining socialism by saying it has safety nets despite my insistence on the mode of production. Why are you so consistent with butchering my points? Respond to the actual points I make.
On 996: it is way less common than people seems to think. It was a fringe practice in ~40 companies during the tech boom. It has since been made illegal and is declining from it’s already fringe position.
While overtime pressure which was more common and 996 still does unfortunately exist, the trend is clearly negative. As in, it’s being actively cracked down on. The Supreme Court ruled 996 illegal in 2021, and recent policy pushes like the 2025 Consumption Boost Plan are specifically targeting illegal overtime and pushing for better enforcement of rest/vacation rights among other benefits. It’s not perfect, obviously, but it’s hugely improved from where things were in the 2000s or even 2010s, and honestly it’s just not the omnipresent norm that English-language coverage sometimes makes it sound like.
Awesome, thanks for letting me know! I knew it was on the decline, but solid evidence on material movements like declaring it illegal are great to see. I myself once worked a similar schedule for a while, here in the States.
Sorry to hear that.
Something I always find interesting about people bringing up 996 and that era is that at its peak it was about as bad as Japanese work culture while being far less prevalent as a percentage of the population affected.
Now China is putting multi year plans in place to fix it and support workers and yet is still demonised for it while Japan under the cart titan is continuing to push workers harder and doesn’t get half the blowback especially among westerners.
I understand propaganda and racism play a big part in it it’s still an interesting sight to behold.
Good for them. It’s 2026 and they finally made illegal a year ago something that Europe made illegal (and enforced) decades ago.
Now China is almost at the level of USA when it comes to workers rights forced to work vastly too long hours without repayment.
But since I have you here, what is the gig economy rate and workers protection in China? We’re seeing a boom of gig economy of the worst exploited kind (Uber, Glovo, etc) among immigrants from muslim and asian countries in Poland (first it was gig economy and then migrants were imported en masse).
More on 996: it only became a “major” phenomenon around 2016–2019. It was ruled illegal in 2021. That’s a 3–5 year window, most of which the government spent doing the groundwork to draft enforceable legislation. Comparing that timeline to Europe’s decades of labor law development isn’t a fair metric, it should be about trajectory, not starting point.
On worker rights: yes, China still has gaps. However it’s important to note it’s rapidly moving in the right direction. While China is tightening overtime enforcement, expanding social insurance coverage, and piloting portable benefits for flexible workers, many US and EU jurisdictions are eroding protections through austerity, gig-classification loopholes, and weakened collective bargaining. Improvement vs. decline isn’t a tie.
To add to that is the hukou system. It’s extremely flawed in it’s own way, no question. But for rural hukou holders, it does guarantee land use rights and homestead eligibility, a subsistence buffer that doesn’t exist in the same form in the US or Europe. It is a structural fallback against total destitution, which changes the risk calculus for work.
On China’s gig economy: platforms like Meituan and Didi are now included in pilot programs requiring occupational injury insurance contributions, and several provinces have issued guidelines mandating minimum earnings floors (tied to local minimum wages) and rest periods. Enforcement is uneven and rollout is gradual, but regulatory pressure is moving toward protection, not extraction. The “worst exploited kind” framing ignores that China’s gig workers generally retain rural land-use rights, face lower cost-of-living baselines in hometowns, and operate under a system actively testing mechanisms to curb platform abuse, not one that universally treats them as independent contractors to dodge all liability.
Totally agree. Although it’s like the old saying 瘦死的骆驼比马大, right? Do you remember EU’s Forced Labour Ban that affected Apples companies in China, and that the exploited Chinese workers complained to EU instead of CPC? Or Brazils BYD scandal that for Brazilians Chinese workers treatment by BYD was tantamount to slavery, while for the workers it was an improvement?
Lets leave USA on the side. I’m not from there, from what I’ve seen I wouldn’t like to live there as a worker.
Let’s call spade a spade. Hukou is system made to stop urbanization. It’s effects are that there’s a lot of rural workers lacking social safety nets in cities that still migrated to the cities looking for better work opportunities, and because of missing social safety net they had no choice but to agree to be exploited by the capitalist class (no matter if privately owned or if state owned, if a company exploits the workforce it’s a capitalistic leech, agreed?).
Sources: uh… Literally definition and exceptions under which migration was allowed, and the hukou wages are, what, 40% (?) lower for the same job today, see this or one of the sources (too many links opened on the phone, sorry) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecot.12412#ecot12412-bib-0029