War
- Thread starter captainmorgan
- Start date
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
The Times article focused on high rates of unemployment among recent college grads in China. They graduated almost 12 million people last year and most are finding it hard to even get an interview, much less a job that pays enough to make the education worthwhile. Unemployment among China's youth is running 20% and the trend is running toward worse than better.
Xi's response is to tell them to accept their lot, "eat bitterness" and accept jobs in manual labor. Pressure from parents, who sacrificed by paying for those educations are telling kids to keep trying. Many of the best are finding jobs outside of China.
Then there is this:
Chinese workers seek end to "eating bitterness"
In the eight years since Zhang Shuxiang first left her village in the poor interior of central China, she worked in 20 factories before coming to the assembly line of a Foxconn plant making products for tech firms including Apple. She wants it to be her last.
Meeting the aspirations of Zhang and other migrant workers who power China’s economy - officially estimated at 159 million - is crucial for the government. Younger, better educated and more tech-savvy, many migrant workers grew up as the sole children in their families and are less accepting than their parents were of tough working conditions.
They are also becoming more aware of their rights and of the widening growing range of available jobs, including services, that has come with rapid economic growth and which offer a way out of the relentless tedium of factory work.
“They are willing to take collective action, strikes, work stoppages, protests when they feel their rights have been violated or what they are owed has not been given to them,” said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for Hong Kong-based workers’ rights group China Labour Bulletin.
“Workers know that if they stand their ground and ask for better pay and conditions, employers...have to agree to some of their demands.”
Xi's administration is pouring money into infrastructure projects that aren't paying off -- roads and trains to nowhere. People paid enormous sums for homes in high rise projects that have stalled out and might never get built. Recovery from Covid lockdowns is not going well. It's kind of a mess right now in PRC.
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
I'm not understanding Xi's course of action. He does seem very dated, like he came from the cold war era, but sense is sense, no matter your sensibilities.The Times article focused on high rates of unemployment among recent college grads in China. They graduated almost 12 million people last year and most are finding it hard to even get an interview, much less a job that pays enough to make the education worthwhile. Unemployment among China's youth is running 20% and the trend is running toward worse than better.
Xi's response is to tell them to accept their lot, "eat bitterness" and accept jobs in manual labor. Pressure from parents, who sacrificed by paying for those educations are telling kids to keep trying. Many of the best are finding jobs outside of China.
Then there is this:
Chinese workers seek end to "eating bitterness"
In the eight years since Zhang Shuxiang first left her village in the poor interior of central China, she worked in 20 factories before coming to the assembly line of a Foxconn plant making products for tech firms including Apple. She wants it to be her last.www.reuters.com
Meeting the aspirations of Zhang and other migrant workers who power China’s economy - officially estimated at 159 million - is crucial for the government. Younger, better educated and more tech-savvy, many migrant workers grew up as the sole children in their families and are less accepting than their parents were of tough working conditions.
They are also becoming more aware of their rights and of the widening growing range of available jobs, including services, that has come with rapid economic growth and which offer a way out of the relentless tedium of factory work.
“They are willing to take collective action, strikes, work stoppages, protests when they feel their rights have been violated or what they are owed has not been given to them,” said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for Hong Kong-based workers’ rights group China Labour Bulletin.
“Workers know that if they stand their ground and ask for better pay and conditions, employers...have to agree to some of their demands.”
Xi's administration is pouring money into infrastructure projects that aren't paying off -- roads and trains to nowhere. People paid enormous sums for homes in high rise projects that have stalled out and might never get built. Recovery from Covid lockdowns is not going well. It's kind of a mess right now in PRC.
Why promote careers in the tech industry if you need farmers? why not promote agriculture? it's not all grubbing in the dirt, a lot of farms are very high tech, and it's a rare day you come home dirtier than an office worker.
You have to wonder if Xi is stuck in an information loop where his aides keep him from finding out about anything substantive, and feed him endless bullshit. It would explain all the building projects that are leading nowhere, and taking on big new jobs before old ones are close to finished.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
… because big tech firms concentrate profits that can be more efficiently skimmed into those offshore accounts?
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
China is also facing a demographic crises cause by another grand vision of the one Child policy, young people leaving the country will exacerbate this issue. Xi's infrastructure projects and empty cities are kinda like Mao's great leap forward, cultural revolution and then one child policy disasters. The economic situation, kleptocracy, demographic issues and covid lock down fiasco are the result of authoritarian thinking and one-man imperial rule.The Times article focused on high rates of unemployment among recent college grads in China. They graduated almost 12 million people last year and most are finding it hard to even get an interview, much less a job that pays enough to make the education worthwhile. Unemployment among China's youth is running 20% and the trend is running toward worse than better.
Xi's response is to tell them to accept their lot, "eat bitterness" and accept jobs in manual labor. Pressure from parents, who sacrificed by paying for those educations are telling kids to keep trying. Many of the best are finding jobs outside of China.
Then there is this:
Chinese workers seek end to "eating bitterness"
In the eight years since Zhang Shuxiang first left her village in the poor interior of central China, she worked in 20 factories before coming to the assembly line of a Foxconn plant making products for tech firms including Apple. She wants it to be her last.
Meeting the aspirations of Zhang and other migrant workers who power China’s economy - officially estimated at 159 million - is crucial for the government. Younger, better educated and more tech-savvy, many migrant workers grew up as the sole children in their families and are less accepting than their parents were of tough working conditions.
They are also becoming more aware of their rights and of the widening growing range of available jobs, including services, that has come with rapid economic growth and which offer a way out of the relentless tedium of factory work.
“They are willing to take collective action, strikes, work stoppages, protests when they feel their rights have been violated or what they are owed has not been given to them,” said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for Hong Kong-based workers’ rights group China Labour Bulletin.
“Workers know that if they stand their ground and ask for better pay and conditions, employers...have to agree to some of their demands.”
Xi's administration is pouring money into infrastructure projects that aren't paying off -- roads and trains to nowhere. People paid enormous sums for homes in high rise projects that have stalled out and might never get built. Recovery from Covid lockdowns is not going well. It's kind of a mess right now in PRC.
Last edited:
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
Yeah, but why promote jobs in tech that don't fucking exist? That doesn't facilitate the movement of wealth, it doesn't do anything except produce a bunch of people who have no chance of getting a job in their chosen field without immigrating elsewhere...which in no way enriches China or it's oligarchs.
printer
Well-Known Member
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
just raised more questions for me...
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
Imo it does enrich the oligarchs right now to the detriment of hundreds of millions of citizens.
A dark and speculative hypothesis: we’ve been hearing suggestions that the Chinese economy is headed for trouble. Perhaps the Maybach class has lost confidence in the system lasting much longer, and is making hay while the sun is shining.
printer
Well-Known Member
Hindsight is 20/20.
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
Russia is 'on the brink of revolution' as their border is deemed 'weak'
18,543 views May 31, 2023
"The Russians tend to enjoy using pretty apocalyptic language to raise the temperature and put the pressure back on the UK."
Times political correspondent George Grylls discusses rising tensions between Russia and UK, after comments by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
I don't understand Xi's course of action either. This article might shed some light. They claim that Xi has jumped from early economic development-centered policies to polices that put security first. Security means whatever Xi wants it to be, internal security, external security, economic security, security through technical prowess, security through food independence, and so forth. If anybody understands what "Hegelian-Marxist dialectics that guide Xi and his comrades’ way of thinking" means, please fill me in.
For Xi Jinping, the Economy Is No Longer the Priority
By Guoguang Wu | Beijing’s focus has been on strong and steady economic growth for decades. But China’s leader has just put an end to that era. For Xi, it’s only about power—at home and abroad.
www.journalofdemocracy.org
What I do understand from the article is if Xi had stuck with the status quo economic development policies, he would have had to step down so that somebody else could continue on and take China into world leadership. Xi stole a march by changing the country's focus from economic development to security and thus made him the one -- he believes -- to make China number one.
So, maybe he's just a power mad megalomaniac, who doesn't need a reason, just, power for power's sake.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
Iirc the Hegelian dialectic emerged from an effort to rationalize the process of history. In simplest terms, a dialectic iteration is to start with the “thesis” (usually the structure of the existent political or economic reality), challenge it with an emergent “antithesis” (changes in society or technology that upset the applecart) and fuse them in a “synthesis” that embodies features of both “in the progress to a higher truth”.I don't understand Xi's course of action either. This article might shed some light. They claim that Xi has jumped from early economic development-centered policies to polices that put security first. Security means whatever Xi wants it to be, internal security, external security, economic security, security through technical prowess, security through food independence, and so forth. If anybody understands what "Hegelian-Marxist dialectics that guide Xi and his comrades’ way of thinking" means, please fill me in.
For Xi Jinping, the Economy Is No Longer the Priority
By Guoguang Wu | Beijing’s focus has been on strong and steady economic growth for decades. But China’s leader has just put an end to that era. For Xi, it’s only about power—at home and abroad.
What I do understand from the article is if Xi had stuck with the status quo economic development policies, he would have had to step down so that somebody else could continue on and take China into world leadership. Xi stole a march by changing the country's focus from economic development to security and thus made him the one -- he believes -- to make China number one.
So, maybe he's just a power mad megalomaniac, who doesn't need a reason, just, power for power's sake.
The classic example is the Marxian take on it: capitalism plus socialism breeding a better society featuring public ownership and administration of the means of production/engines of prosperity.
It drips late-Enlightenment mechanistic determinism, and the idea of a forward trend in human history.
In the current context, Xi and co. are trying to fuse the sometimes-conflicting needs of the post-Marxist economy that has worked so well for them with the new awareness of a (fabricated?) need for regional security, which probably means a way to grab Taiwan while staying out of a ruinous war with US and other regional powers, like Japan.
He is selling the idea that the (still opaque) synthesis that incorporates the most of both is a Progressive Thing, good for China and by extension Asia.
My opinion, and I could be wrong.
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
Well,
Doesn't seem to allow for disruptive technology or new ideas that drive growth to overtake the established model for doing things.
Then again, when the established model for doing things benefits the people in charge of an autocratic and authoritarian regime that reeks of corruption, new ideas and disruptive tech are not allowed.
but I could be wrong.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
I think new ideas and disruptive tech are taken up as “export only”, with China’s known contempt for international law around intellectual property being turned into a manufacturing edge.
Domestically, they are extremely conservative as regards tech available to the people.
The Soviets joked about “selling the capitalist West the rope with which it would hang itself”. The Chinese told no jokes but embraced the idea. Wasn’t there a scandal recently about unauthorized Chinese hardware being used on the F-35 assembly line?
printer
Well-Known Member
Really he has been focused on making sure China will be #1 in the world in the future. China's history ingrains that into the mindset. After all, there are few countries that can show the state lasting thousands of years. The US is just a toddler when viewed through China's eyes.I don't understand Xi's course of action either. This article might shed some light. They claim that Xi has jumped from early economic development-centered policies to polices that put security first. Security means whatever Xi wants it to be, internal security, external security, economic security, security through technical prowess, security through food independence, and so forth. If anybody understands what "Hegelian-Marxist dialectics that guide Xi and his comrades’ way of thinking" means, please fill me in.
For Xi Jinping, the Economy Is No Longer the Priority
By Guoguang Wu | Beijing’s focus has been on strong and steady economic growth for decades. But China’s leader has just put an end to that era. For Xi, it’s only about power—at home and abroad.
What I do understand from the article is if Xi had stuck with the status quo economic development policies, he would have had to step down so that somebody else could continue on and take China into world leadership. Xi stole a march by changing the country's focus from economic development to security and thus made him the one -- he believes -- to make China number one.
So, maybe he's just a power mad megalomaniac, who doesn't need a reason, just, power for power's sake.