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.