316
Two photos of the same train driver, taken 26 years apart
(thelemmy.club)
The two trains pictured:
More info about (and photos of) the driver, Han Junjia:
It's absolutely hilarious to me how people in the west are genuinely surprised that people in China overwhelmingly support their system and government. Just imagine what it must be like to live in a country where you see this sort of progress happening all around you in a single generation. You see a clear and tangible demonstration of the government working to improve your life everywhere you look.
In fairness, when my mom was a kid phone and fridges were new here in the US.
It's also quite amusing to see the cognitive dissonance when you point out that the Chinese system (classified as communist by many here in the U.S.) was the one that has pulled off the greatest improvement in living conditions in human history, pulling hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in basically a generation.
"But muh capitalism!" (Don't worry, capitalism is proceeding to do the opposite.)
A lot of people don't understand the historical context of the US having sat out WW2. The whole myth of capitalism being a superior system was built on the fact that the US got to develop its industries while the rest of the world burned. So, naturally, the NATO bloc that it formed was far ahead economically. And the west has been riding that advantage ever since.
Oh, I believe it. I got a degree in environmental sciences, and in the course of my studies, learned the historical context that goes way back earlier than WW2, even: The United States initially became an economic superpower, and built its industries, on the sheer bounty of natural resources that it extracted from North America and the Caribbean. Nothing much to do with the economic system, except to concentrate the gains to a lucky, elite few.
yup
It does keep baffling me that your average western government keeps rolling out the scary china bad AI face recognition panopticon but like without building a gajillion miles of high speed rail and then people who advocate for the panopticon are still stumped that maybe being chinese sort of fucks rn
It's like we get all the bad aspects of Chinese system with none of the benefits because the difference isn't in the amount of freedoms or human rights, but rather in which class holds power in society.
That's not fair, outside of america we're getting at least 1% of the benefits China gets. That's infinitely more than 0%! ๐
touche
The most surprising to me is how much China got fucked by the opium war.
It's incredibly depressing to read about the horrors of the century of humiliation.
I could be wrong as I know little about the topic but I should imagine people like this train driver has seen, in a single lifetime, such drastic change. Kind of like saying "I remember how bad things were compared to now".
Not really sure what you're trying to say to be honest.