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New bike infrastructure in Guangzhou, China ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ณ (cdn.imgchest.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[โ€“] 36 points 2 weeks ago (19 children)

Correct me if I am wrong, but I get increasingly the impression that the average Chinese lives a better live than the average US-American. Living conditions seem to improve in China, whereas they decline in the US.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 4 days ago*

    from what i've gathered i'd say china is basically as good as most developed countries, with the quirk that it has a fucking bonkers huge population and unlike a lot of the other high-population-density countries the population is really concentrated in the cities rather than the whole country just being a single continous shanty town.
    And as a result of both the absolute size of the population, and the fact that they live in high-density and quite new cities (and a lot of infrastucture in general is basically from the past 100 years if even that), it means that you get things like an extensive high speed train network and whatnot.

    So it's like if france had 12 Parises and a fairly repressive government. Though it should be noted that chinese politics seems significantly less terrible on a local level, and at this point the rest of the world has started catching up on the whole dystopian government thing..

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  • [โ€“] 40 points 2 weeks ago

    Certain aspects of life are bad in China.

    In the US, there was a failed conman and a failed reality TV character (same person) who campaigned on making the country worse but claimed it'd make the country better (while not actually expecting to get elected), and people decided that he should be president. They elected him again recently.

    The alternative party seems to campaign on "Let's make the country less worse and more slowly". Anyone who campaigns on making the country better doesn't make it far in politics.

    So yeah, it makes sense that life in the US has been getting objectively worse.

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  • [โ€“] 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

    Yeah sure, unless you hold a picture of Winnie the Pooh in public. You'll be arrested and imprisoned/disappeared for life... Or say anything about tiananmen square. You'll get 7 years but for sure will be disappeared shortly before release. That's the quality of life Lemmy users crave ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚

    Edit: BRING ON THE DOWNVOTES YOU HYPOCRITICAL AUTHORITARIAN WORSHIPPING TANKIES

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  • [โ€“] 21 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Canโ€™t it be both? Canโ€™t it be that there is higher life quality and also the regime can be bad? I mean I feel like thereโ€™s room to criticize both. And then reflect back on oneโ€™s own country.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Well yeah sure China is not a utopia, but at least they have universal healthcare. I'd rather not be able to talk about certain things than not being able to afford medical bills. Imagine going into generational debt just for calling an ambulance. Just recently I read an article here on Lemmy where 92% of all US-Americans postpone going to the doctor because they can't afford the bills. If this is not textbook sh*thole country, then I don't know what is lol.

    And no, I am not glorifying China, I just think the comparison between the US and China is very interesting, because of how China is portrayed by Western Media often as a development country and how they lag far behind the Western World in terms of quality of living. Meanwhile the quality of living in the US is rapidly declining, although it is such a rich country and could easily afford at least the same standard of living you can see in Western Europe.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

    The catch is that you voted for it. You know the stereotype that Americans are dumb? Well...

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  • [โ€“] -2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    At least we get to vote. In China you get disappeared for trying to vote yet they SO SMART ๐Ÿค“๐Ÿค“๐Ÿค“

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 1 week ago (2 children)

    It's not that they can't vote, it's that they get nothing else to vote for but The Party.

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  • [โ€“] -1 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    And if you try to challenge that party off you go^oooooo^

    Yet people will upvote the word China like it's the gold standard ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 1 week ago

    That mechanic is what's letting them succeed.

    Rather than winner-take-all elections where Party B spends 4 years unwinding everything Party A did in the last 4 years, the decisions can be made inside a party framework built for continuity.

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