I remember one time when I was very young and working as cashier at a grocery store a family came through (mom, dad, and like 2 year old kid). They scanned their EBT card and it came up like 1.25$ short. The mom said she would put the bread back and I just did a manual coupon for 1.25$ to 0 out their balance instead. They acted as if I'd just done something so amazing for them but like this is a multi-million dollar company I think it can afford to give you a 1.25$ coupon so you can have bread? To me it wasn't even a big deal. We gave stupid boomers coupons to shut them up when they compained all the time. But America is so backwards that helping someone out in need is seen as a shocking thing. While it's entirely normal to give free stuff to annoying petit-bourgeois who are having a temper tandrum.
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People in the US don't actually starve to death. They die from exposure and malnutrition first 🙃
If I were Chinese, I would have so much fin asking "clueless" questions to USians.
China doesn't have to be BASED, and likely isn't. It just has to be better enough than the US, which in the 2020s is an embarrassingly low bar to pass.
I think it makes sense when you remember that alot of the bad is being controlled out of it through people being tourists and likely not speaking high level or in many cases any Chinese.
Tourists are not really going to interact with many/if any of the systems with real issues like the hukou system but will have daily interaction with systems that work incredibly well like the metros.
And then through not speaking the language spotting assholes becomes exponentially less likely.
You'd be surprised, some people are actually completely unaware of how a bunch of basic things work in the west. My younger cousin, who had never left China and is also extremely offline (for a zoomer), once asked me what's the deal with lawns. Like "Who maintains them? Is it like plants in parks? Why are they there?". The more I explained it, the more confused she got.
So you can't not have grass, everyone has grass. But it also can't be too long. And you have to spend extra money keep it alive in a drought (which Australia experiences fairly frequently). And you have to spend money on equipment to cut it, or spend more money hiring someone else to cut it. If you're renting, not maintaining the landlord's grass will get you in trouble and possibly evicted. And you have to keep weeds out.
Now, she was 19 at that point in time, so fairly naive. But still.
Instead of having this feeling of skepticism and judging China through unserious posts like these, watch some videos of people travelling and/or living in China, watch a documentary and/or read about how their governance works, listen to the Deprogram podcast episode on China they did a few months back. Then you can have a real, nuanced personal opinion formed through your own marxist judgement and factual analysis.
I don’t think that’s what this post is saying. A very real phenomenon on Xiaohongshu is Chinese citizens just straight up not knowing how bad it is in America. Of course there are assholes, but this post isn’t about how all Chinese ppl are saints (plenty of anti black and anti Indian racism), it’s about how by and large America isn’t understood as the predatory capitalist hell that it is. When I joined the app, it was a common misconception that every American owned and lived in a McMansion style home, and some Chinese users straight up called people liars for describing experiences with poverty, homelessness, medical bills etc
(Wouldn't be surprised if this quote was originally meant to be chauvinistic or mean-spirited given it comes from the arch-neocolonialist and generalissimo of failing upwards, though China Daily seems to represent it in a positive light.)
The harsh reality is that if you have some sort of redeemable quality to the capitalist class (a lot of the time that means being white and neurotypical), you can at least be thrown into the mix of a comically absurd bureaucratic pipeline (local and statewide orgs as well as Christian churches) giving you the bare minimum
If you miss one channel along the way though, you will surely be shamed by liberals for not accepting help
The product of generational convincing of populations to have automatic irrational fear of anything that isn't ultra-capitalism.
I don't know much about China, what structures does China have in place to help folks who can't afford food, or don't have enough? Are there things we could learn from them about how to adress hunger?
In the US I feel like the main ways we aim to adress that are food banks and food programs like WIC. Which I frankly also dont know a ton about
welfare system called the Five Guarantees (五保) if you want to look into it further. as far as I understand it if you qualify for the Three Withouts (三无): without livelihood source, without the ability to work, and without family support then the state guarantees basic food, clothing, housing, medical care, and burial expenses
Damn if they don't live for Number Plural Noun over there
Five Guarantees, Four Cardinal Principles, Three Withouts, Two Whatevers, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
The issue with food banks and food programs is that they often do little to address the underlying cause, which is that housing is not a guaranteed right. Difficult to store stuff long term if you have nowhere to store it. Fresh shit is basically right out.
The other thing is that most, if not all, of these private organizations are tied to religious organizations, most of which (Unitarian Universalists ftw here) make you attend a service or join a group in order to have basic access to these things. Hell around here, even the domestic abuse shelters are all run by Christian fundamentalist groups, and while it is good that someone is doing it, they actively turn away trans survivors because 'they are actually men'.
The issue is that it isn't a right. We give up so much to the state in terms of freedom and we don't even get the right to the basic security of goods.
That isn't to say that China doesn't have its own issues, but in giving up some of your freedoms your are guaranteed some level of basic security.
It varies wildly. Nanjie Cun, for example, has an average monthly salary of $32 USD, but all housing, utilities, healthcare, education, public transport, basic furniture (tv, microwave, beds, chairs) are provided for free for all residents of all ages. Also, there's a stipend of free food: rice, flour, some vegetables and some seasonings. Beyond that, there are communal canteens which is under $0.40 for a meal, or free for pensioners.
But you also have other areas of the country where you only get free food and housing if you're unable to work or in an area without jobs.
Most cities have food banks, but in some places, to access them you need to take on the expense/debt of operating a car.



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