Who shrink-wraps pairs of apples and oranges on a piece of styrofoam? That struck me as particularly bizarre. Is this normal in other parts of the world?
edit: I know this is totally tangential... it just struck me as a faux-futuristic trope and not pragmatic at all. Hence: bizarre
And yet, gun crime is non existent, suicide is much lower than the US, etc. China is actually by all measures a much better place to live than the US. The freedoms in the US just lead to death and suffering and political divisions and unhappiness. In China people are unified.
> China is actually by all measures a much better place to live than the US
I think you need a source on that one. Gun crime is obviously worse in the US - and an ongoing problem - but it's not a huge impact on quality of life for most people.
In suicide, China measures middle of the pack - certainly ahead of the US - but many Western countries do better.
In terms of "happiness" - China ranks quite low on the World Happiness Index:
> China is actually by all measures a much better place to live than the US.
I think that's an overgeneralization. There are many things that do "work better" or "improve faster". Mass transit and metropolitan cleanliness are good examples of this (with exceptions, of course).
However, the lack of a strong regulatory body for things like food quality and water quality still make it a much riskier place to live IMO.
That's not to say China won't, for example, achieve a one billion+ person version of Singapore in our lifetimes, but I still have a "wait and see" attitude towards this.
Note: I have lived in China and travelled nearly 6K miles by mass transit to all kinds of places there.
Car accident rates are higher in China, you are also more likely to die because of pollution. People are not very unified, which is why the government focuses more on internal security than external security. The PLA has killed way more Chinese in the last 30 years than foreign combatants.
Well, considering the PLAs only major combat action in the last 30 years has been in Beijing, they probably aren’t eager to publicize that. Thought I have a hunch that it is true for the PLAs entire existence (they never killed many Japanese, and the Siege of Changchun claimed at least 500k compared to anything that happened in Korea).
I'm sure the PLA keeps and makes available to all & sundry its detailed internal records of who got liquidated and why; and is always open to the scrutiny and criticism of concerned third-parties.
I mean, if you can't expect that kind of service from the military wing of an unaccountable authoritarian maoist kleptocracy...why even have one??
I don't think the PLA gets called in for executions when the PAP can do the job just as well. So the PLA's internal deployments are more likely to be something like fighting separatist groups, which they might want to boast about.
We're pretty fucked up over here in the West, but I can say "We're pretty fucked up over here in the West" and no one is going to put me in prison for it, eh?
In China, if you are not one of the unified mass you have good chance of ending up in reeducation center, work camp or at worst executed and yours organs are sold. Thanks, but I prefer the west.
US is very strange at the moment... better comparisons might be to Europe, Central and South America, who generally enjoy incredible freedom, political discourse, quality of health, education and life.
public safety - China has a clear win. Thanks to the surveillance level and strict gun/drug control, you can walk on the street of any part of any city without having to worry about your safety. I cannot say the same most of the major cities in the US.
However, air pollution, food safety, extremely high competition and fast-pace together make China a quite unattractive place to live and work.
Hmm, much of this can also be said about the UK. High levels of surveillance, strict gun control, generally good public safety, but high air pollution in urban areas.
Except for the drug control part: the police here seem to have pretty much given up on that.
You haven't been to China if you think UK's air pollution and China's are comparable. The smog is so bad at times in major cities you can't see the street from your hotel window.
They aren't comparable at the moment. But London used to have "London fogs" that contained a large air pollution component. At least one was so bad that a doctor hired a blind man to guide him on his house visits, since the doctor couldn't see enough to tell where he was (even on foot on the sidewalk), but the blind guy wasn't handicapped at all by the smog.
Oh I know, I'm just clearing up some possible misconceptions, I think some people aren't aware just how bad pollution in China is right now. Even in tertiary cities there's significant smog. If their authoritarian government does one think I hope it makes fixing that a priority.
If this is based on statistics, bear in mind that China does not report all crimes outside its borders (for face reasons) and even locally (so as not to disturb "social harmony").
You're absolutely correct. I've spent about 3 months of my life in China. During that three months, my father-in-law was pulled over while the police checked the trunk for a local suspect in a quadruple homicide that day.
This quadruple homicide was not reported on the news, likely for "social harmony" reasons as you mentioned. To me, this makes their external reporting of public safety quite untrustworthy (ironic, considering the video linked by OP).
Yup, everyday you step out into the streets in America and must dodge bullets. At every moment. That's sarcasm by the way.
Gun crimes are still dropping. Our coverage however is increasing. What I love is when people confuse gun crimes and gun deaths. Do you know what gets counted in gun deaths but not gun crimes? Suicide. But the USA gun deaths get related to the rest of the world's gun crimes. I will say we have a suicide rate problem. It's actually really bad. But when you hear people defend communists, the same group in any other country makes the Nazis look like amateurs when it comes to genocide... suicide does look like a decent option. To be honest too, I imagine eating a bullet is more attractive than hanging or bleeding to death. Anyways, every time communism arises, "We're all for peace and tranquility and to achieve that we must kill a lot of people who don't agree with us on a philosophical level and we pick a social group the majority will enjoy watching get killed." But oh, the communists are all about unity and peace and "philosophical expansion against imperialism and oppression" that is some how different from the standard definition of imperialism and straight up murder.
edit: I know this is totally tangential... it just struck me as a faux-futuristic trope and not pragmatic at all. Hence: bizarre