[batista]

You should go in China for once, and talk to Chinese people to better understand their situation. They were miserable in the countryside, and the "sweatshops" you mention are already providing them with a better life than what they had.

LOL. They were "miserable in the countryside" because their old way of living and farming was not a priority anymore for the central government, that needed city workers to build the country's industry. So, in essence they gave them incentives to come to the city, and they also made it so they the old village system wouldn't work, stopped subsiding, redirected resources, etc. It's a centrally planned economy, it's not a "coincidence".

The sweatshops

--and no quotes needed, those are real sweatshops, and 99% of the HN readership wouldn't stand an hour there (we're people that are even annoyed by browser popup windows and such first world problems), and yet some consider them as fit for the Chinese people--,

don't provide them "a better life than what they had", they just make it so that they are kept alive, by eating, and sending some money to their families back home. The "better life" they are "provided" is working 14-hours at best in hellish conditions, then sleeping till the next day, and drinking themselves to oblivion on weekends. Yeah, slightly better than dying of starvation, if those are your only two options.

Incidentally, that was the way the old English industrial revolution thing started. They forced farmers to work in the factories, in similar hellish conditions.

"While the average life expectancy all around Europe increased, that of the average factory worker decreased. There were "almost no safety devices on machines, accidents were common.' (Wallbank, 490) Edwin Chadwick's 'Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain' penned in 1842 provides a terrifying look inside the workplaces of the period. 'That the annual loss of life from filth and bad ventilation are greater than the loss from death or wounds in any wars in which the country has been engaged in modern times. That of the 43,000 cases of widowhood, and 112,000 cases of destitute orphanage relieved from the poor's rates in England and Wales alone, it appears that the greatest proportion of deaths of the heads of families occurred from the above specified and other removable causes; that their ages were under 45 years; that is to say, 13 years below the natural probabilities of life as shown by the experience of the whole population of Sweden.' (Chadwick, available online at: http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/history/chadwick2.html)

[ekianjo]

LOL you too. Obviously you are ideology driven and refuse to see the facts that Chinese people make the deliberate choice, nowadays, to go in the cities and work in those "sweatshops" instead of staying in the countryside. Nobody is forcing them to do so. Nobody is forcing them to stay in the "sweatshops" with a gun on their head. It is a pragmatic choice.

And Yes, Living is better than dying of starvation. I don't know how one can even argue with that. If you live you can get married, have a family and children, and expand your overall satisfaction that you achieved something in the end.

I have been in China and I have seen and talked with the people who choose to lead that life, and for me this is very clear that they are better off. Feel free to believe whatever the evenings news tell you about the horrible conditions at Foxconn and other companies alike, they will still keep queuing for a job there, no matter what you think of them.