| Having lived in an actual third world country for a couple decades, I personally can't take statements such as "xx is becoming more like a third world country" seriously. I get the sentiment behind it though. If I compare, for example, my experience living in cities in China vs cities in Europe, I would argue that the relative freedom of movement forces residents in Europe to confront the inequality in their everyday lives. In China, on the other hand, such inequality can be easily covered up by either confining the migrant workers (an artificially created underclass of people without hukou[0] registration in the city but still seek opportunities there) in urban villages[1], or sometimes, simply cracking down on and expelling them through policy changes with little resistance[2]. I don't doubt the fact that you're not a sheltered person, but even the average urban residents in China can be oblivious to the plight or even the existence of such an underclass. I'd argue that one can be quite sheltered even if they live there, which is also by design. And this is actually quite common in relatively wealthy Asian countries, see this example [3] in Singapore of how people talk about maids. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_village_(China) [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/27/china-ruthless... [3] https://youtu.be/QH9fX4KIhZg?si=Yp5KjI59Owc09fvd&t=1007 |
With the same logic you could say wages don't need to increase for the next 20 years, or police can be defunded because more crime is not so important, because the 3rd world is off way worse...