This article looks like a goldmine, but I don't have time to read it all and won't be interested in doing that once I have the time. Here's my favorite paragraph of the part I read:

Today the party’s propaganda machine is spinning stories about young people making a decent living by delivering meals, recycling garbage, setting up food stalls, and fishing and farming. It’s a form of official gaslighting, trying to deflect accountability from the government for its economy-crushing policies like cracking down on the private sector, imposing unnecessarily harsh Covid restrictions and isolating China’s trading partners.

archive link

  • Shinji_Ikari [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    See my other comment, but the CCP has been actively building infrastructure for more rural areas and building up local micro industries. Everything from pearls, to costume princess dresses, to expensive digitally tracked chickens for wealthier urban people to conspicuously consume.

    So while in the US, "move to the country" means you move to a place where the hospitals are closing and infrastructure rotting as mental health declines, a lot of areas in china are seeing the opposite happen.