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.
Everytime i see a nytimes article about China I search the author's name for epoch times articles and it's a pretty decent hit rate.
when u get to certain treats-level (anywhere in the world, I don't live in China) manual labor is absolutely looked down upon. I am one of very few ppl in my coding person life who has previously held a manual labor job for any amount of time (irrigation).
and yeah, it sucks! That's why I thought I wanted a desk job. And then you get the backlash that regular ppl who are busting their ass do sometimes where they tell u about how soft your hands are. You just can't win!
see, I actually don't mind doing manual labor, I enjoy building things and finding ways I can improve them, but only when I'm not massively alienated from the fruits of that labor. I wouldn't mind doing irrigation if it helped people in my community that loved and accepted me, but wtf even is that, nothing I'll likely ever experience except vaguely in the realm of ideas
The way society is structured currently manual labour might be marginally less alienating, but it will destroy your body, and you'll have to do it for another 2 decades after it does just to survive.
Skilled trades seems like a nice midway point, but just like "learn to code", "learn a trade" feels less like practical career advice, and more a long term labour cost saving measure.
the billions stolen in wage theft are going to develop new types of steam loom for deskilling labor
yeah i call it irrigation but what I was helping to irrigate were lawns in the suburbs via sprinkler systems :agony-4horsemen:
i also agree if it wasn't so alienated it would be fulfilling but like most other jobs its just for a paycheck
of course, they're always going to rebrand their vanity projects as something that's actually useful
My job is like 70% manual labor and 30% programming, so I interact with a lot of middle manager types and IT people types who absolutely look down on me because I get my hands dirty. I like what I do, but it’s insane the attitudes people get when they realize the person they’re talking to is not a “businessperson” or “white collar,” especially so when I know I make more money than some of them. Had to explain basic networking principles to this one guy and he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I didn’t think you were smart enough to know that.”
no no I mean what's your job? I'm a programmer and want to do something real that also pays like programming
Secret to rough hands is to rock climb lol.
You can be white collar with a white collar hobby and still have rough hands!
Lifting heavy will also do the trick, assuming the bars you use are sufficiently knurled. Deadlifts especially will give you calluses very quickly.
this is gonna start sliding into shitposting territory but goddamn there are two strains of yuppie that are infuriating. Those who are contrarian about the latest fad in their city (in this case its a deluge of rock climbing gyms) and those who 'don't want to talk about work'
5+ years in agriculture and kitchens didn't make my hands any rougher.
Idk I'm just built different
gaslighting
The word has (had?) a specific definition you fucks! It's not just "any untruth"!
The gall of talking about gaslighting regarding the economy when the western media continually runs stories about how the economy is doing great, despite most people getting continually poorer. I know that what we call the economy is just a machine to make rich people richer and poor people poorer, so it doing great does mean that, but goddam
Yeah, like "14 year old pays for mothers medical bills via blood donation drive at her school"
I saw a Naomi Wu post that basically said the opposite, that factories are competing for labor, and that there's a shortage of labor in the construction industries because all the hardened uncles are getting old and the younger generation isn't as equipped for manual labor.
I skimmed the article a bit, it sounds like exactly what she said, young folks above manual labor.
When the population is aging and people are waiting longer to have kids, this would make sense.
But also, you have more and more people moving into the cities in China, so there can be labor demand in rural areas AND a labor glut in urban areas.
Naturally... :parenti:
Mr. Xi’s instruction to move to the countryside is equally out of touch with young people, as well as with China’s reality. In December he told officials “to systematically guide college graduates to rural areas.” On Youth Day a few weeks ago, he responded to a letter by a group of agriculture students who are working in rural areas, commending them for “seeking self-inflicted hardships.” The letter, also published on the front page of People’s Daily, triggered discussions about whether Mr. Xi would start a Maoist-style campaign to send urban youths to the countryside.
Such a policy would devastate the Chinese dream of moving up socially that many young people and their parents hold dearly.
You CAN'T move up socially if you live in a rural area, according to the NYT.
Of 13 Chinese graduates from his school, the five who chose to stay in the West have found jobs at Silicon Valley or Wall Street firms. Only three of the eight who returned to China have secured job offers. Steven moved back to China this year to be closer to his mother.
Now after months of fruitless job hunting, he, like almost every young worker I interviewed for this column, sees no future for himself in China.
Living in the rarified air of a NYT office where Silicon Valley and Wall Street are the only two acceptable career paths.
Mr. Xi’s instruction to move to the countryside
This shit is so infuriating. It's deliberately invoking the bad parts of the Cultural Revolution when a close reading suggests it's basically "uhh have you considered working outside of a major city?" You get the exact same advice throughout much of the U.S.
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.
I don't know how many times I've seen people say shit like "if you can't afford to live in LA you should just move to Montana"
NYTimes should write an article about how dystopian it is that entry level coders should consider looking outside of only Silicon Valley where they have to compete with Standard, Berkeley, MIT, etc. grads
Last year I read a book called "Blockchain chicken farm". It was an american-chinese person going to china to meet distant relatives and generally travel around to learn about how tech is changing the landscape of business in general in China.
The government is putting a lot of effort into getting high speed internet out to rural areas and sending out someone that teaches them how to open stores on Ali Express to sell their goods.
The author even interviewed a few people who came back to the rural areas after working in the city, finding equal or better success in various small local industries. It honestly made me sad, thinking about how in the US we're allowing vast swaths of the country rot because their old industries no longer profit. The government makes zero effort to help these communities besides a smarmy "lern 2 code".
These NYT people seem to have no interest in learning about china on the ground and they never will.
They will rediscover China in twenty years, when the behemoth of industry has gobbled up the Amazons and Microsofts of the West and these are the people you need to suck up to in order to stay in business.
I think I saw the same post, but I also saw that construction in China is becoming more and more specialised. I mean, these guys build bridges by laying prefab pieces together and rotate and move entire buildings in a few days. They even build new roads in 48 hours.
young people not being able to find jobs? im glad America solved that with 0% unemployment.
Young Americans are finding jobs earlier in life than they have in decades :amerikkka-clap:
That's what they mean, China didn't give the freedom to 10 year olds to work in the mines.
They yearn for the mines
the government for its economy-crushing policies like cracking down on the private sector
Love how it just drops it there as if the US's situation is a goal to aspire to.
Cracking down on private companies paying bad wages is actually driving down wages!
Is this like one of those memes where you take a US issue and pretend it's actually about one of the certified bad guy states?
"Buck up" was the version I grew up with
Now, I can't help but wonder whether "seek self-inflicted hardships" might translate better as "challenge yourself" :thinkin-lenin:
spinning stories about young people making a decent living by delivering meals
Wait, fake stories about people making a living in service work? 🤔
making a decent living by (...) fishing and farming
Oh no!
The 5000 year old question in China has always been how the fuck do we feed all these people with this little arable land. Every single dynasty rises and falls with how well they organize and manage this issue. With so little land to farm on, modern China relies heavily on imports, mechanization, and clever ideas like terrace farms, greenhouses etc. to get by.
So to answer your question, no, because there's not enough land and the trend is the other way around where rural farmers migrate to the city to find work. However I still see small 1 acre sized plots that are worked by one family being fairly common in the space between cities, but even those are getting less common.
NYT write shite again, and projecting again. The US economy is doing great dude, don't try to deflect it.
young people making a decent living by delivering meals, recycling garbage, setting up food stalls, and fishing and farming
As opposed to the glorious west where young people and immigrants do those things on starvation wages as the most blessed market intended?
In other news, importing more opium will allow the Chinese merchant class to prosper and drive economic development, says BEIC spokesperson.
