Thanks Bo, it is cool that the web is global and that you are able to join in from China.
How free are they now in China? Is the middle class growing? How about the working hours, do they get leisure time? Are conditions improving for the common man in China as their economy improves? Is the money making it to the workers?
Sometimes the bosses are all getting rich, while the workers starve, which is why unions are so important.
The Middle Class is definitely growing. Urbanization is rampant, suburbs developing (an unheard of concept 20 years ago). There's a good deal of economic freedom and competition. But the gov't and folks at the top are raking in huge amounts. White collar workers doing reasonably well. China has tried the past decade to boost consumer demand, so they don't have to rely so much on the vicissitudes of export trade.
Chinese get a good deal of holidays. Chinese starting to take more international vacations. Travel around the world and you run into more Chinese these days (when I was in Bethlehem last year, one Palestinian guide was teaching himself Chinese getting ready for the nascent market). My one doctor friend, in his early 30's went to Namibia two years ago and Israel/Palestine/Jordan this year. More travel to Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc.
This is really a first in Chiense history. in the past Chinese would migrate to these countries and work hard to build a life. Now many can earn enough in China and holiday in SE Asia. Unimaginable a generation ro two ago.
There's still a lot of folks making very little and barely surviving. But overall, there are jobs and money sloshing around -- though the inequality is huge. China doesn't really allow unions, as the PRC doesn't allow organizations that could compete for power/prestige. I'm sure the lessons of Poland have filtered through. And a communist gov't is supposed to represent the workers. There are Some phony gov't unions staffed with party officials and management reps, etc. Every company of a certain size is required to have some communist party officials on the payroll monitoring how things are done. Kind of partisan spies.
China tends to do things in its own way, borrowing some from the West and from successful Asian countries (South Korea was a big model for a while, Singapore and Japan before that). But China's market-Leninist system is a hybrid all its own.
Political rights, freedom of expression and rule of law are all curtailed. But most are thankful they can choose their work and make money and focus on that. Corruption is endemic and part of the package. For a tightly controlled authoritarian country, you'd be surprised how many protests occur all over the place on a weekly if not daily basis. Often involving local officials confiscating land for development projects, or companies such investment houses disappearing over night with all the customer funds, Ponzi schemes (one that collapsed two years ago had taken in over $1B!), etc. The far west where Turkic-Muslim Chinese live has become a police state, with crowded reeducation camps, checkpoints all over, deployment of cameras and facial recognition tracking, and a severe crackdown on Islamic worship.
China is a big messy country, but the economic growth over the past 2.5 decades has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Which is admirable and amazing.
The Chinese global investment has been a double-edged sword. Countries have become burdened with huge debt. Sometimes the projects are planned out that well. China doesn't care if another country is corrupt and a good percent of a deal goes into the pockets of corrupt leaders and their cronies. There is increasing concern about debt traps. China has taken over a major port in Sri Lanka after they couldn't service the debt they took on for having China building it. And I think the same has occurred or been threatened in a few African and So. American countries. China also tends to hire Chinese companies to build projects, staffed by Chinese, with little benefits for local African/So American workers.
Recently, China is giving lip-service to cleaning these abuses up and following int'l practices on their global lending/projects.
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