The conversations are amazing
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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I didn't think child labor still existed in China, just harsh labor conditions and low pay.
China's government's strict control of the media did, however, lead to me not questioning the social credit score thing.
Pretty naive to think that child labor dosen't exists in China tbh. Maybe not at the scale of child factory workers that some western media like to depict, but at a smaller scale, in farming, family owned business and small isolated factories.
In farming and small business’s it’s very common to see kids working in the us
According to a couple news stories I've seen pop up from time to time, we have child labor in the US too. It's not legal and the children are usually the children of illegal immigrants. Maybe it's sort of the same deal over there i.e. desperate people doing desperate things despite the norm.
A lot of child labor in the US, is in fact, very legal.
From the age of 10-15, working papers can be issued allowing children to deliver newspaper, hawk products on corners, and do limited farm work.
From 15-17, working papers can be issues allowing children to pretty much do any job, with some limitations on hours, and tooling they can use (ie, no automatic sharp tools, like slicers).
Now, these are for my state. Some states are far more exploitative, such as Georgia, where kids as young as 13 can work a fast food joint.
Yeah as an American that lives in a rural area, I started working at the age of 8 doing small jobs like penny saver delivery to help pay for groceries since my mom was wasting child support on booze and drugs.
By 14 I was an assistant chef at a restaurant because I started as a dishwasher the year before and the other chefs quit or had a heart attack (miss you Bob). And I worked until 1am basically doing clean up and still had to go to school.
If no one around you is caring about the rules and life of others, big federal/state rules are easily ignored, even in America.
Now that you mention it, I was a soccer ref when I was 15. You're right, it probably varies by state. I guess "child labor" is a pretty broad term that could include delivering newspapers and processing chicken on a factory floor.
Yes, this is not something exclusive of China, or the US, basically everywhere, except maybe some countries in Europe, still have some kind of child labor in a lesser or greater degree. I don't think China is the worst place on that respect, but blinding believing to someone who lives in a big metropolitan Chinese city that child labor dosen't exists is pretty dumb.
As a parent, I would prefer this to modern western environments for children that include TVs, video games, phones and no idea what I do for a profession.
China is fucking rich dude.
So is the US, and we still have farms, small businesses, and small factories
Missing the "child labor" reference on your comment makes it very funny.
I mean, the US has that too. My point is that a nation being rich really doesn't prevent having those businesses or using them for child labor at all.
I got it, but it's sounds like the US have small (in size) businesses and factories, not that small business and factories use child labor.
Both are true. What's your point?
I think it should be "and we still have child labor in farms, small businesses..."
Without the "child labor in" the comment sounds funny to me.
Ok
As opposed to how it is in the US...?
US media loves to go on about the horrible working conditions in China, claiming 11-hour days and all kinds of other sweatshop working conditions because nothing sells like a good tragedy, but nobody talks about the working conditions at home and talking amongst ourselves is often made difficult, either by cultural or business practices. It's illegal to punish employees for talking about how much they make with each other, but that doesn't stop businesses from doing it anyway, because people here simply don't know their rights as a worker and companies love to take advantage of it. So we think we have a clear grasp of how the Chinese live while still believing that people here work 40-hour weeks and somewhere in the cultural zeitgeist is still the belief that people can afford a house with a white picket fence, a dog/cat, and 2.5 kids on one person's salary.
They're both bad governments just in their own special ways
Precisely!
Purchasing power is rising dramatically, labor conditions as well.
996 sounds like amazing labour conditions
Believe it or not, present in the US and other Western Countries as well. I would know, I have been forced into that before, and I even saw worse. Working hours for Chinese citizens are on par with developed countries while doing far more industrial production. Propaganda generally works by taking a kernal of truth and exaggerating its scope or minimizing it, not normally by outright lying.
Literally illegal in China
Literally allowed in practice
No actually, you're just a racist making assumptions.
Not necessarily. You don't know why they're making that claim.
I live in Korea, where the letter of the labor laws are quite strong. However, they're not enforced. Workers don't sue companies because they're either afraid to rock the boat due to cultural norms or afraid they will develop a reputation and become unhirable.
Korea and China are very distinct cultures, but there are key facets that are common between them. Confucian (or at least neo-Confucian in Korea) values prioritize maintaining the peace and deferring to authority. This is one of several factors that causes Koreans to endure intense working hours, and I'm more willing to believe Chinese folks overwork a lot due to the few shared values.
You're also making assumptions though. And like pointed out elsewhere, mentioning Tiananmen Square still gets silenced so we're kinda forced to assume one way or another and I generally don't believe the state that is doing the silencing. That's not racist and it's messed up to jump to that accusation so quickly
No it doesn't. It's called the 6/4 event there. Do you EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?
Tiananmen Square https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1797650356727665115.html The US literally funding the propagation of fake Tiananmen square massacre pics
https://www.cecc.gov/sites/chinacommission.house.gov/files/documents/roundtables/2002/CECC%20Roundtable%20Testimony%20-%20Sharon%20Hom%20-%204.15.02.pdf
Actual footage from Tiananmen square as covered by the CPC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8dqOuHqcBQ
https://youtu.be/7bl_cyYHwNQ
Explanation of what happened https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-fiction-and-propaganda/
Tankman full vid
https://youtu.be/GRb4VY2dU4c
There's a concerning amount of gaslighting going on in this thread. There absolutely was and is silencing going on around Tiananmen Square: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#Contemporary_issues
What about the Tiananmen square massacre?
You understand my claim is that there topic gets censored right? None of that is even attempting to be evidence to the contrary. I guess you're trying to say they're stomping down on lies spreading? That's still censorship and I am still highly sceptical of a state that does that. It's so weird that you want to eat that up. You weren't there. You have to, again like I said, make assumptions about which sources to believe
There’s a concerning amount of gaslighting, so here’s a NATOpedia link.
Well you're clearly a nato spy doing a counter psyop so I can ignore anything you say too. See how dumb that sounds?
Same.
Not hard to believe when there's camps for uyghurs.
Happy to be wrong.
I maintain this, but other comrades like @davel and @yogthos keep better megathreads about this topic.
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#whats-going-on-with-the-uyghurs
This megathread is garbage, it lists quora and twitter threads as sources.
Twitter and quora are not sources lol. They're platforms ppl use, and their posts should be measured by their merits, not where it's posted.
I prefer hearing about it from Marxists far closer to the source, and using China's own information they publish:
https://www.cpiml.net/liberation/2020/08/chinas-concentration-camps-for-uyghurs-in-chinas-own-words
I mean america has wage slavery. I just think the detail are just different
USA have literal slavery, and it's even straight up called slavery in 13 amendment to constitution. Which also makes US afaik the only country that did enshrined slavery in constitution. Land of the free my ass.
labor conditions actually aren't very bad at all. equivalent to first world countries. pay is relative