Comically naive take on China. The author has obviously never been to China. "We’re finding out that 95% of China’s population owns their homes..." Yeah, because the Chinese people can't invest in anything but real estate. And home ownership isn't that great when the real estate market is collapsing around you. China is in the midst of a housing bubble that is making the 2008 real estate bubble look like a tiny market blip. China has 75M empty housing units and is faced with a demographic crisis unlike the world has ever seen so that investment households made in real estate could turn out to be incredibly costly. And that $500 apartment you mention doesn't look so cheap when your average salary is $1500-$2000 a month. Try to understand the concept of ratios.
You should also check with all those ‘Homeowners’ who are paying mortgages on property that have yet to be completed. The cities in China are filled with incomplete buildings from the likes of Evergrande (bankrupted last year) and Vanke (just went bankrupt last week). Most of these properties are owned by people who were forced to take out mortgages before the properties were complete. Many “homeowners” in China pay mortgages on properties that will never be complete. How’s that for home ownership? Imagine the American government allowing construction companies to rape their customers like this?
FYI, it's Little Red Book, not Red Note. China has consciously changed the apps name because Little Red Book references the Cultural Revolution Mao days, you know the Starvation Cannibalism days when Chinese parents were trading kids so they didn't have to eat their own progeny. Bitch all you want about the US's past history but at least we weren't dining on each other.
"...groceries are real with seeds and cheap too..." - not that cheap when you compare salaries between the two countries. Plus, in China much of this produce is grown on land with environmental problems. China is running out of land that is useful for harvesting food because it's such an ecological disaster -- because they don't have government bodies like the EPA. You report on companies dumping toxic chemicals into a river and you could go to jail because the government doesn't want that story out.
"...they’ve almost eradicated homelessness which stands at about 0.18%" -- visit any Chinese city and you'll see heart-breaking homelessness. You should be careful spewing numbers like that because they are fake. China has a massive homeless problem; the government just hides it. Just like they ‘eradicated’ poverty by changing the definition of poverty-line — hey, look 400M people instantly raised out of poverty. There's a youth unemployment figure of 20%, so ask yourself what kind of future you'd prefer, one in which the country has a 4% unemployment rate or one in which the 'lying flat' youth movement has taken over amongst young people because the Chinese dream that was promised means working 996, i.e., from 9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week for low pay. The economy is so bad right now that government workers are being forced to take massive salary haircuts. Visit towns outside the main Tier One cities and you’ll find people living on farms that remind you of life 200 years ago.
"...there are no credit checks in China and no credit scores..." -- There aren't? There's a whole social credit scoring system that is used to keep people compliant to the government. Do you know anything about China? There's also something known as the Hukou system, their household registration policy, it divides the population into urban and rural groups and assigns people to specific districts, shaping important elements of state-society relations in China (Cheng and Selden, 1994). People from rural parts of China can't move easily amoung the rural regions and the cities.
There's also the "black children" of China, who are the second and third kids born during the one child policy. These children aren't black but have been denied rights because they were the unwanted second and third children born to couples who already had one child. These kids are denied rights that you take for granted. Think about having a subclass in society simply because of your birth order. In many cases, these kids don’t even get an opportunity for education. What a future, no?
"...the quality of life is much higher…” Is it? You have no freedom. The court system is stacked against you. Jobs are hard to come by and there are few worker rights. The food you think is beef might be fake meat — it might be a sewer rat. You work 996, if you’re lucky enough to have a job. That egg snack you grabbed from a local vendor might be fake. The oil you’re cooking your hotpot in might be oil the gutter oil salesman collected from, that’s right, the gutter last night. That vaccine you’re giving your kid might end up killing them in a fake vaccine scandal — like there was a few years before COVID.
"...cars and phones are cheap..." once again, not that cheap if your salaries is on average, $1,500/year. Ratios again. And you obviously haven’t looked at phone prices in China, many are comparable to American phone prices. Sure, there are low budget ones, but the latest Huawei phone costs $1000+ and it's using outdated chips. The Chinese are pushing back and not buying the trifold Huawei phone because they're tired of supporting useless phones that the government pushes for nationalistic reasons.
Cars are cheaper than American ones, sure, but that’s because the Chinese government has pumped billions of dollars into the sector. These Chinese EV companies have been built on stolen IP. China is now filled with parking lots that contain thousands of EVs that will never be used because the car companies simply built them to collect the $10K government subsidy they got for each car. The government put its thumb on the scale to try to decimate the West’s automotive industry. Trust me, that’s no way to run an industry as China is now finding out. Internal consumption is way down because, guess what, when the equity in their home collapses 40% in 5 years, you tend not to want to buy new things. Like time I checked, that was kind of the opposite of what happened in the US. Our home prices have rocketed so much so people complain the cost of housing. Rightfully so, by the way. We suffer from inflation; China suffers from deflation. Which one would you prefer? Trust me, it’s not the latter as things can spiral downward. No one buys; economy collapses.
Oh, as for EVs, check out Chinese social media, which is filled with Chinese EVs blowing up. Ask yourself, would you rather pay a little more for a car that you know won't blow up and roast you in seconds (because the manufacturer cheapskated on the wiring), or a cheap Chinese car that is filled with stolen IP that might be a death trap? Decisions, decision.
Bitch and moan all you want about the US, but don’t become a propagandist for the CCP, please. They love ignorant takes like this. One last question, if the Chinese really live better than us, why are they so desperately — and in many cases illegally — trying to migrate to the US?
