Look, I'm rural minority. I've filled the forms. I've seen the wage gap. I know the barriers. Saying it has flaws isn't news. I said that already. But pretending the land-use rights, the homestead eligibility, the hometown fallback don't materially change a worker's risk calculation? That's idealism. That's ignoring the concrete for the sake of a slogan. You can critique the system and acknowledge its positive material effects.
I've just realised I've replied to you on another comment. I don't have time for people who brag about targeting random Chinese players in games, buying into propaganda to dehumanize us, then show up pretending to champion Chinese workers' dignity. So I'm just going to stop here and leave it at this.
More on 996: it only became a "major" phenomenon around 2016–2019. It was ruled illegal in 2021. That's a 3–5 year window, most of which the government spent doing the groundwork to draft enforceable legislation. Comparing that timeline to Europe's decades of labor law development isn't a fair metric, it should be about trajectory, not starting point.
On worker rights: yes, China still has gaps. However it's important to note it's rapidly moving in the right direction. While China is tightening overtime enforcement, expanding social insurance coverage, and piloting portable benefits for flexible workers, many US and EU jurisdictions are eroding protections through austerity, gig-classification loopholes, and weakened collective bargaining. Improvement vs. decline isn't a tie.
To add to that is the hukou system. It's extremely flawed in it's own way, no question. But for rural hukou holders, it does guarantee land use rights and homestead eligibility, a subsistence buffer that doesn't exist in the same form in the US or Europe. It is a structural fallback against total destitution, which changes the risk calculus for work.
On China's gig economy: platforms like Meituan and Didi are now included in pilot programs requiring occupational injury insurance contributions, and several provinces have issued guidelines mandating minimum earnings floors (tied to local minimum wages) and rest periods. Enforcement is uneven and rollout is gradual, but regulatory pressure is moving toward protection, not extraction. The "worst exploited kind" framing ignores that China's gig workers generally retain rural land-use rights, face lower cost-of-living baselines in hometowns, and operate under a system actively testing mechanisms to curb platform abuse, not one that universally treats them as independent contractors to dodge all liability.
Something I always find interesting about people bringing up 996 and that era is that at its peak it was about as bad as Japanese work culture while being far less prevalent as a percentage of the population affected.
Now China is putting multi year plans in place to fix it and support workers and yet is still demonised for it while Japan under the cart titan is continuing to push workers harder and doesn't get half the blowback especially among westerners.
I understand propaganda and racism play a big part in it it's still an interesting sight to behold.
there are hypersonic missiles, and a combination of technologies that have already defeated the so called Iron Dome.
I knew Iran had been breaching air defences like the iron dome but didn't realise they had dipped into their hypersonic supply yet. Would you happen to have any sources or videos? I was under the impression they were saving the more advanced stuff like the Fattah-1 still and had been making do with short-medium range ballistic missiles and shahed swarms.
On 996: it is way less common than people seems to think. It was a fringe practice in ~40 companies during the tech boom. It has since been made illegal and is declining from it’s already fringe position.
While overtime pressure which was more common and 996 still does unfortunately exist, the trend is clearly negative. As in, it’s being actively cracked down on. The Supreme Court ruled 996 illegal in 2021, and recent policy pushes like the 2025 Consumption Boost Plan are specifically targeting illegal overtime and pushing for better enforcement of rest/vacation rights among other benefits. It’s not perfect, obviously, but it’s hugely improved from where things were in the 2000s or even 2010s, and honestly it’s just not the omnipresent norm that English-language coverage sometimes makes it sound like.
Stupid but effective test I have leftover from my gaming days. Write Tiananmen Square (Massacre) before I interact with you any further.
Aside from this being pure chauvinist racism. Let's take it you bought into the propoganda that Tiananmen Square is completely censored and Chinese people get punished for seeing or saying it by being sent to a camp or disappeared or whatever (even though that's patently and obviously not true).
You were in your mind just condemning random innocent Chinese people to punishment for fun while you gamed? You are fucking disgusting. I hope you realise that you are a terrible person on the level of a German snitching on Jews in ww2. Even if thankfully the propaganda isn't true doesn't take away from how vile and evil it is that you would try.
Apologies on advance for the length got very invested while typing this.
The 2021 ruling followed by 2025 reinforcement doesn't mean the problem is "solved," but that's actually how good governance is supposed to work. You set a standard, you monitor where enforcement falls short, you gather feedback from workers and local courts, then you adjust the framework as necessary according to feedback. The Supreme Court explicitly ruled 996 illegal in 2021, and the 2025 Consumption Boost Plan reinforcing those protections after a period of monitoring and feedback is good governance. Chinese reporting shows this cycle in action: enforcement is still uneven, yes, but the trajectory is consistently toward stricter oversight. It's not perfect, but the direction is clearly negative for illegal overtime practices, and that matters more than pretending one decree could fix decades of practice overnight.
On billionaires and inequality, I think the analysis China Has Billionaires helps clarify the confusion in English. As that piece explains, socialism isn't defined by the absence of wealthy individuals or by hitting a specific Gini coefficient. It's defined by who holds ultimate control over capital and whether the state can subordinate profit to social goals. In China, billionaires exist, but they operate within boundaries set by a socialist state. When tech platforms overreach, when property speculation threatens stability, when capital tries to dictate terms, the state steps in. The Jack Ma case is a good example here: when Ant Group pushed for high-risk microloan products that threatened people's and the countries financial stability, regulators halted the IPO and restructured the company. That's not capitalist logic. That's capital being managed, not ruling. If we look at how capitalist states like the US or those in Europe have generally allowed high-risk consumer lending models like Klarna to expand with minimal restraint, the contrast with China's intervention is fairly stark.
The same logic explains the 2021 crackdown on for-profit private tutoring. Excessive academic pressure was harming student wellbeing, but more fundamentally, the state moved to stop education from becoming a commodity where money buys advantage. China's public schools remain the primary pathway to success, with the gaokao system designed to be merit-based. Contrast that with the US or Europe, where wealthy families can purchase extensive tutoring, legacy admissions, or even direct donations to secure college placement. The Didi case mentioned in the redsails article fits here too: when the company rushed a US listing while holding sensitive geographic and user data, regulators intervened, not to punish growth, but to assert that capital cannot override data sovereignty or social stability. That's the socialist boundary in action.
Also the number of billionaires in China has plateaued and even begun to decline as redistribution mechanisms and regulatory pressure intensify. That's consistent with a transitional socialist project: allowing market mechanisms to develop productive forces while retaining the political capacity to rein them in when they conflict with collective interests. And it's worth remembering what the socialist state has delivered: over 800 million people lifted out of poverty, infrastructure built in less developed regions even when it's not profitable because state-owned enterprises serve a redistributive role, and public systems that prioritize collective welfare over short-term returns.
The socialist principle for this stage isn't "equal outcomes regardless of contribution." High aggregate wealth inequality metrics can coexist with massive improvements in living standards, public infrastructure, and social mobility, which is precisely what China has delivered. The real test isn't whether a few people get very rich, but whether the working majority sees their conditions improve and whether the state can redirect surplus toward collective needs. By that measure, China's trajectory aligns with a socialist project navigating a complex, globalized transition. If you haven't read it yet, the redsails piece walks through these tensions with historical context and avoids the checklist approach that often leads to premature judgments about what socialism must look like at every stage.
Edit:
Also a fun graph I found the data is from the world inequality database
I see two main issues with your comment. First, it feels like you're relying mostly on non-Chinese sources here(correct me if I'm wrong). I feel if you were in China or actually reading Chinese-language reporting, you'd see that while overtime pressure and stuff like 996 still exist, the trend is clearly negative. As in, it's being actively cracked down on. The Supreme Court ruled 996 illegal in 2021, and recent policy pushes like the 2025 Consumption Boost Plan are specifically targeting illegal overtime and pushing for better enforcement of rest/vacation rights. It's not perfect, obviously, but it's hugely improved from where things were in the 2000s, and honestly it's just not the omnipresent norm that English-language coverage sometimes makes it sound like.
Second, capitalism vs. socialism isn't really defined by work hours, pay conditions, or how hard people are pushed, that's a misunderstanding of what those terms actually mean. What matters is who owns the means of production. In China, it's without a doubt the people, exercising that ownership through the state. The state being the apparatus through which people collectively wield power. Around 70% of the largest companies are state-owned, and all the strategic sectors (energy, transport, telecoms, finance) remain under public control. So yeah, China is socialist. The real question isn't if, just how far along it is in the transitional period that socialism entails.
996 is way less common than you people seems to think. It was a fringe practice in ~40 companies during the tech boom. It has since been made illegal and is declining from it's already fringe position.
It was just a fairly tone deaf reply given the topic. It comes off very much like the standard nazi defense when they get called out on dog whistles. Maybe that wasn't your intention but I'm sure if you read them again you can see how it gives that impression.
You are taking all this time to run defense about how it's actually bad to force Nazis out of spaces like the punk scene because some of them might just be mislabeled. I assumed if you were going to talk shit you'd at least have a solution? If it's bad to force Nazis out of spaces then should they be allowed in all spaces or did you perhaps receive a divine revelation about how it's actually possible to beat them in the marketplace of ideas or some such nonsense?
Look, I'm rural minority. I've filled the forms. I've seen the wage gap. I know the barriers. Saying it has flaws isn't news. I said that already. But pretending the land-use rights, the homestead eligibility, the hometown fallback don't materially change a worker's risk calculation? That's idealism. That's ignoring the concrete for the sake of a slogan. You can critique the system and acknowledge its positive material effects.
I've just realised I've replied to you on another comment. I don't have time for people who brag about targeting random Chinese players in games, buying into propaganda to dehumanize us, then show up pretending to champion Chinese workers' dignity. So I'm just going to stop here and leave it at this.