What the Heck is Going on In Hong Kong?

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

7 hours ago, ir_fuel said:

Imagine having kids (I don't know if you do) and you have the choice between seeing them 2 full days every week (Saturday and Sunday) + a few hours every weekday or seeing them for 1.5 months without interruption but then you won't see them again for 10.5 months?

For me the choice is pretty clear. I'd rather work less hours a day and see my kids grow up, instead of "saving up time" and realising they grew 3 inches since the last time I could spend some quality time with my family.

You certainly have a point there.  I agree it's not ideal, but as people move towards more developed centers they probably do see their kids as much as they can.  If you look at the industrial revolution in the US or the Great Depression, times were tough and people had to make sacrifices.  I know people who work 12 hour shifts in Canada.  There are also Filipino people who move here to work in order to send money back home.  People adapt, and compromises have to be made for sure.  Maybe China will adapt a shorter work day in the future?  Hard to say.  They do seem to reinforce the work hard and be rewarded ethic.  Does it work?  China seems quite competitive in the global market.

7 hours ago, ir_fuel said:

This is oversimplifying things. Are you comparing killing sex offenders to putting away people in labor camps because they said something that is not in line with how the government wants you to think? "Your best behavior" is simply nodding yes to whatever you are being told. What country are you living in where you can get in trouble for sharing images containing Winnie the Pooh

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855

Over-simplifying would be saying that Communism is bad, Democracy is good.  I'm just trying to point out some things that seem to work over there.  It might be radical in thinking that communist policies can be effective, but when you look at the overall picture of how things are going over there as compared to elsewhere you do have to acknowledge that there are some deterrents to crime and as well as benefits to economic growth.  We all enjoy our Chinese made EUCs.  You've seen how Gotway and King Song employees work hard all day late into the night to get these wheels put out onto the market.  You don't see any other country making these in a competitive manner.  Why is that?

I constantly hear about convicted criminals who have killed people serve a short prison sentence only to be let go and subsequently repeat more crimes.  Capital punishment might not be effective in preventing crime, but it does seem to prevent repeat offenses plus it saves on prison costs to try to rehabilitate them.  I think if a person is taking other people's lives intentionally, they should forfeit their own as the penalty for doing so.  You got to pay to play.

I wasn't trying to defend the communist attempts at thought control/censorship/whathaveyou, but rather point out that there may be some things that they do which may be effective at dealing with certain situations. 

9 hours ago, ir_fuel said:

How trustworthy are those crime numbers, coming from China? Why would they be honest about this? There are countries on this planet where the leadership claims "we have no issues with homosexuals, because homosexuals do not exist here". I have a hard time believing these kinds of numbers, no matter how high or low they are. 

Also, hasn't the American justice system taught us that "an eye for an eye" apparently doesn't work to keep crime rates low? Apparently even the death penalty does not keep people from killing each other. I am all for severe sentences for criminals, but from a "prevention" perspective, it just simply doesn't seem to help a lot.

 

It could all be a lie, but judging on how they deal with crime it's probably not too far off the mark.  It's good to be skeptical of fake news, skewed reports, and propaganda on either side of the fence.  The death penalty may not prevent other people from committing first degree murder, but it is pretty darn effective at preventing the offender from doing it again.  I think that does count as a win?  If you capture a wolf that is killing sheep, do you put it in prison for 7 years and release it hoping it will become a better wolf, or do you put it down and know it will not re-offend?

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

44 minutes ago, LanghamP said:

China probably has the most school killings in the world. Typically a middle-aged Chinese man will take a knife and kill a bunch of school children. 

https://www.theweek.co.uk/97379/what-s-behind-china-s-school-knife-attacks

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/07/us/ten-years-of-school-shootings-trnd/

40 versus 356.  China's population of 1.43 billion versus US at 330,784,700.

Statistically, I'm not sure it's a rampant issue over there?

[ir_fuel]

9 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

You certainly have a point there.  I agree it's not ideal, but as people move towards more developed centers they probably do see their kids as much as they can.  If you look at the industrial revolution in the US or the Great Depression, times were tough and people had to make sacrifices.  I know people who work 12 hour shifts in Canada.  There are also Filipino people who move here to work in order to send money back home.  People adapt, and compromises have to be made for sure.  Maybe China will adapt a shorter work day in the future?  Hard to say.  They do seem to reinforce the work hard and be rewarded ethic.  Does it work?  China seems quite competitive in the global market.

The more you can exploit your workers the more competitive you are. The most effective way of advancing an economy is by using mass slave labor.

We already reached a point where some companies are looking for other countries to offshore production because China has become too expensive ...

Yet again, it's not because on a high level you are competitive that the people you "exploit" are happy. Your analogy with the industrial revolution is a good one. Or "back in the day" (where Trump wants to go back) when there was a lot of manufacturing / manual labor going on in the US, the US could be considered as "more competitive", but at what price? You think all those people working in mines lived happily until 85 years old and saw their grandchildren get married? I think @LanghamP can post a heap of youtube documentaries here showing how all that "competitiveness" destroyed the environment and polluted an enormous amount of people.

So yes, from an economic and financial viewpoint you are right IMO, but you can't breathe or eat dollars.

 

9 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

Over-simplifying would be saying that Communism is bad, Democracy is good.  I'm just trying to point out some things that seem to work over there. 

The more you can suppress your population, the less issues you will have globally. That makes sense. You just have to be on the "right" side to make the best of it.

9 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

It might be radical in thinking that communist policies can be effective, but when you look at the overall picture of how things are going over there as compared to elsewhere you do have to acknowledge that there are some deterrents to crime and as well as benefits to economic growth.  We all enjoy our Chinese made EUCs.  You've seen how Gotway and King Song employees work hard all day late into the night to get these wheels put out onto the market.  You don't see any other country making these in a competitive manner.  Why is that?

Because they have a huge manufacturing advantage. It has taken them a few decades to get there, but what IMO happened is that all the know how that got injected by Western companies going there for mass production got translated into the Chinese themselves becoming more invested and educated in those matters (because the market demand was and is gigantic) + the fact that they simply have a gigantic workforce that can churn out heaps and heaps of stuff for "cheap".

Also don't underestimate the amount of money the government poured into artificially inflating the economic growth. Look at all those ghost cities and shopping malls for instance.

9 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I constantly hear about convicted criminals who have killed people serve a short prison sentence only to be let go and subsequently repeat more crimes.  Capital punishment might not be effective in preventing crime, but it does seem to prevent repeat offenses plus it saves on prison costs to try to rehabilitate them.  I think if a person is taking other people's lives intentionally, they should forfeit their own as the penalty for doing so.  You got to pay to play.

I understand that point, but (I don't know why) I have read somewhere that the death penalty is actually more expensive than jailing someone for life. Don't ask me why. Could be complete nonsense, but I vaguely remember this.

The only problem with a death sentence is that you can't undo it if you are wrong, and we all know innocent people have been convicted.

9 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I wasn't trying to defend the communist attempts at thought control/censorship/whathaveyou, but rather point out that there may be some things that they do which may be effective at dealing with certain situations. 

Yeah, but you need to take the entire package, and IMO this has nothing to do with communism. In theory, you can be a communist country and not censor the internet.

9 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

It could all be a lie, but judging on how they deal with crime it's probably not too far off the mark.  It's good to be skeptical of fake news, skewed reports, and propaganda on either side of the fence.  The death penalty may not prevent other people from committing first degree murder, but it is pretty darn effective at preventing the offender from doing it again.  I think that does count as a win?  If you capture a wolf that is killing sheep, do you put it in prison for 7 years and release it hoping it will become a better wolf, or do you put it down and know it will not re-offend?

Yes, but we can agree that the best solution would be to make sure we have less animals transforming into wolves amongst the sheep.

[ir_fuel]

6 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

https://www.theweek.co.uk/97379/what-s-behind-china-s-school-knife-attacks

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/07/us/ten-years-of-school-shootings-trnd/

40 versus 356.  China's population of 1.43 billion versus US at 330,784,700.

Statistically, I'm not sure it's a rampant issue over there?

40 we know of.

[LanghamP]

40 minutes ago, ir_fuel said:

40 we know of.

School attacks in China is something you hear about mostly anecdotally from Chinese people. However, we don't know how common.

From the article @Hunka Hunka Burning LoveLove linked to.

The Chinese government also often blocks access to online news of the attacks. “Several were censored by state media for fear of copycat attacks, while online discussions were also blocked,” The Independent reports.

Shrug, no good idea how big it is. Personally I suspect it's high because most Chinese people I've talked to have gone to a school where that has happened, and almost all know some whose child was killed.

However, it's dwarfed by pollution deaths.

I remember being in Tianjin for two weeks at a sixth floor apartment and never seeing the ground because of the pretty white clouds below me.

Wait, those aren't clouds...

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

1 hour ago, ir_fuel said:

The more you can exploit your workers the more competitive you are. The most effective way of advancing an economy is by using mass slave labor.

We already reached a point where some companies are looking for other countries to offshore production because China has become too expensive ...

Yet again, it's not because on a high level you are competitive that the people you "exploit" are happy. Your analogy with the industrial revolution is a good one. Or "back in the day" (where Trump wants to go back) when there was a lot of manufacturing / manual labor going on in the US, the US could be considered as "more competitive", but at what price? You think all those people working in mines lived happily until 85 years old and saw their grandchildren get married? I think @LanghamP can post a heap of youtube documentaries here showing how all that "competitiveness" destroyed the environment and polluted an enormous amount of people.

So yes, from an economic and financial viewpoint you are right IMO, but you can't breathe or eat dollars.

Couldn't it be considered that one country's "mass slave labor" is another's "conglomerated employment initiative."  Why wouldn't a poor farmer's son want to move to the city to make a better income to help support his family?  As an agricultural country moves towards industrialization and modernization, there often is a shift of population from smaller centers to factory locations in bigger cities.  Where employment is available people tend to go.  Are they exploited?  Is the Red Army forcing men, women, and children at gunpoint to become cheap slave labor?  I don't know.  Maybe, maybe not, but I think it might be more maybe not?

There will be employee rights violations in any country where corporate head honchos see an opportunity to take advantage of an available workforce, but that struggle is not localized to China.  If you come from a poor town where there are no jobs, and someone offers you $1/hour to work at a nice EUC factory, wouldn't you take it to survive?  People in the US back in the days of the depression earned $17/week.  What may seem like slave labor wages to one person might actually be better than the alternative to another.  Keep in mind costs of living likely are not as high in some parts of China.

There always will be growing pains as countries develop their economy.  How would you do things differently if say tomorrow they said hey, we appoint @ir_fuel as Supreme Leader of the Communist Party of China?  Would you try to impose Western or Belgium work standards on all factory workers?  Switch to a democratic political model?  Legislate 8 hours a day max, overtime pay at 1.5, and declare a higher minimum wage?  At some point you start losing economic advantages I would imagine.  Would you give Hong Kong and Taiwan independent status?  Look at the city of Detroit.  Once it was a buzzing hub with 1.6 million people.  Now there's only about 620,000 with rampant empty houses foreclosed every where.  I don't think the people who left Detroit were that happy or exploited.  In the global market a country has to maintain a competitive edge to stay prosperous unless you close all borders and try to be self-sustaining, but I think that might be not without challenges.

 

[ir_fuel]

6 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

Couldn't it be considered that one country's "mass slave labor" is another's "conglomerated employment initiative."  Why wouldn't a poor farmer's son want to move to the city to make a better income to help support his family?  As an agricultural country moves towards industrialization and modernization, there often is a shift of population from smaller centers to factory locations in bigger cities.  Where employment is available people tend to go.  Are they exploited?  Is the Red Army forcing men, women, and children at gunpoint to become cheap slave labor?  I don't know.  Maybe, maybe not, but I think it might be more maybe not?

I didn't say it is slave labor in China. I stated that taken to the extreme slave labor is the best way to advance quickly. Think of it in "war" terms. Mass enslavement of prisoners / parts of the local or conquered population / ... Imagine how fast you can build a road if you have heaps and heaps of free workers that you can have work 16h / day 7/7. That's what I meant. In no way am I saying that this is what helps China! This is what helped other countries back in the day. As far as I know Chinese are free to go (within the rules set) and are not owned by anyone, so it can't be slave labor.

 

6 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

There will be employee rights violations in any country where corporate head honchos see an opportunity to take advantage of an available workforce, but that struggle is not localized to China.  If you come from a poor town where there are no jobs, and someone offers you $1/hour to work at a nice EUC factory, wouldn't you take it to survive?  People in the US back in the days of the depression earned $17/week.  What may seem like slave labor wages to one person might actually be better than the alternative to another.  Keep in mind costs of living likely are not as high in some parts of China.

See above  

 

6 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

There always will be growing pains as countries develop their economy.  How would you do things differently if say tomorrow they said hey, we appoint @ir_fuel as Supreme Leader of the Communist Party of China?  Would you try to impose Western or Belgium work standards on all factory workers?  Switch to a democratic political model?  Legislate 8 hours a day max, overtime pay at 1.5, and declare a higher minimum wage?  At some point you start losing economic advantages I would imagine.  Would you give Hong Kong and Taiwan independent status? 

I'd probably make Gotway and Ninebot stated owned, and take the engineers from Ninebot and force them to work with the ones from Gotway to make a very fast waterproof EUC that is built with correct production standards in mind.  

Once that's done we'll think about the rest.

 

6 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

Look at the city of Detroit.  Once it was a buzzing hub with 1.6 million people.  Now there's only about 620,000 with rampant empty houses foreclosed every where.  

You can thank the US car industry for that.

 

Anyway, I have a feeling your entire post is based upon a miscommunication between us. So let me rephrase: no, China does not employ mass slave labor to advance its economy.

[LanghamP]

7 hours ago, ir_fuel said:

This is what helped other countries back in the day. As far as I know Chinese are free to go (within the rules set) and are not owned by anyone, so it can't be slave labor.

Chinese aren't slaves, but they aren't free to move around their own country either. The Chinese government sets strict limitations on moving away from your birthplace; for instance health care is charged at a higher rate from your hometown (but in the US we do the same, with in network vs out of network). Another thing is they carefully check passports when boarding trains or planes, then you can go or not go based upon your social credit score. I suppose you could walk.

Being staked to the land you're born on sounds an awful like serfdom. Chinese who aren't serfs sound suspiciously like nobility.

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

Here’s an article that explains a bit more detail about the HK/China situation.

https://thediplomat.com/2019/10/can-beijing-and-hong-kong-rejuvenate-one-country-two-systems/