> No amount of media can paper over the fact that your life sucks.
1. A Chinese citizen experiences rising living costs.
2. Their social media feed is filled with videos of Americans struggling with medical bills, homelessness and housing costs.
3. They start feeling like they're better off by comparison.
4. Their satisfaction with their own country may increase without any improvement in their personal circumstances.
If media ownership was meaningless, governments and oligarchs wouldn't spend so much effort controlling it.
[–] yogthos 12 hours ago
[–] za_creature 11 hours ago
China's rise has been nothing short of meteoric, and I applaud them for it. I'm certain that their average standard of living is very high by most metrics, quite comparable and maybe even better than western countries. IT IS STILL NOT A DEMOCRACY!
At any rate, I'm going to stop arguing because you seem way too invested in praising the dragon, and not just in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50386836
[–] yogthos 11 hours ago
You appear to have an infantile understanding of democracy equating it with simply having the ability to vote.
It's also hilarious that you think you understand Chinese system better than people who actually live in China and call their system a democracy. The sheer amount of chauvinism required to hold such beliefs is astounding.
At any rate, stick to subjects you have a clue about in the future as to avoid making a clown of yourself in public.
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-peop...
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jone...
Social mobility in China being far better than in the US https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/ch...
The typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-ri...
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w231...
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growt...
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019...
And your whole narrative falls apart when we look at how MAGA actively voted against Trump once the war hit them in the wallet. Also, look at the riots happening all across Europe where the media tells people things are going great.