A horrible economy is crushing Chinese workers, and it’s bringing them to the brink.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
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Do you know lots and lots about China?
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So working in China sucks.
Of course, working sucks in a lot of places,
but few of them reach “install anti-jumping nets outside the windows to keep the employees
from offing themselves” levels of suck-i-tude.
Employers in China mistreat employees all the time.
These workers in 2019 are being punished by their bosses for not making their end-of-year
targets.
And China’s extreme 996 work culture that forces people to work from 9am to 9pm 6 days
a week or more to stay afloat certainly doesn’t help.
But people put up with it.
Why?
Because China’s declining population and economic woes mean that competition for jobs
is brutal.
You see, where in some countries a labor shortage might mean that workers can demand higher
salaries and still get jobs, in China, it just means that workers have to work even
harder just to keep their jobs.
And the pandemic only made things worse.
With the economy slowing down, competition for jobs has never been harder.
To illustrate just how hard it is just getting a job, one Chinese worker told the New York
Times about how she shelled out more than $5,000 and spent 20 months doing little but
studying.
“All for a [government] position that paid less than half what she used to make,” since
working for the government is seen as the safest option for job security.
Wow.
I’ve been doing this show for over a decade, and that was the first time I’ve ever heard
the Chinese government and “safe” used in the same sentence.
I don’t know whether I should gag or make a wish.
But if you ask me, that’s hardly an upgrade.
Nevermind that working for the government is basically serving genocidal communist regime.
Her new monthly salary of only $420 sucks, even by Chinese standards.
$420 isn’t a monthly salary.
It’s a tip Elon Musk would leave for the lolz.
And the memes.
This Chinese worker is just one of many workers who find themselves having to settle for less
pay.
One former marketing executive told the Wall Street Journal how, after his last employer
went out of business during the pandemic, he now has a job that only pays about $500
a month after taxes—about 20 percent of what he earned at his peak.
Meanwhile, he has a $770-a-month mortgage, among other expenses, so he took an extra
gig at a coffee shop that pays less than $4 an hour.
I’d say he could always move back in with his parents, but that also assumes that his
parents weren’t killed by China’s disastrous Zero Covid policy.
Money matters are even worse for rural workers, which make up a considerable chunk of China’s
workforce.
Scott Rozelle , a senior fellow at Stanford University, found that rural Chinese families
on average currently earn only 60 percent of what they made in 2019 before Covid.
Unemployment may be part of that, but if it is, you won’t find out from official Chinese
unemployment statistics, since the CCP doesn’t include rural migrant workers in the data.
Yeah, they don’t like harvesting bad data.
The only harvesting the CCP cares about is harvesting the organs of dissidents.
Which makes for the
Bleakest version of Stardew Valley ever.
But given that China’s National Bureau of Statistics officially states that rural workers
made up 295 million out of China’s 780 million workers in 2022, this isn’t something China
should be ignoring.
Urban or rural, people are earning a lot less money while also working more hours than ever.
This absolutely wrecks people’s health.
According to research conducted by the Chinese Sleep Research Society , more than 300 million
Chinese have sleep disorders, and nearly 40 percent of adults have insomnia.
That was back in 2016.
I’m willing to bet that has gone *way* up since the pandemic.
Wait!
Maybe those aren’t anti-jumping nets.
They’re hammocks.
Daaw, those bosses are considerate after all!
Lack of sleep has become such a problem that there’s an entire economy around it.
If someone in China offers you money to sleep with them, odds are it isn’t sexual.
They want you to knock them unconscious with a pipe so they can finally get some decent
rest.
Young workers especially are so sleep deprived that many are turning to singing bowls to
combat sleeplessness and stress.
“I fell asleep immediately when I lay down.
I have been working under great stress.
Due to my busy work (schedule) and anxiety, I could not go to bed until 2 or 3 am and
had to get up at 7 am for work.”
“Stress, anxiety and insomnia are the three words I hear most often from my clients.
Relaxation and happiness seem to be a luxury these days, people have forgotten how to achieve
them.”
And here I thought owning a home was a luxury.
Young homeowners in China see people sleeping on the street and think, “Luckyyyyyy.”
People are paying good money for this, and for good reason.
“If I don’t pay for these healing sessions, I might have to pay more for the doctor.”
Mmm, Communist utopia.
It's pretty sad that Chinese workers are pushed into this situation, but they’ve got to
make their money somehow.
Getting paid, though.
That’s another matter entirely.
I’ll tell you more after the break.
Welcome back.
Chinese workers work brutally long hours and get little to no sleep for minimal pay.
But some people can’t even seem to get their hard-earned cash.
Teachers and civil servants complain about delayed salary payments and reduced benefits.
So do doctors.
The same doctors who have to deal with the insomnia epidemic.
Here, you can see doctors perch in window frames in protest over unpaid wages in Sichuan
province.
This is bad for the CCP.
Because without doctors…
Who’s gonna harvest all those organs?
So why is the situation in China so grim for workers?
Well, as usual, at least part of the blame lies in the Chinese Communist Party .
Despite what Chinese state-run media may suggest about the economy…
The CCP has done a very shoddy job of handling it, before, during, and after Covid.
Chinese authorities stated in 2021 that the “996” work culture was illegal, but enforcement
is another matter.
And the economy just keeps getting worse and worse.
Rather than see an economic boom in 2023 and beyond like people predicted, China continues
facing a disastrous property market crisis…
…crippling debt problems…
…and tumbling exports.
It’s kind of like being promised a Playstation for Christmas, but instead all you get is
the knowledge that you’re never going to be able to retire.
Feliz Navidad.
It especially doesn’t help that China’s aggressive bullying and crackdowns on private
enterprise have a lot of people nervous…
…which, in turn, scares off foreign companies from directly investing into China.
In short, Chinese workers have the short end of the stick with a disastrous Chinese economy.
I’d say this is a nightmare, but you actually have to be able to get some sleep to have
nightmares.
Chinese workers are sick of it.
The CCP’s policies have led to things like the “lie flat” movement…which is simultaneously
symbolic *and* the only way to get some z’s while protesting…
…the “let it rot” movement…
…and the “involution” movement.
All of these were terms that trended online.
In case you don’t know what they mean, another way to put it is that Chinese workers, especially
the youth, went from putting very little effort into work , to not caring whatsoever about
work ...
…to feeling locked in an “endless cycle of self-flagellation.”
“the experience of being locked in competition that one ultimately knows is meaningless.”
Basically, a never ending spiral towards nihilism.
You know it’s bad when Chinese workers don’t enjoy reading Nietzschebecause they consider
him too upbeat.
Now, that feeling of pointlessness is turning into rage.
Anger is definitely boiling in China.
In fact, 2023 saw a whole bunch of worker protests…
…all over China.
Especially among manufacturers over things like wages.
Why?
People aren’t happy making less and working more?
Why can’t you just be zen and be satisfied with their increasingly horrible lives and
thank their leaders actively ruining their futures from their castle fortress ?
According to the China Labour Bulletin , a Hong Kong nonprofit that tracks workers’
movements in China, there’s been a surge of manufacturing protests in China.
By the end of 2023, the China Labour Bulletin reported almost 1,800 protests amid massive
layoffs, reduced wages, unpaid wages, and business closures in the country.
That’s more than double the amount recorded in the previous year.
Also, keep in mind the CCP is actively censoring things that it doesn’t want people to look
at.
And not just this.
Boy, it sure would make Xi mad if this were on a shirt, conveniently available at ChinaUncesnored.Tv/merchandise
Some footage showing Chinese protests gets scrubbed.
For example, when I tried to look at this particular footage of a July protest in Liaoning…
…I got this instead.
Trust me, it was supposed to show a Chinese protest, not filtered Chinese thots.
Also, this is further proof of how bad the economy is.
She can’t afford adult sized clothes.
She bought child-sized clothes, which barely cover her at all, the poor thing.
Chances are, there are a lot more protests that we’re unaware of.
Protests over the economy, and working conditions in general, could spell disaster for the CCP.
It hinges its legitimacy on promising Chinese people that they would find economic prosperity
as long as they submit to the Party.
The last thing it needs is too many people protesting, giving up on life, or even blaming
the CCP for their woes.
This should wake people up to the fact that communism, a system that claims to be for
workers, actually kind of sucks for the workers.
When you live in communism, the closest thing you get to a safety net…
Is one outside your office trying to keep you from offing yourself.
Now I’ve got a video I want to show you, but first, it’s time to show love to the
people who make this show possible, the China Uncensored 50 Cent Army—
Fans who support the show on patreon.com/chinauncensored.
As my way of thanks, I’ll answer their questions at the end of these episodes.
Today’s question comes from John Marcus Ellis “Chris: Does Xi Jinping work for the
CIA?
But seriously, w/ your Master's Degree in Music from NYU, why doesn't CCP just bribe
you w/ millionsof $ in record deals & concert tours?
Maybe it could team you up w/ Lang Lang & a chorale of honeypot girls for a tour of American
Think Tankis.
Or a China tour.
You could open for a C-Pop Boy Band.
Ever think about flipping for Yuan?”
John, I have been very open about my willingness to be bought off, but China hasn’t even
tried.
They’re missing their bet.
But so this is interesting—there might be a parallel universe where I did pursue a career
in music after getting my Masters in music composition from NYU.
Yes, that’s a thing I did.
Yes, it was a devastating financial mistake.
But since I always was always interested in China, the idea of traveling to China and
doing something with indigenous Chinese folk music did cross my mind—like a Bela Bartok
of China.
I bet the CCP would have been all over that idea.
That’s the kind of soft power propaganda they would love—taking Chinese culture and
twisting it into something for the Party’s benefit.
While the CCP can’t provide for the people, it does have loads of money to blow on soft
power.
So somewhere there’s an evil timeline Chris making some kind of crappy mashup of Western
and Chinese music funded by the Chinese state.
And I”m glad he isn’t me.
Thanks for your question and your support John.
And in my ongoing attempts to talk about controversial topics YouTube would otherwise censor—like
Chinese social media—I’ve been hiding them in gaming content in my new show Gamers
Unbeaten.
Help me beat the algorithm by clicking on this video, about a new game that’s Pokemon
with guns.
2nd amendment bros, eat your heart out.
And click on that orange button to support us on Patreon.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.