World News
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
view the rest of the comments
I hate to do this, but I feel like Taiwan(numba 1) is doing this better than China(numba 4).
The Taiwan government is literally giving money to have kids. The more kids you have, the more monthly cash they give you. I think our president said something along the lines of "it's up to our country to take care of all children of Taiwan". I'm paraphrasing.
Not just cash, we also have infrastructure setup. Most malls, government buildings and public places have breastfeeding rooms. There is almost always a bathroom designated for people with children. There are even bathrooms set up with small tiny toilets. There is a designated area for kids to sit on the train. There are designated elevators for kids.
Plus healthcare is free/cheap so that helps.
If China wants more babies, it needs to start giving the people things that promote having kids. Unless you force them to have kids.... I guess because you can. Fuck the CCP.
South Korea has a similar strategy, although I think it comes as housing benefit and paid time-off.
The problem is that these economic incentives are relatively small. And they all come with the caveat that you have to... get married and take up a subservient role in child care and produce babies (the last bit in particular being extremely unpleasant and not something you can easily pay people to do).
By contrast, private employment in the professional sector offers a significantly better deal. Get more money than the miserly state stipend. Keep your independence. Don't tear your vagina in half producing a new baby. Enjoy your fucking life in an economy that is built to produce luxury consumerist experiences.
The article is paywalled, so its hard to say exactly what Chinese social policy isn't doing. But the country worked very hard to curb its population towards sustainability and to improve the outlaying regions of the country that was shedding peasant farmers in droves. Compare the population distribution of China to neighboring Japan, where a full 12% of the population lives in the capital city. Tapei is nearly as bad.
At some point, people are responding entirely to social pressures. I'm not going to try and have kids if I'm living in a closet on a peasant wage. Neither are folks in Europe or North America. We're all in the same boat in this regard. Post-industrial countries are all seeing a population shortfall, in no small part because they've compressed populations into these tiny spaces and given them barely enough to live on.
Add in the cultural shaming of "teen pregnancy" and what you're left with is asking a bunch of career-professional thirty-somethings to get off the career elevator so they can fuck like horny adolescents.
That's not going to work anywhere you try it.
Taiwan has paid time off for mothers(not dad's). Usually a month or so. There are no housing benefits in Taiwan that I know of. The incentive is def a small portion of how much a child costs, but it's not a little. I get like 8000nt a month directly deposited into my account. I also get schooling incentives. It is basically free cash that pays around 25% of my child's schooling/daycare.
China has a brutal 996 culture if you're lucky to even have a job. Nobody is going to start making babies when a VERY large % of your young population is unemployed.
That's, like, $250/mo American though, isn't it? Imagine giving up a career that earns you $10k/mo so you can spend your time as a daycare worker for 1/40th of that.
Hong Kong and Shanghai business sectors have operating managers that try to foist 996 culture on people, and there are enough young people who don't want to spend their lives on the farm willing to take the opportunity. But you by no means need to work a 996 in order to afford basic standard of living, outside of the high rent sectors in the bigger cities. You see similar work-till-you-drop attitudes across the Pacific Rim - in Japan and Korea and the Philippines and across the pond in California even.
There are plenty of American gig-economy workers and student workers and double-job-holding hard cases who work what amounts to a 996 in practice. As someone who tried to work while in college and hold down two jobs at once, early on in my life, I've seen it and lived it. A pure sucker's bet, as the pay in these jobs is routinely shit and all that extra work never amounts to any kind of career advancement - just burnout. But this isn't in any way unique to China, much less endemic.
Unemployment globally is at record lows. Demand for labor is ramping up as the Boomer generation retires and the smaller Millennial and Zoomer workforces matriculate into the industrial and service sectors. And, generally speaking, unemployed people (particularly high school/college drop outs) have more time and opportunity to fuck, not less. When you're young, hot, and broke, fucking is one of the only reliable forms of entertainment. Also, a decently paid way to make a living.
But Western neoliberal culture hates when young people have kids, and both the economy and the legal system exist to punish you for it. Everything from tax laws to workplace advancement are predicated on you giving every ounce of time to your career. Dating, leisure, hobbies, and parental leave all come with a host of knock-on economic penalties and social stigmas.
Its not the unemployed people who are having trouble finding the time and opportunity to make babies. Its far more often the upwardly mobile who have to put off starting a family time and time again, because the economic costs grow considerably as you rise up the socio-economic ladder.
China wants people to move from rural areas to cities, which is why they forcibly move them from rural areas to cities.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/asia/chinas-great-uprooting-moving-250-million-into-cities.html
Given their development patterns, it more appears that Chinese planners want the cities to move to rural areas. The article you're citing is describing mass modernization in some of the most remote corners of the country. Northern Hebei abuts Inner Mongolia. Liaocheng is basically China's Iowa.
Did you even read the article? They are redeveloping historically agricultural land into urban industrial centers, primarily for the purpose of increasing output in these agricultural territories. Farmers are moving from underdeveloped ranch homes to fully electrified and transit-connected tower blocks of their own accord. In fact, one of the bigger complaints in China is the political economy around folks jumping the queue in order to get into these new luxury units faster.
This is a sentiment that's sharply divided rural and urban communities in China for decades, and which has contributed to a gray market of labor moving from poorer rural neighborhoods to richer urban centers that the state is hoping to discourage.