Summary
Many Americans joining China’s social media platform RedNote are encountering strict censorship uncommon in Western platforms.
One non-binary user had a post asking if the platform welcomed gay people removed within hours.
Posts on LGBTQ+ topics, fitness photos, and sensitive cultural content have been censored, frustrating users unfamiliar with China’s moderation rules.
RedNote is hiring English-language moderators to handle the influx. While some users enjoy cultural exchange, others criticize restrictions.
Analysts see RedNote’s growth among US users as a soft power win for China.
Yep, hopefully they see that just because the US is shitty that China can’t be worse.
They both suck equally in my book
Then you have successfully fallen for china’s propaganda.
Living and working conditions in China for most citizens are horrific, far beyond even the worst problems we see in the US.
Source: have pooped through a hole in the bottom of a moving train in China, and also visited a foxconn
jailfactory.At least they have a train…
The train is for city folk to get between cities, rural folk can’t afford it.
Sorry, but that sounds like an upgrade to me. Pooping has gotten so boring lately, but that sounds exciting! I’d pay good money to experience taking a miles-long dump.
Imagine you’re lost in the Chinese wilderness
“I can smell the train tracks!”
The CCP think of everything
Removed by mod
There’s a train in Belgium with an open hole for the bathroom? What year was this in?
Ive been to China for work. Must be why they have mega cities there. Couldn’t be poor people exist in both countries. Never said I like the Chinese government.
There are more Chinese people living on less than $10 per day than total Americans.
The median household income is close to 1/10th of the US amount.
The US poverty situation simply cannot compare.
They also have a population of over a billion people. What misleading point are you trying to make? The U.S. is literally the richest country in the world.
The point I’m trying to make is in relation to the original comment that stated that both countries suck equally.
They do not suck equally, and it’s not even close.
Dude, I grew up poor as dirt in this country. You can suck an egg trying to tell me that.
You really don’t understand how “dirt poor” in America is still better than “dirt poor” in China.
Dirt poor in China literally means a dirt floor, and often dirt walls. Not dirty, but actual floors and walls made of hardened mud. No running water, no electricity, and backbreaking labour to scrape together enough rice to survive on.
Even a lot of employed Chinese people have it bad, there’s a term they use called 996 in China. 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. It’s technically illegal but is a widespread practice for employers in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
Even homeless people in NA have it easier than millions of these workers.
And just what were they making in that Fozconn factory? Ohhh American electronics.
Actually foxconn makes a ton of the low-cost android and android go phones used in China, India, Indonesia, and Africa. Many of the phones made by foxconn (like HMD/Nokia for example) barely register as having sold units in the US.
How does that make it any better that the Chinese government lets it happen?
Okay I hate China as much as the next guy but this can’t be true. CCP treatment of a small subset of its citizens is horrible, but they can get by despite that because they’re able to competently run the country for the rest of the population. There’s an implied consent here of the sort you typically see in stable dictatorships.
It can be true. There are more Chinese people living on less than $10 per day than there are total Americans.
Absolutely not a China stan or anything. I’m pretty solidly against any government that allows the existence of billionaires. But judging a system by the amount of us dollars people live off of is a pretty metric. I have 100 monies, does that buy me a condo or a condom? I have 100 million monies, can I afford to eat tonight? Depends on the cost of living, the inflation rate, so many factors.
What percentage of their populace is homeless, has access to clean water, has access to the Internet? Or if you’re dead set on using the amount of people living off a set amount of dollars, at least provide some info on what 10usd gets you in China, and if there’s a big difference depending on geography?
Again, not a China stan, I think their censorship is shitty, I think their about as socialist as Nebraska, and that the Chinese government has hurt the socialist movement pretty severely by leaning into capitalism and abandoning any truly socialist ideals in exchange for international strength. In fairness, I’m also not a fan of the US. Just so you understand my position here. I’m not jumping to the defense of either, they certainly don’t need my help.
You can google these things yourself if you wanted.
About 90% of the Chinese population has access to clean water, which means around 140 million people still do not, and that’s by China’s own reported numbers and standards. It’s probably worse than that in reality.
There are more Chinese people without access to the internet than the total US population, About 77% have access, and that metric does not measure households with internet, it’s just people who have ANY access, including using a cheap phone only at public WIFI locations.
Of course there’s a big difference based on location, some cities on the coasts are exceptionally wealthy compared to rural inland areas.
The point wasn’t that I wanted the info, friend. The point was to demonstrate how shitty a metric X USD is.
You gotta take into account cost of living differences there or you’re not making much of a point. There are countries in the world where living off 10 dollars a day would make you solidly upper middle class. I’d know; I come from one of them. Either way your claim that living conditions for “most citizens” are horrific doesn’t hold much water when their middle class is still one of the fastest growing in the world.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, this seems pretty irrefutable and apolitical haha
Their middle class is one of the fastest growing in the world simply because so many people are still in poverty.
They have 140 million people (around 10%) that don’t even have access to clean water, and about 20% that don’t have access (any access) to the internet.
Even if you take into account PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) Chinese citizens, the median Chinese family is FAR worse off than the Median American.
Not equal, China is better at censorship, tracking, and social pressure. They own the corporations and businesses. Go to other countries to kidnap their citizens that talked bad about them.
US corps own the government, not seeing how that’s better. Also, the US does kidnap people who they don’t like internationally as well.
What if we didn’t do oppression olympics and needless political division for 5 minutes. Every gov sucks in its own way, so do corps, but people, including Chinese people are awesome.
They suck and excel at different things. For example the US doesn’t have high speed rail while China doesn’t have military bases around the globe.
Actually the Chinese high speed rail is littered with issues. Safety is obviously an issue, most stories that escape the bubble and make it west are about steel quality in the tracks causing cracking and closures.
The other issue is economics. Sure, China has a lot of high speed rail, but a lot of it goes nowhere important, connecting small cities where a normal train line would have been more economical and practical for the sole reason of claiming more high speed rail than any ither country. This has lead to a huge expansion in the governments “hidden debt” to over 1 trillion usd from the rail line operator alone. This is only for laying the lines themselves does not even account for new trains or maitenance or stations and services.
Also, if the recognized speed of high speed rail is 125mph like wikipedia says, America has a decent amount, it just so happens large cities are spread apart across the continent and flying is more economical than high speed rail.
Can’t say anything about quality issues.
I can say a few things about the economics. It doesn’t matter whether some or all of this rail is economical or not. Countless infrastructure projects around the world are built without them being economical. The half-a-trillion US interstate highway network was likely not economical either. Infrastructure like that has two important purposes. One’s to support future use. Given the speed with which cities have appeared and filled with people in China, or expanded in the US, a rail line or a large highway corridor support this urbanization. Urbanization creates significant economic growth. The other purpose is finding work for people who then spend their wages in the rest of the economy. So long as there isn’t shortage in real resources - people, concrete, iron, etc. - spending money for this increases domestic consumption and therefore economic growth. Functionally doesn’t matter if the money was created via debt or printed. You can cancel or pay that debt by printing the amount. The debt is typically created out of thin air anyways. Western counties used to this too prior to the neoliberal era when there was slack in the economy. These days we have a lot of bullshit jobs that serve a similar purpose. I think both things considered, HSR buildout in China is solid long term planning, despite of its growing pains.
On what’s high speed rail, I’m thinking ETR500/1000 like the Frecciarossa 1000 in Italy. Those regularly go at 300kph. Looking at Amtrak’s wiki:
It seems only parts of the Northeast Corridor get close to that. There’s plenty of geographic high speed rail opportunity in the US that would eliminate short haul flights which have the worst carbon footprint of all flights. There’s no public investment appetite for it. There’s barely enough public funding to maintain the existing roadway infrastructure. Plus I’m sure airlines donate good money to government officials to ensure HSR isn’t a threat to their profits.