Posted on 02/01/2019 4:15:04 AM PST by vannrox
China is a land where society changes every couple of months. You leave a town, and come back in six months and all the roads are different. New buildings are everywhere. The kids are using new slang, and new apps and everything is radically different. Its kind of unnerving.
Foreigners come to China, and are amazed at how different it is compared to their expectations. Locals are totally immersed in the change and look outside China with wonder at how could anyone stand to live elsewhere where everything changes at a glacial pace. China is rushing head-first into the new year yikes!
Here are just some microvideos taken around China by normal people. All of the videos were filmed and collected in January 2019. By watching the microvideos you might get a mere hint at what is going on at the middle kingdom. Enjoy.
This first one is showing one of the many, many many Chinese soap operas being filmed. The Chinese love these historical dramas, and really, who can blame them. It is sort of like the King of Thrones on steroids. China is a nation with centuries of fighting, court intrigue, romances and horror. Its no wonder that the soap operas are so popular.
[video]
Whats going on here? I wonder. Is she racing to save her loved one? Is she fleeing from the army that will destroy her village? Is she on the way to deliver the magic sword to the hero? Who knows?
Here is BlackPink which is a very popular group in China these days.
Over the last few years the C-Pop, K-Pop, J-Pop and T-Pop have all kind of merged into a kind of standardized popularity format, all
(Excerpt) Read more at metallicman.com ...
Those guys are ok.
Interesting that the politics under Xi is becoming so bad that they are mentioning it and it’s consequences after being non-political for a long time.
“China was essentially on the right path...”
That’s debatable, but I know what you mean.
“... until Xi Jinping arrived”
Yes. NeoMaoist.
I recommend reading this and watching the video clips. I’ve had two long stays in China in recent years and what this blog is describing is a lot closer to what I experienced than most of what I read about China on FR.
The author doesn’t shy away from the fact that China has an authoritarian government and will harvest your organs if they are so inclined.
“King of Thrones”?
No one is saying China is a liberal democracy. Nonetheless, in some areas, particularly economic, they enjoy more freedom than in the US, especially places like California and New York. China is particularly bad on religious freedom, and unfortunately, things seem to be trending poorly in other areas.
Provided you pay the appropriate people under the table.
Big companies, yes, but then in the USA they have to buy politicians to survive, too.
Not my experience - but most of my time has been in med device...so may be due to that.
rereading that makes it sound like I have experience in bribing officials....NOT so.
But I have experience with many suppliers who have told me that maintaining regular business order did require it. Moreso in the boondocks then the metro areas, but even in many of those.
Watch on youtube “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”!
..Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It is set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history, starting in 169 AD and ending with the reunification of the land in 280. ....”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms
Its an excellent Chinese made film on youtube.
They are a massive authoritarian state. Just disappeared a million into their retraining camps. State-owned businesses even when they pretend otherwise.
This thread and these ideas are wacky.
She is a minion in a matrix of death. Chinese factory slaves have put mor americans out of work than all democrat presidents combined.
The first tier cities are nice. Every modern convenience found in every western city. And just as expensive.
They are the jewels of China.
Its odd to see the cities change as you go down the tiers. Very indicative of a top down planning system. Small apartments, small bathrooms, dirtier and louder.
The countryside is the worst of all. Not sure what China will do for food once the current generation of farmers dies off because the youngsters are heading for the cities.
All in all China is both a third and first world country.
I’m thinking Xi Jinping sees himself as the next-generation communist. My understanding is he gave a long speech to the party about “communism with Chinese characters” and laid out his plan for the future.
I have no problem calling him the bad guy. He has the potential to be as disastrous as the “Great Leap Forward”.
“Interesting that the politics under Xi is becoming so bad that they are mentioning it and its consequences after being non-political for a long time.”
I was surprised as well. You know what they’re thinking is WAY worse than what they’re saying.
Both of them arrived in China before Xi Jinping took over and they are frustrated that he is dragging China back to the bad old days.
And yet small, non state owned business thrives in China while our own government is regulating business to death (or at least out of the country). You are right though, that it is much better to be a muslim in the US than China.
I love how they deal with illegally parked cars. Probably not too good for the car, but that’ll teach them to park illegally.
Formatting failure, though - why is it full of vertically-oriented videos in boxes so tall they won’t even fit on the screen in the browser?
Having to sign over one’s intellectual property to the state is not economic freedom. Those who deal with Red China care nothing for the human cost of satiating their greed; however, there are too many like-minded (to the Party) people running things in the USA now that make things too hard to do business here and thus China is posited as the “answer” to what is supposed to be a false dilemma.
How are they not state-owned? Whose word verifies that?
Yeah, the formatting of videos is a bug that happens from time to time. You can fix it by reloading the webpage in your browser.
The videos are all micro-videos from the TicToc application. Which are, maybe 99%, taken by cell phones ... thus the size.
As far as the cars go, yeah you run a risk of damage to the car. But then again, from the Chinese perspective, you shouldn’t have parked illegally in the first place. BTW. The Chinese are pretty “live and let live” about life, but I’ll tell you what, if you break a law, like drunk driving, you could be thrust into a world of serious hurt. If you drive while drinking, there are no points subtracted, and court hearings. No. You go directly to prison (not jail). Spend two years there, and then afterwards reapply for a driver’s license. Yikes!
I’m not saying US businesses are more free in China, though to some degree they are. Apple hasn’t signed over the IP for the iPhone to China in order to manufacture there. My point is that Chinese entrepreneurs have less red tape, regulation, taxation, litigation, unions, political correctness, diversity training, etc to deal with, so it is easier for them to start a business than for a comparable US entrepreneur to start a business in the US. It is one reason we celebrate 3% growth while China is disappointed with 7%.
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