Comment by rcpt
1 day ago
I see countless US stories about how "family farmers defend themselves from evil development" or "Oakland residents suffer the effects of global trade booming in their city". But when I read about China's incredible growth nothing like that is ever mentioned. Why is that?
Chinese citizens actually can stand up to private developers. Not so much stuff like the Three Gorges Dam. The developers just build right around them. It pops up as a single photo with one of these homes on reddit sometimes but CNN ran a story a decade ago, there's even a name for the way the home sticks out. https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/19/asia/gallery/china-nail-house...
The CCP has a pretty tight grip on the domestic narrative. The farmers in China have no agency to complain. US farmers, on the other hand, are a powerful constituency, especially the consolidated, corporate entities.
because it's not evil development. what i have seen that actually happens is that the farmers get enough money to build a new house. it is based on the size of the house they had in the village which lead to the curious situation that people expanded their buildings even though they knew already that their village was slated to be wiped.
then the farmers pool their money and build multistory apartment buildings not far from the area where their village was so they are not being chased away and left helpless.
Multiple things at play here
For candid Chinese dissidence there are a couple of tolerated zones on wechat, like an American Embassy’s wechat page. Its not protected, people just use it that way sometimes. And you just have to learn some of the slang.
There are in person clashes sometimes. The municipal level isn’t as quick to seem every little action as an affront to the territorial unity of China, which is against the Chinese constitution.
The social safety nets are very expansive and work decent for the population. Housing, healthcare, busy work for income.