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Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

bbc.com

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Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#71

Post by vthallam »

nathanyukai wrote: post #57
teknopaul wrote: post #46

I went to China and everyone i met was doing 9-5 monday to friday. A school leaver with no qualifications in his chosen career finds his first job is crap is not really world news. Change jobs and hang in there kid. China's unemployment rate is lower than the uk where this article originates. You have labour laws. The worst expected unpaid overtime hours i ever worked or saw worked was in a bank in London. 885 was to…

I'm surprised with your experience. I'm chinese and almost everyone I know work for extra hours regularly, without any extra salary. It's definitely a bad work culture and being discussed a lot on varies chinese forums

> chinese forums

Curious on whether these forums are moderated or monitored by Govt? And are there any online places where people can discuss without fear of the Chinese govt?

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#72

Post by jadedhacker »

phyller wrote: post #62
avcdsuia wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are even not allowed to have feminist organizations, any non-governmental groups with powers are considered threat to this country.

It was a joke. He was implying that if the workers took hold of the means of production, they could displace the capitalist bourgeoisie that are exploiting them. Then they could set up some sort of People's Republic, with a single, communal political party that represents the people, not the powerful minority. They could call it the "People's Republic of China". That would solve everything, what could go wrong? Commu…

Does it look like the workers own the means of production in China or is it a mix of government and private capitalists? If so, that's state and private capitalism. If the workers own the means of production it means they literally are the managers of the factories in a democratic fashion. You wouldn't see much useless overtime if that happened.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#73

Post by pishpash »

sloxy wrote: post #66
jsemrau wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, who "wants" to work overtime ? Most European work cultures survive well with a great work-life balance.

sure but it's slowly being eroded by the americanisation of companies & management styles. salaried workers being exempt from paid overtime in most European countries has turned in to a joke. Instead of just being used to deal with "emergency" situations, it's used to coerce extra work for free.

That's exactly it, overtime is so normalized that planning never takes an 8-hour workday into account, with the obvious result of a frequent need to go to overtime to achieve basic business goals.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#74

Post by Install_Gentoo »

imglorp wrote: post #25
ausjke wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gosh this sounds like a revolution in the cooking state, is this totally true? maybe not that bad I hope. the big problems are the debt and the house bubble, one of them blows up will cause serious issues, so far so good it seems.

Last time they stood up to speak, 10,000 students were murdered in public to make an example. They might think twice now.

btw, those students were communists protesting the privatization of collective farms among other things under Deng.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#75

Post by NyrIsNotDead »

1_800_UNICORN wrote: post #33

Very interesting article, but I was disappointed that the article stated that the millenial only-children of China are "outspoken", "pampered", or "self-centered". I don't believe that any of those terms apply to people who are fighting against working 72 hours per week for low pay. This is a case of basic human rights. The words that come to mind to describe the folks who are fighting this fight are "proud", "resili…

You filthy american can suck my cock

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#76

Post by l33tbro »

imglorp wrote: post #25
ausjke wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gosh this sounds like a revolution in the cooking state, is this totally true? maybe not that bad I hope. the big problems are the debt and the house bubble, one of them blows up will cause serious issues, so far so good it seems.

Last time they stood up to speak, 10,000 students were murdered in public to make an example. They might think twice now.

Indeed. They also didn't have the omnipresent surveillance back in 1989. Hard to imagine how the student movement back then would have gained momentum using today's communication tools (with the government backdoors and all).

Surveillance and an all-powerful regime has well and truly snookered the Chinese, and it seems their autonomy will not improve for a very long time.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#77

Post by golergka »

ionised wrote: post #64
merpnderp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-preservation is the most selfish thing you can be centered on, and it is absolutely ethically and morally correct. Being self-centered is what makes free markets successful, as in pitting your self interests against others, brings out the most productive aspects of everyone involved.

This is wonderfully ideological. I'm surprised people still believe this stuff. Free markets are successful because people are self-centred? The last 40 years or more should have been enough time to see that humans are not just machine-like self-interested information processors that respond to the market, they do behave altruistically and will co-operate when the purpose is worth it. It's this naive insistence that…

Of course people will cooperate: it's in their self-interest. It's rational to recognize positive-sum situations and cooperate.

It's also rational and serves your self-interest to act "altruistically", as your empathy is a basic biological instinct that you can't really fight against, just like hunger or sexual desire. But just like with hunger or sexual desire, letting a biological instinct dominate your whole life is unhealthy and, tbh, pretty stupid.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#78

Post by eeZah7Ux »

ionised wrote: post #67
0xffff2 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Which parts of that apply to any western country? The US (where I live) certainly has its problems, but none of the things described by the original comment apply widely in the US.

The surveillance of citizens and credit scores don't apply to the US? Or the obscene ballooning of rents without a corresponding increase in wage? Absurd overtime expectations?

Spot on. US introduced credit scores even before China.

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#79

Post by emodendroket »

ekianjo wrote: post #51
1_800_UNICORN wrote: post #33

Very interesting article, but I was disappointed that the article stated that the millenial only-children of China are "outspoken", "pampered", or "self-centered". I don't believe that any of those terms apply to people who are fighting against working 72 hours per week for low pay. This is a case of basic human rights. The words that come to mind to describe the folks who are fighting this fight are "proud", "resili…

> This is a case of basic human rights. There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week. For most of human history people lived in abject misery and precariousness and in comparison 72 hours a week and most folks having all the comfort of modern city life is not as bad as it sounds like.

In ancient cultures it was considered normal to leave a baby to die if you didn't want to raise it. Should we bring that back too?

Re: Young Chinese are sick of working long hours

#80

Post by adinobro »

ausjke wrote: post #20
yakuza00000 wrote: post #17

Poor Chinese Millennials. They are frustrated their country turned dictatorship. They are constantly monitored by the big brother, social credit score, public cameras that have facial recognition. Their words censored by wechat, and the great firewall. If they say something wrong, they will be watched and put on no travel list. There's no moving up the ladder; they're stuck trying to buy a $500k house with a meager $…

gosh this sounds like a revolution in the cooking state, is this totally true? maybe not that bad I hope. the big problems are the debt and the house bubble, one of them blows up will cause serious issues, so far so good it seems.

No it isn't actually true. Roughly 80% of Chinese people are happy with the direction the country is going vs 40% in the USA.

Most people don't care about censorship and the ones that do can get around it. From their point of view, it is no different to the NSA or the cameras in the UK (way more than China).

Most Chinese people I know own a house (more like a shack) BUT it is out in the countryside. They want to move to the city where apartments are more expensive and there are more opportunities.

They look at their parent's life and their life is a lot better. The ones that have enough money (not all of them) generally move to another country since they can afford it. The ones without money don't care.

The pollution is bad but at the same time China is putting more money into green energy than any other country. Every bus in the cities are being sent to the country or scrapped and replaced with electric busses (more than every other country combined).

As far as the debt goes it is something they worry about. At the same time, it is lower than the USA debt. The housing bubble is also an issue but they are building millions of apartments unlike other cities in the world.

Basically, the working class is currently better off but they have the same problem that the USA has right now. Lots of students graduating from universities without enough high paying jobs to match.

Technology scales really well so you don't need a lot of workers. You need a lot of low paid works ... same as in other countries.

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