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Comment by wordofx | Hacker News Reader

600m people in China live in poverty despite claims of the CPC eliminating it. Traveling around China you see this. Showing off main cities is not proof that people don’t live in poverty.

Low crime is simply not true. Most crimes are not reported or swept under the rug as local statistics are reported back to the central government and no one wants to look bad. But wow if you have Weibo you can see some pretty horrible stuff daily before it’s deleted. Nothing worse than seeing 2 woman hacked to death with an axe because of road rage. Cheap food in China comes with a lot of trade offs such as quality. Many shops recycle left over hotpot for the following day. Gutter oil is a real thing. Fake meats or meats from other animals is a real thing.

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> Showing off main cities is not proof that people don’t live in poverty.

The claim was:

> Urban life in China, excluding pandemic times, is better than urban life in the states.

“Showing off main cities” is a perfectly reasonable thing to do to support this claim.

So it's the Dubai argument. "The city life is great, especially for ex-pats, don't mind what's being swept under the rug over there".

Irrelevant argument because how rich people (subjects we're talking about) live in rich areas (i.e. main cities) =/= how poor people live in poor areas. Frankly average Chinese poverty in T4+ villages is pretty quaint compared to seeing junkies everywhere. It's more humbling, not disturbing. Of course you can find statistical outlier crimes on social media, but daily life is not filled with the levels of social decay and shithole experiences in western urban areas that PRC diasphora frequently makes comparisons to on social media. It maybe a bubble, but it's a cozy bubble that rarely gets pierced in daily life for the well off.

One of the benefits to China is the low drug use. But you’re blind if you can’t find insane amount of homeless people in Beijing or shanghai. Or that most people there are struggling. If you want to live with tunnel vision then it’s an amazing place to live. (Shanghai cos I didn’t live in any other city. Only travelled)

Lots of people are struggling but you won't find many truely "homeless", you'll find a lot of migrant/informal workers who has homes in rural areas slumming it in the big city to save $$$ so they can remitt more back home. Most with remotely sound mind / physically able can scrounge up $500 rmb for a shared bunk in a T1 shitbox. It elicits a different kind of sadness vs actual homeless. Generally state makes effort to "dump" the truly homeless due to feeble body/mind back with family. Not to be crass, local govs has been doing a very comprehensive job keeping "riff raff" out of sight out of mind etc... it's just a different type of experience/problem vs addicts and unsound people getting in your face downtown or stinking up transit every day. I'm not saying Chinese cities don't have their seedy side, or that a lot of regions still trigger developing country feels, but they are largely avoidable for the privileged - don't even need tunnel vision when local gov NIMBYs it for them. Like functionally PRC apartheid / hukou society, but major cities don't feel like your customary actual apartheid rich middle eastern city full of poor migrant workers everywhere. Or even many part of North American where it's painfully obvious some minorities are doing all the low end service work.

Gosh that's some propaganda.

Every country has homeless people. There are truly homeless people in China. You don't need to put it in quotes, either.

Who said there was no homeless? The reply was in context of major cities where one will very rarely see true urban homeless in major urban areas where well off spends there time. The migrant workers naive expats thinks are "homeless" are generally not - they have homes, they're just willing to occasionally slum it while working "abroad" - it's like saying backpackers who camp on side of road to save $$$ are homeless. They're manifestly not the same thing. Hence quotes.

Truly homeless exist, but statistically and visibly much less problem, because typical local gov very proactive/interventionist in moving them off streets... truely urban homelessness is like... not a really a social option... no right to be homeless. VS in west where homeless don't get cleaned up unless for the occassional politically motivated reasons. In PRC it's default, homeless get detected fast -> get moved into local shelter system where system ids them and tries to guilt trip family into caretaker roles -> can come with modest stipend to cover costs.

I guess I must be blind, I've never seen anyone identifiably homeless.

The government wouldn't allow encampments, so how can you even tell?

Drive around at 2am. I haven’t lived in China since pre-covid but back then you would see in the early morning police coming to wake them up and move them along. But middle of the night you can drive around see people sleeping under bridges, doorways, alleys, tunnels. Never somewhere permanent. As there is an image to maintain in the cities.

Making homeless people illegal doesn't mean they don't exist.

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