this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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It wasn't limited to cities. Mostly, government intervention means to help people only in the cities, yes, but one of the really notable things about Chinese modernization is that the government pushed to have it spread out to the rural areas, too, with big investments in modernizing and improving basic quality of life everywhere.
I'm not sure if this is still true, but for quite a long time, they really were invested in trying to uplift the entire country, subject to the usual corruption caveats and provided the citizenry provided unflinching loyalty. The problem is that if you have absolutely no say in any of it, and if you get on the government's bad side for any reason, God help you. It doesn't even have to be anything you did. You're fucked and no mistake.
It's still pretty misleading. Yes, most rural Chinese have toilets and electricity now, but they still struggle to access Healthcare and education. About half of rural Chinese do not finish a high school equivalent degree, because they cannot afford the basics like books and pencils. And because they have residency status which prevents them from attending any college. Likewise, for these people to access real Healthcare beyond traditional woo, they need to find transportation into the city and pay bribes for single appointments with no guarantee of continued care. It's still a very tough life and looks nothing like what the west considers "poor country folk."
Hm, do you have a source where I can read more about this?
Just about health care, I just looked around, and I found some outdated sources, and this: https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12939-023-01908-4
This is what I was talking about. It looks like in 2009, the CCP indentified that there was a problem in rural access to health care, took a big swing at fixing it, and it worked. My sort of stereotype of it is that for all their heinous treatment of anything that “threatens” them, they really do sometimes make sweeping policies which are just aimed at making things better for the average person, which the US as a general rule does not.
But I’m completely open to reading up about it. Maybe I am wrong in my picture.
This is based on personal experience seeing the lines of people outside the hospitals in Shanghai at 6am trying to get on the schedule for specialty care which only exists in the cities, and talking to my in-laws about it. I have personally never actually tried to obtain medical care with a rural hukou. It's possible that my view of this is incomplete, but I know for sure that people do travel long distances and pay bribes for specific kinds of care, since they are technically not allowed to use hospitals outside their residency.
Got it. Makes sense. IDK if "they're sincerely working on it" is even accurate, but if so, that isn't necessarily incompatible with "and it's sometimes still really bad."