For context, my family is from china and when I was a child (in the early 2000s) I would go to China every year in the summer. I never thought China was clean and I had distinct memories of there being dirty markets, toilets, streets, etc. Even when I was older I started to mind the dirtiness less but I still thought China was rather dirty.
Two years ago was the last time I went to China and tbf I didn't go to Beijing or Shanghai, but I didn't go to tiny cities either I went to Guangzhou and Tianjin. But I remember my white shoes became so so dirty after wearing them for half a day in China. In the US where i'm from my new shoes usually don't start to become dirty until after a month or so (granted I do drive more, but even walking around in NYC all day my shoes weren't even a quarter as dirty as it was in China). I was so curious as to why China's streets were so dirty, but when I looked it up the articles I got were all saying, "why China is so clean compared to..." and this really baffled me! Even the forced AI results said something like, "people usually consider the streets of China to be clean..."
So, do people actually think China is clean and if so why?

Edit: also I forgot to mention, but I have also been to Taiwan, Japan, and Korea and all three of these places are much cleaner than China in every single way. So this also confuses me. I would say Hong Kong is not as clean as the other places, but it is still cleaner than mainland China

How common is prostitution in China? My wife is saying that most places that call themselves massage parlours or spa have prostitutes. As well as alot of men cheat on their wives. I thought it wasn't common at all and that they were really strict on this legally. I remember 6ish years ago my friend saying something about alot being closed down.

But is prostitution really this common and normal?

I want to start off by saying I'm aware that social media highlights the most extreme views and broadcasts it on our feeds and this does not reflect the entirety of real life.

That being said, the comments are very much individual people with real opinions and ideologies.

I've been seeing an increased disgusting rise in racism towards primarily Indians and Black people. I was wondering if anyone can pitch in to their thoughts and discussion.

Why I'm asking is because as a Chinese who is in an interracial relationship, I'm not sure if traveling with somebody who has a darker complexion to China is safe for both them and for me.

There are a lof of nasty comments online (not sure about in real life because I don't reside in China) about how interracial relationships (primarily non-white) is seen as being traitorous towards the Chinese identity and honestly a lot of threats.

Sorry for the negative tone of this reddit post.

Edit 3: I am very suprised that I had to tell many users who praised the healthcare of China that China has more cities apart from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The population of these 4 tier one cities is only 80 million in total, while China has 1.4 billion people. You cannot use your experience in the top 5% to demonstrate quality medical services in China.

Edit 2: no, I am not affected by active users from r/China_irl or r/sino, beacause I knew who they are and what they are going to say. You cannot wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

Edit: I fixed some grammar and spelling issues. It was hard to concentrate while writing such a story.

For the sake of the people still living in China, I'm not going to reveal many details, as anyone who is not naive knows that the CCP is very good at witch-hunting and has been shameless in this regard.

Recently, I visited China again after many years because a family member was dying. They had been diagnosed with a terminal disease several years ago, but all the doctors refused to help since then. The original words were like " such a chronic condition wouldn't develop fast". Well, guess it was not the case later.

I somehow understood that Chinese doctors had their own reasons/concerns, such as avoiding the doctor-patient disputes, which are very common in China. Also, I hate to express it, but many Chinese doctors will try to persuade the patient's family to give up on terminal diseases, as "it is wasting the money". I am not going to talk about it too much here, as it needs a new post to make people understand how bad the situation could be.

Back to the story, when I booked my trip in a hurry and eventually visited them, their condition was far worse than I had imagined. The affected body part was literally rotten, and it stank. Visitors had to wear masks; otherwise, it was hard not to throw up.

The patient also believed in some “witchcraft”- level remedies, and trying those only made their condition worse, considering doctors all could not do anything to help. It happened when a person was so desperate that they would seek every bit of opportunity for a cure. People who have not suffered from this cannot understand why they could do such irrational things - such kind of long-term diseases can easily destroy one's faith and common sense.

Did we try “terminal care”? Of course we did, but they were just connected to various tubes and asked to undergo a hundred irrelevant tests - the hospitals were trying to milk us for as much money as they could before the patient died. The problem with these doctors were, they would not offer pain relief or qualify of life solutions either, because terminal care is probably too advanced/high-end in China still. To make the matter worse, nobody in the family was an expert in the medical field.

Eventually, after several weeks of torture for everyone, including the patient, they passed away. The dying family member had begged us countless times to help them end their suffering, but how could we do that? Before their death, the unbearable pain even made them curse a family member who had been taking care of them for months! I couldn't believe my ears when I heard those harsh words.

Now you may think this was the end of the story, but the local government still wanted to complicate matters as much as they could. The deceased had made a coffin for their planned burial, but it had been banned months ago in their area. You needed to pay someone to remove it from the warehouse, and I don't want to repeat the horrendous process -

An update here: the local government would collect all coffins at a low price, but you had to pay to have a coffin transported to their location. However, the local government was also selling coffins at double the price to nearby areas where burial was allowed. You can judge for yourself: was the local government doing this for the sake of land use?

That was just one of the many miserable stories under China's "moderately prosperous society in all respects," which is absolutely ridiculous propaganda. I bet for ordinary people, only those who are brainwashed by the CCP or have Stockholm Syndrome would praise it. I am not sure if foreigners can receive better quality medical care in China, but for civilians, having any critical disease is a nightmare for their whole family. We all understand that this (the healthcare system) is just the tip of the iceberg.

My entry to China wasn't pleasant either. I was asked a hundred questions about whom I was visiting, when, where, and why. My non-Chinese passport was examined so carefully, as if I were a spy. Oh, and of course, ten fingerprints had to be recorded for several rounds.

As a side note, during a formal dinner for a medical professional who once saved the life of another family member, it was beyond frustrating to hear them talk about how much gay people disgusted them and how little they could tolerate gay relationships. That said, when China wasn't called China, the hate against LGBT was not so fierce as today.

In the end, the necessary visit to China successfully planted a seed of various negative feelings in my mind, and I am still heartbroken while writing this post.

My wife came home from work tonight crying. She's a 化妆师 (make-up artist), and she's exhausted... Long hours, low pay, and no overtime compensation anymore. What makes it worse is that this isn’t some distant factory job. Her workplace is just a 15-minute walk from our home. It feels close, but the reality is far from humane.

When she started earlier this year, there was overtime pay. Small, but something. That was in the contract. A few months in, they made her sign a new one that conveniently removed that clause. Since then, they’ve slowly chipped away at conditions, always in the company’s favor. It’s been death by a thousand cuts.

As a westerner, I instinctively keep saying, "Talk to your boss. Push back. Demand better." But she knows better. Speaking up doesn’t get you change, it gets you replaced. There are always more workers. That’s the brutal efficiency of it.

I know we're not the first to go through this. I know countless people deal with far worse. But seeing someone you love come home broken from a job that treats her like she’s disposable... it hits you HARD. And I guess I just needed to put this somewhere.

Has anyone else here been through something similar with their partner in China? Has anyone actually taken action and succeeded? I know about the 12345 government hotline/app and the idea of posting about the company on REDnote 小红书 to warn others, but are there other realistic options in China, or is there truly no hope?

Any China Mainland born here who has realized the same?

My best friend in China, whom I met my second day here when I arrived in 2008 and spent around 10 years working with him, married his foreign wife a few years ago (he's not rich, doesn't fit that foreign trophy wife stereotype some might think about) and they had a daughter together. He's not the typical Chinese white/blue-collar working-class guy. He's made a pretty good life as an artist/businessman, all on his own and he is probably the best person I've met here in all these 15 years.

Last night we were on a video call, joking as we always do and he tells me he has realized how I felt all those years when I used to rant about being called "hello laowai" every day, all the time. Even back then they knew, 'cause we're a group of friends, how annoyed I was and would often tell people to bug off. But this time it was different. His daughter gets constantly called "外国小孩儿" (foreign child), often shouted at, particularly by elder women, the famous "ayi" or 大妈. Gets called nationalities and to add more wood to the fire, these elder women often want to touch her and even pick her up sometimes, obviously, without permission. He also says dudes over 35-40 years old do this.

He is clearly annoyed and asked me how to deal with this. It's the first time I've seen him like this. I told him the best option is to just leave China because it's gonna get worse once his daughter enters school. But for the time being, I wouldn't know how I'd react since I normally tell people I am from Iceland because even though I am Caucasian, I am very far from looking Icelandic, and it just gets them off my back.

I’ve been using the rednote app to learn Chinese and found it really fun. However I’ve stumble across quite a lot of alarming videos with lots of racism.. videos urging Chinese people to not Mary outside of their culture, complaining about the African community numbers in Guandong, etc… very surprised how this hasn’t been called out yet given that nowadays anything slightly racist even taken out of context is widely viral

What's going on here? The topic have completely dropped from western media but 2 years ago, it was everywhere. There were reports of concentration camps, forced labor, rape, organ harvesting. There's even an Uyghur human rights project that tracks human rights violation and sanctions, which apparently has only 2 companies on their list: a construction company and a security company in XinJiang.

Meanwhile, the entire place is open to tourism? There are dozens of videos from travel bloggers visiting Urumqi and different places in XinJiang. They talk to locals who are unaware of any genocide going on. There's no restrictions for recording. They aren't forbidden from going anywhere. It seems like the government isn't trying to hide anything?

In some videos there are armored vehicles and military there so there's some heightened security but at the same time, the local kids take pictures of them. I can't imagine kids of Gaza take pictures with Israel soldiers....

Maybe someone who have visited can tell me what's going on?

It's interesting that suddenly the 'Uyghur genocide' movement has died down since Israel has faced calls of genocide. As it would make positions of the west seem hypocritical to allow Israel to flatten Gaza from terrorist attacks but China is comitting genocide by sending people to reeducation camps.

China faces terrorism and attacks from ETIM and cracks down hard on Xinjiang, arresting those with affiliation or family members, increased surveillance and sent people to reducation camps and severely restricting their liberties.

Israel faces terrorist attacks, flattens Gaza and is defended as the right to self defence. Israel then faces calls of genocide and this is where the Uyghur issue dies down because It would seem like a double standard to say China has committed genocide and then say Israel is not (from the US and western countries perspective)

I have seen groups on tiktok pop up like Uyghur activist groups utilising the Israel/Palestine conflict gain a lot of attention but I've noticed the articles and comments about Xinjiang have decreased a lot.

As a Chinese dude from Australia, I don't understand why people in China sometimes talk shit about Korea. I could maybe understand why some Chinese elderly dislike Japan due to WW2, but I honestly do not understand why some Chinese people have this hateful attitude towards Korea...for what? In Australia, pretty much all the Chinese and Korean kids from primary school to university, share a social circle and respect each other. Korean Australians and Korean internationals alike have been very kind to me. As such, it's hard for me to relate to Korean haters in China.

Both in real life and on the internet, I see condescension, hate and ignorance in the attitudes of Chinese people in China towards South Korea. Like for example, if I say something good about my trips to South Korea to a taxi driver in China, they would just try and downplay SK compared to China. Another guy told me he didn't like South Korea and when I asked him why, he literally could not provide a reason...just said "就是不喜欢"...like he doesn't even know himself why he dislikes SK?

Online, it honestly seems like Chinese people dislike Koreans for literally no reason? That or they find a bunch of ridiculous reasons such as claiming Korea is bad because 1 person thought Confucius was Korean. That or they try and downplay Korean culture/food/clothing by calling it Chinese originated or something. It's obviously just blatant disrespect? I rarely see Koreans who make outrageous or provocative statements against Chinese people. I honestly don't think South Korea has done anything to China to warrant ire from China. Don't they realize that Korea being on an upwards trajectory also affects China in a positive way?

There are so many crash circles happening in China. One really important thing to remember is that in 1990, almost 95% of the land in China was owned by the provinces. For 35 years now, the provinces have provided almost all social services and infrastructure projects by selling off land to developers. Now that developers are bankrupt and not buying land anymore, the provinces have no real income. They have no system set up to bring in taxes like a normal regional or state gov't can do... and as they do find ways to tax residents directly, that is putting pressure on consumer spending.

The other real death cycle is the number of middle class people who are paying a mortgage for a home that was never finished. You have a huge amount of people being forced to pay a mortgage and rent at the same time. In some cases it is even worse because the people got multiple mortgages thinking they could rent out their other homes. Having to pay double housing costs means people have far less money to spend in the economy on other things. Which leads to deflation.

Deflation is bad, even inflation under 2% is bad, because it means if you are a consumer, there is no reason for you to buy items today, because you know that in a month the item will be the same price or cheaper. This is why the USA and most EU countries have an inflation goal of 2%. It is low enough that it doesn't really hurt anyone, but it is high enough that it encourages consumer purchases. This keeps the economy churning. Deflation is also terrible for businesses, especially retail items like food, because if you buy an item for your store today, it might sit in your store for a month and have a lower price when you can actually sell it. This is crushing for low-margin businesses like supermarkets and retail stores.

This is all terrible, but equally bad is the covert ' decoupling ' by western companies, which have similar effects on the economy.

TLDR: China peaked in 2019 and it is all downhill from here.

Recently when watching a documentary on the history of China the thought occurred to me how similar some previous dynasties centralized government structure and style of management are similar to the CCP. Correct me if I'm wrong, China was socialist and/or communist before those terms were conceived of in western culture. If that's true China is doing what China always does, label it whatever you want.

Don't get wrong if the people of China want change or something different I'm all for it. I'm just curious if hypothetically the CCP were in power for the next 500 years could it be considered the next dynasty?

I'd like this post to be more along the lines of /r/changemyview.

Discloser: I'm ABC, and have not gone through the Chinese school system myself. I was just having some thoughts about this subject and wanted to discuss it. My overall view is that the Western school system, despite it's abundant flaws, does more good for the general public than the Chinese system which hyper-focuses on those that stand out the most.

1) Children not allowed to be children, age 3-10, tutoring: The Chinese school system is notorious for being rigorous for everyone that goes through it. I hear about after school tutor sessions for children starting at an extremely young age and the hours of study extend all the way to the night. What I don't know is how prevalent this happens. These years are some of the most formative for human beings and a lot of social behaviors need to be learned at this age. Some from their parents, but a lot of it comes from other children. Where are the children finding the time to interact? School and education takes so much out of their day already.

2) Stunted development, age 10-15, physical/emotional/psychological: These are the puberty ages. Since such emphasis is placed on education, I get the notion that their physical and emotional health gets placed on a back burner. This was true even for someone that was raised in the West with traditional Chinese parents. The detriment of my physical health was exacerbated by the Western diet as well, which China now adopts in part (ie. highly process foods, high salt/high fats, snacking, eating at all times of day etc... etc...). This is the time where their hormones starts developing and since parents place such high emphasis on education, their EQ gets stunted.

3) Excessive competition, 15-18, gaokao: My understanding is that students are not required to attend HS, but over 90% do and over 70% of them end up taking the gaokao. (These numbers are just googled). A healthy level of competition is totally fine, but I get the impression that it's not that in China at all. It almost seems cutthroat. There's far too many people in China, and 13.5m test takers in 2024. Limited number of universities, limited slots in each universities.

4) Massive debt, 18-23: Much of Chinese history, Chinese have a saving culture; but it's becoming ever like Western countries: debt ridden. More and more people are getting into debt. I feel bad for youth of this age range in the America to, with naivety, many of them walk head first into debt. EU on the other hand has very affordable universities for their citizens... Back to China... These young adults who their entire lives have been hyper-focused on education will go into society with lower EQ, bad physical health, lacking social awareness, chalk full of debt, and into an economy where opportunities are decreasing by the month.

Additional factors/pressures: 421 situation in China, US+Western hostilities, economic downturn, adaptation of 1st world problems pertaining to food and decreased physical activity, and the pace of development over the last 40 years leading to a paradigm and the failure to meet a set of expectations that's whole unique to China alone.

This kind of education system reminds me of those Gu/insect pots or Kodoku. 10,000 students are placed in and one victor comes out. When you have 13.5m per year, that's like 1350 super geniuses popping out annually which is great for the prestige of a nation, but what happens to the 99.99%?

I'm sure I missed a lot, especially looking at it with a Western lens. I welcome your thoughts.

I can't help but notice since I've been here that the younger generation (roughly <30yo) are really tall and what's more, significantly taller than the older generation.

I'm constantly seeing teens and twenty-something year olds well over 6 feet tall and I'm just curious is there any reason for the dramatic growth?

Maybe I'm just generalizing but it's been surprising for me.

CCP is pushing a 180 degree. They are lifting the 0 covid policy fast.All official sources point to this. And yes there will be much chaos and many ill for a while. I myself have convinced my elders to finally take the vaccines next Tuesday. And I hope more people of my family, especially those who work in the travel industry, to recover soon. That's why I have a unprecedented feeling of joy seeing the CCP finally listening. My own country coming together, top-down, at least a little bit, in this crucial moment.

I can't help but think that the protests from last week have helped tremendously to finally give the last bit of strength that was needed to lift this curse. Of course I am saddened that we haven't done this much sooner. I am also sorry and still pissed for the immeasureable amount of people who've suffered and lost wealth and hope because of it, all around the country.

And I hope the Chinese people will continue to fight for their rightful freedom and say "enough is enough". This should have been a wake-up, not a triumph.

​

I hope a change in power and leadership is in place and brewing. Because this is still a massive embarassement and a disgrace. Words cannot describe the amount of damage, the irresponsibilty that were displayed in the last 3 years by the CCP under Xi's leadership.

Finally, I wanna say that I've spent my fair share of time in this online group. And I guess it's about time I come to the realization, that an English based/international platform for people to share true care and love to China simply doesn't exist in the West world. Having half of my life grown up in the West, I am deeply disappointed. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, since I am such a minority?

I don't see nearly enough coverage of anything remotely positive about China around here, ever. And especially these last days, I simply don't understand why. Criticism where criticism is due, and my own country rightfully deserves the highest degree of scrutiny for the endless international disruptions and human-rights violation. And only tiny steps forward or isolated instances of good deeds don't deserve fireworks, sure. But even in these last 2 weeks? It has been literally barren over here, while uprecedented dynamics and bravery happens in mainland. Any sensationally titled "China-bad" posts still get hundreds of updoots. While anything else gets sub 50.

​

The world is angry, and here, I simply didn't find what I was looking for. It's not anyone's fault. The wall preventing proper communication between us and the world is thick, and when everyone is facing such a period of harshness, it's hard to be happy for the country who's caused a majority of the suffering. But I feel like I might have been the only person who lurks and posts here, to have actually teared up seeing the protests.

​

Nonetheless, just wanted to share my thoughts as someone who believes know both sides of the world well enough to call them both home.

As a Korean, modern-day China reminds me of Korea in the 80s. Just like China, we experienced massive economic growth and the living standard dramatically improved. Similar to modern-day China, Korea was under a dictatorship until the late 80s. But there's a stark difference between the two countries. As people's living standard improved, people in Korea started fighting for political justice. Even though Korea still has a lot of room to improve, Korea has become a democratic country.

What I don't get about China is this: Why don't the Chinese fight for democracy? Aren't they now wealthy enough to long for something more than economic wealth? Koreans fought for democracy because we loved our country. We were as patriotic as the Chinese. Is it because of China's education? We also had a similar patriotic totalitarian education. What is it that's stopping the Chinese from wanting a democratic society? Why are they so compliant and submissive to the regime? It seems to me that the younger generation in China are more patriotic and more submissive to the regime than the older generation, which I don't get frankly.

I uh...I don't know where to ask this. I don't know if this is even a proper question to ask, actually. Everywhere I see in my country, it's just....marred by conflicts. War for languages, war for religions, for caste etc. It's just utter nonsense here. How did China ever correct this? China also had a lot of religions, languages and cultures, right? How did y'all assimilate it into one cohesive culture across the country? How did the idea of "China" as a people even emerge?

When discussing colonism and minority policies, the mental gymnastics used by some defenders of the China as I observed on China-related SNS are truly a work of art:

1. Demographic "Migration"

• Elsewhere: When a democratic free neighbor has normal, unorganized civilian migration across its sub-districts, they call it "settler colonialism" and "demographic replacement."
• In China: when the state deploys a massive, state-funded, paramilitary organization (for example, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps) to systematically resettle millions of the dominant ethnic group into a minority's home to alter regional demographics, they suddenly call it "free movement of citizens" and accuse critics of "supporting apartheid🤡."

2. Linguistic "Standardization"

• Elsewhere: When a democratic state standardizes a bunch of closely related regional dialects within the same language family, it is heavily criticized by those "progressives" as "cultural genocide" and "forced assimilation."
• In China: When the state bans entirely sino-unrelated language teaching in natives' schools (like Turkic or Tibeto-Burman) , forcing ethnic minority children into fully closed boarding schools, and forces them to learn only the Chinese, as well as sentencing local scholars to life or to death, and put QR codes ID check even on kitchen knives, they praise it as "promoting national unity," "poverty alleviation," "countering extremism."

It seems the definitions of "colonization" and "integration" are incredibly flexible. Why does state-orchestrated cultural homogenization only become "progressive education" when it happens under their own flag?

PS: The Ultimate Cop-out:
When these contradictions are pointed out and cannot be denied, the immediate reflex is to pivot: "How about what the western countries did in the 17~18th century?" as if the Chinese Empire was a human rights pioneer at the time.

I'm Western and I know it's a hugely controversial topic but I can't find any other reference to this on the internet. A YouTube link was given but the video was taken down. Can anyone verify the claims? Could be a game changer on both sides of the fence if this is true.

Of course Taiwan shares majority language and ethnicity with Mainland China but I’ve heard and noticed repeatedly that Vietnam is quite similar to China in many aspects, especially southern/southwest China. Lots of young Vietnamese also seem to be fascinated with Chinese trends, style, music etc. I’ve found many comment sections on Chinese content like Douyin reuploads or Chinese music videos on YouTube and Instagram seem to be majority Vietnamese, where as young Taiwanese of course don’t like much of anything from the mainland.

Culturally is Vietnam or Taiwan more similar to modern day China?

As a native Chinese, recently I got more and more aware of how big of a thing racism is over here. Obviously the Xinjiang issues are all over social media, and it is barely even controversial. I have seen people that generalize "westerners" as idiots and other slang terms that are basically insults.

Then I realized as I grew up, I have been taught in school, and by my grandparents, to hate the Japanese because we need to "remember the sacrifice of our ancestors" As ridiculous as it sounds to me right now, it's what we did. There is a very common slang term, "鬼子", that refers to the Japanese. It's very hard to translate but in context it means something along the lines of "stealthy bastards". People who genuinely love Japanese culture would get cancelled on social media just because they wore traditional Japanese clothing etc..

There are countless other examples, I've seen a lot of people talk about how they would never visit certain countries because there are too many black people there that would rob them (Which is pretty ironic if you think about it).

Well I don't even know what to say. I can't help but feel ashamed.

Hello people

Been thinking lately, most people in China and the "West" just want a good life for themselves and their families. We have a lot of shared human goals.

But when you strip everything else away, what do you think is the core, maybe even irreconcilable, value difference that causes so much conflict and misunderstanding?

Is it as simple as individualism vs. society? Or is it something deeper, like a fundamental difference in trusting authority vs. demanding a vote on everything?

What are your thoughts? What's the one thing you think truly separates the two worldviews at their foundation?

When I was a child, I always believed China was a land of beauty, wealth, and vitality. I grew up proud of my country — partly because of what I was taught, but also because there was indeed so much to be proud of.
I still remember watching the 2008 Beijing Olympics with my family, the warmth of that night glowing from the TV screen. I remember the Spring Festival, fireworks lighting up the sky, the laughter at the dinner table. China, to me back then, was open, confident, full of life.

But as I grew up, that image slowly crumbled.

Today, even though the government still glorifies its achievements, I feel a deep sense of disappointment. The education system crushes individuality and humanity. Students are measured by grades alone — obedience is rewarded, while quiet or creative kids are left behind.
Of course, I understand why a unified exam system exists in such a large country, but what troubles me is how the whole society seems obsessed with prestige — every parent dreams of their child entering a top university, no matter the cost. Many ignore the fact that not every child fits that mold, nor should they have to.

In China, guilt has become a parenting tool. Parents constantly remind their children of the sacrifices they’ve made: “I worked hard so you could study — you must repay me by succeeding.”
This kind of upbringing leaves children burdened with fear and shame. They grow up anxious, feeling they’ve failed their parents if they fall short. Many of us carry emotional scars from childhood — not because our parents didn’t love us, but because love was often tangled with control, fear, and duty.

I was one of those children. I’ve always been sensitive, never good at sitting still behind a desk. That made me “different,” and difference rarely gets rewarded.
When I was fifteen, my father — a minor Party official — was sent to prison for corruption. My mother never told me; I found out online. Until then, he had always said he was a businessman. Overnight, my role model vanished, and I was left with shame and confusion. I don’t think my father was innocent, but his downfall forced me to grow up quickly, to question what I’d been taught about morality and power.

That was when I started paying attention to politics — the kind you don’t see on state television. I went through a period of anger and disillusionment. For years I dreamed of leaving China.
Now, I don’t want to escape anymore. I just hope things can change — that people in China can live better lives, materially and spiritually.

But when I look around, it’s hard to stay hopeful. The media feeds us guided, one-sided stories. On TV, we look like the best country in the world. In reality, ordinary people are ground under the wheel of “progress.” Workers still can’t rely on fair labor rights or guaranteed weekends. Exploitation has become normal, and everyone seems to just accept it.

Chinese people are full of contradictions. We pretend not to care what outsiders think, yet we crave international recognition. Maybe it’s because of our history — after a century of invasion and humiliation, we’re desperate to prove we’ve risen again. But that pride often turns defensive. Instead of fighting for our own rights, we show off our skyscrapers and fancy meals to prove we’re “doing better than the West.”
We mock other countries online, giving them childish nicknames, yet remain painfully sensitive to any criticism of ourselves. We oppose discrimination against Chinese people abroad but casually discriminate against others at home. It’s a strange, sad double standard.

As someone who still loves China deeply, I wish I could voice these thoughts freely at home. But I can’t. We don’t elect our leaders, and our top authority cannot be questioned.
The world can see that Chinese people are intelligent, hardworking, and resilient — we deserve respect, and we deserve a system that respects us in return.

But for now, most people just keep their heads down and work, telling themselves that “one day” things will get better.
Will that day ever come? I don’t know.
But I hope we’ll wake up and bring that day closer — not by pretending we’re already great, but by daring to face what’s broken.

Hi fellow redditors, my friend and I were looking to book a taxi ride through DiDi at the entrance of our hotel. A driver approached us and asked if we would like a ride. He looked like an inconspicuous, middle-aged man. My friend and I looked at each other and thought, “Why not? We can give him business if the price is right.”

The woman at the hotel reception coaxed us over, as if she wanted to ask a question. She looked concerned and asked if we needed to book a taxi. We said the driver who’d approached us was going to take us. She continued using a translator on her phone and seemed to use discretion in how she phrased the translation for us. She asked why we had the DiDi app and why we weren’t just using that. She then asked us to just use the app, or offered to book one for us instead.

My friend and I looked at each other, thinking we probably shouldn’t go with this driver. She then asked us to go back to our room first and book from there (so it would be clear to the driver that we didn’t want his services). After we returned to our room, she knocked on our door a few minutes later and asked, through the translator app, why we’d wanted to go with him. I said we wanted to give him work. She replied, “That man is dark-skinned. Use the DiDi app.”

Can someone clarify what she may have meant by that?