Sounds similar to the Feudalism system with serfs, or at least that's the closest comparison that I can think of.
Very similar, although without the feudal contract. Or I suppose you could say that the feudal "lords" in this case are bureaucrats rather than hereditary nobles. They're not tied to a specific agricultural plot but are tied more or less to a specific village.
Again though, millions of people break the registration laws every year. It's very similar to the illegal immigration situation in the US -- they're tolerated by many employers and even municipal governments because they're an easily exploited source of cheap labor. With far less rights than migrant workers have here. I've seen guys welding girders at all hours of the morning, 20-30 stories up on a bamboo scaffold with no safety harness and no welding goggles or mask. One of the US engineers I was with was utterly aghast at that, saying that most of them will probably have spot blindness within a couple of years. Industrial and construction accidents are very common, and there's virtually no social safety net for floating people. If you get maimed in an accident, there's no OSHA, there's no court that you're going to win a lawsuit in. Best you can hope for is to get deported back to your home village and maybe your family can tend to you for the rest of your crippled life (along with paying your fine for having illegally migrated).
Otherwise, you might end up crawling around on the streets begging for change like one guy I saw in Shanghai....no arms, no legs. Just a torso and a bowl in his mouth for change. Or another pair I saw in Beijing, a blind man (looked like an industrial accident...I mean, the *sockets* were empty) singing as a young girl (who was missing half her face...I'd say an industrial solvent spill) cleared his path through the subway car and held out a bowl. It's incredibly disturbing, and yet most urban Chinese have become numb to it. I was scolded on more than one occasion not to give any money because then all the beggars would come like seagulls flocking. Which is true, but......good god damn.
@FearfulJesuit: I'll have to look through my library and pick out a few. I have a lot that aren't so good, too. In general, avoid any with titles like "The Rising Dragon" or things like that. There's a cottage industry of fearmongering books about what a looming threat the PRC is, and they often have very skewed interpretations of Chinese history and politics.
@mainiac: I don't think that's accurate at all. There were a lot of investors who sunk money into housing because in the late 90's there was a serious ramp-up in housing prices in places like Shanghai and Shenzhen because of a slew of young professionals emerged with money to spend and looking for apartments to rent. People who owned real estate when that began became filthy rich. So lots of these nouveau riche thought they'd try that too. But then the housing bubble overheated and the number of professionals plateaued. Not much different than what happened in the US in some places -- demand didn't keep up with projections. But after all the work that went into getting the permits, hiring the construction company, getting the materials, distributing the various kickbacks to grease the system, etc.....it's frankly cheaper to go ahead and build it than to scratch the plans altogether. At least then you *might* get lucky and have some tenants. Sort of a sunk-cost fallacy, but not that fallacious in this case because of the nature of
guanxi (favors). Even if you're wasting money, you're gaining favors that you can cash in somewhere down the road.
Investing in China is still quite risky because of the arbitrary nature of government regulations and the fact that contract law is malleable in Chinese courts. What we would call criminal malfeasance and fraud here, they'd call business as usual. And investor savvy just isn't there in many cases.
The Shanghai stock exchange is another example. Most people I talked to likened it to playing pai jiu -- people just threw money in and crossed their fingers (and probably muttered a few Buddhist prayers) to see if they'd get lucky. It was like a game of chance but where skill can make a difference.
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Topic: RedKing's East Asian Politics Megathread (Read 78828 times)