You were a travelor, and didn't live there. You are comparing your own experience as an analyst in Banking, one of the most brutal industry for work.

"600,000 Chinese die from overworking each year"

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-12/11/content_276355...

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?

yes, all popular forums (Baidu, Weibo, Zhihu etc) are moderated. But to be honest, I feel like you misunderstood of the whole "monitored by government" situation in china. It's true that we can't discuss about certain history event or some sensetive policy (people still do that using code language or whatever). But I assure you no one is having fear discussing it, as long as you are not deliberately spreading those negative things in a large scale.

China’s official unemployment rate is lower, but who knows where the real number rises, and there is a lot of gaming the system going kB (especially with lesser tier universities forcing students to get fake jobs before they can graduate).

Chinese were working 6 days a week universally until around 15 years ago, it still isn’t rare to hear if someone who has to work every Saturday (especially in tech).

I worked in China for 5 years. Our suppliers would sometimes work their software engineers so hard, that their wives would come in crying in the office at night because they never saw their husbands.

I was there to witness it because I also worked the same hours. I am a stupid man, who believes in people who build hot dog apps apparently.

Making an anecdotal statement as a rebuttal based off a single visit to China isn't very authoritative either.