You mean like lifting more than 300 millions people out of dire poverty? Chinese in their 40s and 50s rabidly defend their government, because it delivered. I bemoan lack of democracy, Xinjiang repression, pollution and all the rest; but the fact is that the past 30 years have been a success of unseen proportions for China.

And the ones in their 60s remember half their family dying from the famine when they were children, especially the villagers who moved out.

When you live in a country where any negative expression will get you killed, arrested, etc. You quickly only hear the positive voices.

After the Cultural Revolution and after the Four Pests Campaign, there wasn't any other direction to go than up, for those who were still alive, that is.

The Chinese were made poor by the Communist party and only rescued by moving away from the doctrine to something else.

>China basically promised the people who are now in their 40s and 50s benefits that they will not get.

So just like the west with stagnant wages and pension systems in free fall, while healthcare, education, housing, student debt, etc rises?

Are China's out-sized promises or environmental destruction more egregious than the same problems in the US or UK?

The air pollution currently in China is pretty bad, but air pollution goes away pretty quickly after you turn off the coal plants, and oversized promises to pensioners seems like a pretty easy obligation to amend when you have total control over the state.

Where’s the money gonna come from? We’re talking eventually hundreds of millions of retirees. That’s never happened in human history before.

If making good on pension promises was easy, the CCP would have done it by now.