Compare the social programs of China to the social programs of the US. USA has Supplemental Security Income, Medicare, Social Security, emergency rooms cannot turn away patients. There's friction, but the US definitely does take care of its _old_ people. What's the equivalent in China? I'm not saying they don't, but I'd like to know.

China has a number of social programmes for its citizens. Granted, they are all very recent and party politics has often come in the way of delivery. Most of these programmes were even only started in the last decade or so, and nearly all of them were started only from the 1990s onwards.

But the Chinese are going in the direction of massively expanding these programmes (ranging from medical care to education to housing to elderly and disability care), while the USA is actively gutting their own.

The US does the absolute bare minimum in everything you listed.

>emergency rooms cannot turn away patients Sure but that's not real "health care".. again, it's the bare minimum.

Saying the US takes care of it's old people is sort of silly. Healthcare is through the roof. Social security is so low. Elder care is insanity expensive. People are worked far older than they should be because they can't afford to retire- especially with medical costs. Old people continue to pay property taxes on a home they might have paid off 20 years ago.

Really just do some searches yourself; it's like most other developed countries than the US.. health care, education is not insanely expensive, a lot of paid maternity leave, childcare assistance, etc. They provide the base people need.

You’re going back and forth between two concepts: society and its people. Look at the Covid lockdowns for evidence of how much China (or other Chinese for that matter) care about individuals.

That shows exactly how much they care about their people. They are not willing to let individuals be selfish and ruin their society with regards to Covid.

I fully support what they did.

Zero-COVID lockdown policy as was implemented was absolutely not supported by the majority of the Chinese population. And it was more about saving face than caring about people.

The initial COVID response in 2019 was to punish doctors reporting it. Such solidarity. Much caring.

This is exactly the "the idea is so good that it has to be forced" meme

The ruling group think they are enlighten more than everyone else and justified to use force/coercion to apply their will on other people (or just an excuse/scam to abuse power)

That's literally the moral justification for the Thiel/Musk/Yarvin Dark Enlightenment, and the basis of cult dynamics in general.

The idea actually works if, and only if, the ruling group has empathy for the population as a whole. Which - in spite of anti-government propaganda in the US - is at least partially possible.

It's catastrophic when the ruling ethic is narcissism and supremacism.

Then you are by definition a collectivist, which is your right to be but puts you completely at odds with western society and the foundation of the progress humanity has made over the last 500+ years.

To summarize, you're on the wrong side.

Lockdowns backed by force of arms were absolutely the right thing for people at the time. The New Zealand lockdowns were extremely strict and enormously successful until the government buckled and the plague ships came back in.

For some metric of successful. We only delayed the inevitable, and at the end of th day only rank in the middle of the pack in deaths per capita. Far behind many countries with much less strict lockdowns.

NZ lockdowns were not extremely strict. The government told us to stay inside and gave us guidelines and 99% of us followed them willingly. Punishment for not following was fines or a slap on the wrist. We were never forced to stay in our homes we could walk around outside. The guidelines were to avoid places where you would get in contact with people like a workplace or store.

This is so different to China welding people into their homes.

It was not the lockdowns, it was the good fortune of being an island nation coupled with a border control regime so strict it was later found to violate basic human rights.[0]

Australia went down a similar path to similar effect until the proverbial dyke burst and suddenly nobody cared about quarantine any more. The lesson here is that human nature being what it is, you can throw citizens overseas under the bus to appease the majority until they get tired of being locked in.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/new-zealand-high-...

That's the point. In a situation like a pandemic the rational choice is to act collectively, even if that means some inconvenience for individuals.

Ideally it means a population which is educated, rational, and mature enough to rise to the challenge with minimal prompting and direction. But if that fails, stronger persuasion becomes necessary - which may mean sanctions and enforcement.

US (and UK) individualism struggles with this, which creates a weaker, less resilient, and more dangerous low-trust high-paranoia society for everyone.

The Chinese are more used to 吃苦, which is an alien concept in the US.

You can take that too far - and arguably China has - where there's a complete lack of concern for individuals.

The ideal is a balance, and I'm not sure either culture has it.

The more a person can sense others’ situations and emotions, the easier it is for them to blend into a group, embrace its values, and even help shape shared ones. In China, people grow up with Confucius’ teaching: “Don’t impose on others what you yourself do not desire.”

I have read a book called "Chinese Characteristics" written by Arthur Henderson Smith, an American missionary, who also mentioned a similar idea: "How delightful it would be if people could combine the essence of both East and West, and walk peacefully on the narrow, thorny path of the golden mean."

Based on my own experience, Chinese society contains traditional thoughts from the feudal era, collective thoughts from the socialist period, and utilitarian thoughts brought by capitalist development, but it uniquely lacks individualism.

"吃苦" means bear poor conditions (maybe, it hard to translate for me) "吃苦" is considered a good character, and you’d better have it. In China, they even have a maxim about "吃苦" that says "吃得苦中苦，方为人上人".

( Translate by AI tools: 1. Only by enduring the greatest hardships can one become the best of men. 2. Only by enduring the deepest hardships can one rise above their original social class.)

It's hard to translate, I'd like to demonstrate with code:

if(you '吃苦' && '吃苦' && '吃苦' && '吃苦' && '吃苦' ){ You will have a better future. You will have a good job and a good career. You will get to a higher level than others. ..... }

Sometimes "吃苦 & 吃得苦中苦，方为人上人" encourages people to overcome difficulties. Keep going and conquer it.

But it contains a logical flaw: it treats "吃苦" as a necessary even the only key for success.

In recent years, some young people have changed "吃得苦中苦，方为人上人" to ""吃得苦中苦，一直要吃苦", which means: If you used to "吃苦", you get stuck in this quagmire of "吃苦", you will always need "吃苦" (on the other side, someone enjoys life on your behalf)

They "comprehended" that maybe "吃苦" was been designed. It's "designed" to drives low-level people to bear poor conditions and overcome difficult problems and hard work. but as a low-level young people they found that "only themself 吃苦 and other people enjoy ". It's not fair, maybe it's wrong. So they change the maxim.

Young people start thinking, not just follow.

This is a very naive view of what goes on in China. Not saying China doesn’t do anything right, but it’s far from the utopia you seem to think it is. There’s pretty rampant corruption at all levels of government and business, even to the point the central government acknowledges that repeated reforms are necessary. There are also plenty of billionaires in China who, along with the rich and well connected (often one and the same), enjoy a level of privilege and freedom unimaginable to the ordinary people. China’s social safety net has also been eroding to the point that if someone really has to depend on the state to take care of them, they’d be living a very meager life indeed.