At 53, Guan Junling is too old to get hired at factories anymore. But for migrant workers like her, not working is not an option.
For decades, they have come from farming villages to find work in the cities. Toiling in sweatshops and building apartment complexes they could never afford to live in, they played a vital role in China’s transformation into an economic powerhouse.
As they grow older, the first generation of migrant workers is struggling to find jobs in a slowing economy. Many are financially strapped, so they have to keep looking.
“There is no such thing as a ‘retirement’ or ‘pensions’ for rural people. You can only rely on yourself and work,” Guan said. “When can you stop working? It’s really not until you have to lie in bed and you can’t do anything.”
She now relies on housecleaning gigs, working long days to squirrel away a little money in case of a health emergency. Migrant workers can get subsidized health care in their hometowns, but they have little or no coverage elsewhere. If Guan needs to go to hospital in Beijing, she has to pay out of pocket.
As China’s population ages, so are its migrant workers. About 85 million were over 50 in 2022, the latest year for which data is available, accounting for 29% of all migrant workers and up from 15% a decade earlier. With limited or no pensions and health insurance, they need to keep working.
This makes me question what it takes to be a super power. Between this and the leading cause of US bankruptcies being medical related, it’s almost as if super powers can only be super powers if they don’t give any of their citizens healthcare. It’s as if working their citizens to death is the only way for them to maintain their hedgemony.
High levels of growth can be had by extracting as much as possible out of the working population and then not supporting those that are discarded when they have been tapped dry. That is why imperial countries like the Romans, the US, and China can have massive growth at the expense of slaves and immigrant work.
The modern world setting expectations of taking care of the elderly means the US and China will probably decline faster than Rome once the general population pushes back on the exploitation again, then it will likely end up as a roller coaster of growth and decline.
I think there is a disconnect between classical superpowers and modern superpowers. Modern nations use the US and Chinese model of using people as a resource to build as fast as possible with minimal ethics. Classical superpowers, like European nations, use a slow growth and inclusive model that includes a lot of people but takes hundreds of years to establish.
Modern superpowers use capitalism. Classical use a more socially inclusive approach.
Is there a bad history community on Lemmy? If so, someone should crosspost this comment.
No, I think what they are trying to say is that European nation building runs further back so they have more socialized services or something like that. I have no idea.
Man just ignored the entire colonial and industrialization period, simple as that.
This is a whitewashing of history.
Uh, I’m gonna have to stop you. Which nations used an inclusive model?
Ah yes, let’s disregard centuries of occupation accompanied by brutal exploitation of the local population, dismantling and dismemberment of native social hierarchy and ‘population transfer’ for the benefit of the few white man and their collaborators. But hey, they built churches and trains and shit! Let’s conveniently forget how countries that barely got their independence had their chance at economical and political sovereignty hijacked from the same colonial masters now dressed in business suit.
Just go fuck yourself.