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Also, retiring at 70 is complete ass. Per WHO data, healthy life expectancy for Denmark is 71, so your average Danish worker can only enjoy a year of retirement before being hit with debilitating illness. HALE for China is 67.2 for men and 70.0 for women. That's 7.2 years and 15 years of healthy retirement respectively.

To your first question, 996 was already banned by the Supreme Court back in 2021!

All the guilty internet companies “welcomed” the court ruling and announced that overtime is only “on a voluntary basis” and will be “properly compensated”.

And yet the working hours have only gone up since 2021. In fact, just earlier this year, the government tried again to enforce an 8-hour work day because the EU threatened to ban Chinese goods with the EU Forced Labour Regulations, a whole bunch of manufacturing firms again “welcomed” the policy, and yet nothing seems to have happened afterwards.

There are a few factors behind why nothing much has changed, and they’re mostly related to motivation and enforcement issue:

1. There is split opinion on the decision among employees - while some see long work hours appropriately as exploitation, others see overtime wages (150-200% hourly rate) as their way to make enough money and leave the company early. Employment is mostly transient with these companies, and for many people, you want to earn as much money as you can in your 20s and maybe even early 30s when you’re still physically capable, hoping that you could retire earlier than your peers, or earn enough to start your own business.
2. “Voluntary coercion” - with so much unemployment around, employees are more afraid of losing their jobs and fear that not “volunteering” for overtime would mark you as an unproductive worker to be laid off in the next cycle. In China, the competition is so intense that for most jobs (as you’ve said, but it’s not perceived that way), you are replaceable. You’d rather grind hard to keep your job than to lose it altogether, because there is no social safety net when you’re unemployed (hence Chinese households prefer save than to consume, to prepare for such unfortunate incidents).
3. The government depends on private corporations especially during economic downturn - with many budding economic problems that accompany falling export revenues due to tariffs and external pressures, property market crisis, debt crisis etc., the government relies on the private sector now more than ever to prop up a slumping economy. Enforcement is especially tricky because those companies might just implode altogether with entire supply chains and could easily spiral into mass unemployment and recessions if we’re not careful. Workers have to be properly compensated even when work hours are reduced, and that cuts into the corporations’ operating costs. Meanwhile, if the workers are not allowed the opportunity to maintain their wages, they will reduce consumption which is equally bad for the economy.
4. Low penalty for corporations while the costs of arbitration for employee grievances are high - some companies would rather pay the penalties because it is still cheaper than implementing work hours reform that could cut into their profits. Additionally, in China, there is no such thing as a trade union as you have in the West. That means an employee will have to file grievance with the civil court, and for most people, this is simply an unthinkable option unless you believe you have a very strong case to fight it out in the court.

For your second question, please see my response to another user on this comment thread.

That’s because Denmark is a financialized imperialist state that leeches value from the rest of the workers on the planet, whereas China actually creates value. You are acting like being a finance parasite is a good thing to aspire to

Yes and no… Work in government/SOEs (体制内, or “in the system”) usually have standard work hours e.g. 40 hours per week as you say, but can be variable depending on your particular position and job responsibilities. Some departments demand more overtime etc. However, you do enjoy very good social welfare and benefits, if you are one of the 60M (estimated) people working in SOEs or as civil servants.

There are ~740M people in China’s labor force today. Except for the 270M people working in rural areas, the rest are considered urban employment.

In general, the luckiest people are the 10M employees working for foreign multinational corporations. These companies pay higher salaries, have lower requirement for overtime, give good benefits/pensions, annual leaves etc. Also considered a good career trajectory since it adds prestige to your resume. If you get into one of those foreign corporations, you’re considered to have “made it”. Still subject to layoffs as you would in any private corporation though, so there is still a risk of unemployment.

If you are less ambitious, and are fine with working boring jobs with limited career progression, then joining SOEs or working as civil servants would be an option, if you can “get into the system” of ~60M employees. You get good pay, and a lot more welfare and benefits. You’ll have a stable career.

However, it is typically seen to be limiting to your career progression, since you will essentially be working for the same people for the next 10-20 years, day in and day out, with less chances of promotion. You can’t just switch company easily as you would in the private sector. And if you work in one of those random out-of-nowhere towns, it can be quite depressing. “Once you’re in the system, it is hard to get out.” Private enterprises typically don’t value people coming from within the system because they want people who are willing to grind hard and used to long working hours.

The other 400M labor force (i.e. the vast majority of the people) works for private enterprises, and this is where all the hustling and grinding happen. The working conditions are widely variable. A lot of people are squeezed by exhausting work hours with low pay, but if you’re lucky enough to be in a sector that is highly lucrative (some of the tech firms, for example), you can earn quite a lot of money. Still, everyone is expected to grind for much longer hours than you’d find in Western countries.

The prime minister said the deal was the only way to maintain the base's long-term future and strengthened the UK's national security.

I love the idea that the UK's "national security" relies on an island 10,000km away from London. It'd be like China's national security relying on having a military base on Alcatraz Island

Thanks! I was kinda confused by several news sites which made it sound like that diego garcia would still be british.

Or that the Russian SMO is about restoring the Soviet Union and taking revenge on the capitalist West.