My therapist made a comment about how China is a failed socialist experiment because they have 2-3 year olds working in factories. I responded “So we’ve been told.” She looks at me like I’m crazy. (Not a great look for a therapist) “I’ve not seen any evidence of that.”
“Because they’re such a closed country!”
“Which means you have no evidence to your point either?”
“Well, missionaries… anyway!”
Historically there certainly had been a lot of child labor in China (not toddlers, though), basically like in any other developing country except that China was bigger and had many more factories than the other examples, and there were of course many teenagers sent to work in various capacities in the Cultural Revolution, but it’s not like that now though.
The people who are more up-to-date complain about suicide nets, 996, and penal labor. Ironically, the most infamous issues with Chinese workplace suicides (and accompanying sweatshop conditions) were from the operations of Foxconn, a Taiwanese company.
Thank you. I’ll keep this in mind next time somebody brings up these arguments.