02/07/14 - Weekly Roundup!
As Chinese New Year is coming up, people are having to spend a lot of money preparing for it, and it’s caused a wave of workers holding protests in many cities throughout China, demanding delayed wages. There’s protests going on in Liaoning, Tianjin, Hebei, Wuhan, Guiyang, etc, etc. A lot of these people are theoretically government employees. A lot of these people apparently haven’t been paid in three goddamn years, which blows my fucking mind. A lot of people are apparently resorting to committing suicide to try to get their money back.
There’s been disastrous amounts of snow and ice throughout China. Some of you might have seen the post a couple of days ago, of people stuck in jams on the highway for three days. These people apparently have been trying to do something about their situation, getting out of their cars to clear away snow by hand. It’s a good thing it’s Chinese New Year season, so a lot of people are bringing food in the form of gifts for their family, so a lot of people have supplies to feed on for a couple of days in the car. There’s at least one video I saw of people gathering firewood by the side of the road to burn for warmth.
There’s also a Chongqing train, who was stuck unable to operate due to weather conditions, where people were trapped for 24 hours without electricity, food, water, or heating. Or bathrooms. Also stories of people on Capital Airlines who were supposed to fly out at 10:30, and sat on the runway until 7PM at night with no food, no water, no compensation, only to be told they have to get off the plane and wait until the next day.
Meanwhile, official government media is covering this event with lots of posts about how beautiful trees look when they’re laden down with ice.
This snowfall has also caused a lot of buildings to collapse under the weight of the snow and ice all over the country. The worst is in Zhangjiajie, where a historical tea house and some local markets collapsed, causing a lot of injuries. But a car dealership in Hunan and and a sports stadium in Henan also collapsed too.
A fire happened in an apartment building in Guiyang. The homeowners organise efforts to fight the fire, only to realise that none of their fire extinguishers or hydrants actually work. This has sparked a lot of responses in the comment section of people checking out the fire extinguishers in their apartment building to discover that it also doesn’t work. And when I say doesn’t work, I mean it’s missing entirely, or it’s been locked, or they just provide you with a length of hose, with no hydrant anywhere in sight.
The stock market has fallen from a height of 3200 points to now a little over 2600 points. Stock investors are so mad about this that they’re flocking to the comment section of the American Consulate’s weibo account to beg America to invade China, because they’ll find a lot of support among the people. After that comment section got locked, people started flooding into the Indian Consulate’s weibo account to do the same thing. After rounds of articles praising the Chinese economy didn’t work, the government tried telling people to take a break from the stock market for a while instead. When that didn’t work, the CCP has decided to fire the head of the Chinese SEC.
There is a run on the bank going on in Henan rural villages, where people are going to withdraw their money only to find out that the bank has put that money into long-term CDs without their permission or knowledge. This has sparked a run on the bank, where everyone is rushing to the bank to pull their money out. Before the panic can really start brewing though, everyone with an account at these rural banks has been…um…arrested? abducted to Qinglong Manor where they’re being kept prisoner without a warrant or anything. The friends and family of these bank customers have been calling the police every day, but the polite refuse to do anything about it.
A note, that this is not the first time this has happened. Around the time of the White Paper Revolution, at the start of 2023, there was also a run on Henan rural banks, and back then, they also locked people up at Qinglong Manor. As for whether this has happened before that too, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Speaking of Henan police, a man posted a video on social media exposing a local real estate developer for bribing a local official, and was arrested within 40 minutes of the video being uploaded. People marvel at how efficient Henan police must be, to get an arrest warrant and drive out and arrest him all within 40 minutes.
China came out with a policy to raise the minimum wage in many cities around the country, with Shanghai being the highest in the country at 2690 RMB per month. The lowest is Anhui at 1650 RMB a month. The average seems to work out around 1800 to 1900 RMB a month? On average, it’s risen by about 70 RMB a month.
Wait, the guy who posted the video was arrested? On what charge?