0-10% of the U.S. “lives in slums”? lol, okay

20-30% of China “lives in slums”? yeah, right

  • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    4 days ago

    This depends a massive amount on the definition of a slum, because there is certainly a big proportion of the Chinese population that lives in lower-quality housing (not like shantytown-level usually, just lower-quality) but they are overwhelmingly in villages, etc., while “slum” normally implies denser urban populations. If they are using a culturally reasonable definition of slum, then it is a lie.

    Also, our chic “micro apartments,” vs their impoverished “slums”

    • AstroStelar [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 days ago

      I recognise the style as being from Our World In Data, so I searched for them and found it. They use data from the UN which uses this definition:

      A slum household is defined as a group of individuals living under the same roof lacking one or more of the following conditions: access to improved water, access to improved sanitation, sufficient living area, durability of housing, and security of tenure.

      “Security of tenure” is probably where China’s hukou system messes things up.

      There’s also a “complementary” category of “inadequate housing”, which is defined by households spending 30% or more of their income on housing. This isn’t part of the definition of slums, which is probably why the US and such appear so low. But keep also in mind that 0-10% can still mean up to 1 in 10 households.

      The data sources are a mixture of national statistical agencies and the UN’s own.

  • Krem [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 days ago

    are they counting urban villages as slums? because what else in modern China is even mildly slum-like?

    sure, if you go to some very rural corner you can find people living in simple housing, but that’s also not a slum, and you can find similar things in rural southern/eastern europe as well as taiwan and thailand which are all very pale in this map.

    if they really count urban villages (or other migrant worker areas such as the less agreeable factory dorm areas) in urban china as “slums”, which i guess is the only way you’d get anywhere near 20%, then surely you’d do the same for migrant worker areas in the US as well? if they count less fancy urban working class areas in China as “slums” then how come egypt, colombia and southeast europe are all bright pale?

    what about the gulf states? migrant workers there (us-foreign-policy western financebros and other scam artists not counted, i mean asian migrant workers) definitely live in worse conditions than chinese migrant workers and constitute a big percentage of the residents but apparently it doesn’t count.

    • Leegh [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 days ago

      It’s very likely using similar dubious metrics as statistics that claim China has a 20-30% homelessness rate because it counts all the migrant workers that don’t officially own a home in the cities they migrate to (they count rental properties under this FYI) as “homeless” even though they all technically have homes in their home towns already.

      Also yeah, it’s pretty hilarious that Thailand has a ‘pale white’ slum category while all their neighbours are much higher in percentage when Thailand one of the most unequal countries in the world when it comes to wealth and living standards. I mean just go to downtown Bangkok and you will literally find slum-like habitations next to high rise condominiums lol.

      • Western nations deliberately misunderstand seasonal migrant labour specifically for cases like this where they can claim it as evidence of a “homelessness”, “slums” or “forced labour” problem.

        Flashback to western media reporting all local labor in Xinjiang as “forced” and that all the labourers were being sent to other regions of China somehow simultaneously