Is Memphis representative of the Western civilization? I have never been to Memphis, but I just returned from Warsaw, Poland. (I wrote my previous comment literally on IC Sobieski.) It is very safe at night, even if you are alone and unarmed. So is Prague, where I lived for 26 years.
The average banker anywhere isn't likely a serf, but the average banker is not an average citizen.
An average citizen in China was, for example, subject to three years of Zero Covid policy gone wild. AFAIK it took some street unrest, very untypical for China, for the government to reconsider.
For all their faults, Western governments didn't stick to three years of nonsense during Covid. The people who would got voted out, because they could be voted out.
> The average banker anywhere isn't likely a serf, but the average banker is not an average citizen.
A banker is like any other professional. But we can go one step down: Is the average taxi driver more of a "disposable serf" in China than the West?
And consider your use of the word "disposable." If you travel to China and defraud Chinese citizens, they will throw the book at you. If you travel to China and murder a Chinese citizen, they will execute you, and quickly. I've personally been involved in a civil (commercial) legal case in China, and I walked away extremely impressed with the speed, low cost, and the fairness of their legal system, whereas the system in the West seemed almost completely broken to me. (That civil case in China cost less than $10k, start to finish, including trial. In US Federal Court, $300k+ before we even got to trial, thanks in large part to "discovery" and pretrial motions which were -- accurately -- deemed unnecessary in China. Ran out of money before trial and had to settle, lol.) Chinese people enjoy extremely robust legal protections. Their own government evidently doesn't consider them disposable; quite the contrary, it signals that they're not to be trifled with.
If you travel to Finland and murder a Finn, you'll probably get a statistically average sentence of 12 years.
In which country is the innocent life of its citizens more "disposable"? Are China's "disposable serfs" not afforded obviously better protection from evil and harm?
Look, my point is that the Chinese do an awful lot right. In the administration of law, commerce, industry, etc., we should look at them and realize that we in the West have a lot that we can still learn. It's not all bad.
As for Covid, that's a very particular matter and the US/EU/UK/Canada/Australia didn't exactly cover themselves in glory.
The average banker anywhere isn't likely a serf, but the average banker is not an average citizen.
An average citizen in China was, for example, subject to three years of Zero Covid policy gone wild. AFAIK it took some street unrest, very untypical for China, for the government to reconsider.
For all their faults, Western governments didn't stick to three years of nonsense during Covid. The people who would got voted out, because they could be voted out.