| Another problem, not mentioned, with these crazy regulations, is that they are enforced arbitrarily. That is, they directly lead to corruption of the enforcers who are open to payoffs by people with money, just because they have the power, and the results are meaningless and ugly. The rule of law means that the laws must be reasonable and enforced fairly and transparently. None of those conditions exist today in China, so it has no rule of law, and no hope ever of having such. It is not democracy that is the question, Shanghainese don't want democracy, even the middle class, the people in Yunnan would outvote them. In all megacities of the world, including Shanghai, there is now and will rapidly become a huge problem. People move to these megacities to work, but they stop having children. So the megacities fill up with old people. There are not enough workers to support them, and the social security systems are inadequate or will fail. They will die lonely, probably in massive heat waves caused by global warming. Many people everywhere buy expensive houses with their life savings and then ever try to maintain those savings in the form of property values. They don't want a lot of poor people living nearby and dragging down their property values. So they are against people sharing flats, against people different in any way from them and their social class. They try to force these other people to move out. The consequence is that property values drop, nobody will buy those expensive houses then. Instead of passing silly regulations that lead only to corruption, our leaders ought to consider what the real problems are and how to solve them. Old people should be encouraged to work and contribute to society and society should value them and take care of them, they should not be allowed to die lonely. College students and young workers should be allowed the necessary freedom to experiment with new ways of living and take responsibility for their actions, not be bullied by some nanny state. People of all classes and colors and backgrounds should be encouraged by every means to live together and learn how to get along in this world peacefully. I am sad to say that in my experience Shanghainese have a lot to learn in this respect. They depend on migrant workers without hou kou but they despise them and exploit them. They need experts from other countries but cheat them and steal their money. In many cases they simply refuse to try to understand anybody who does not speak with their dialect. When this so-called world-class city is flooded from global warming nobody will be able to understand what they are crying about. |
New Regulations to Kill Group Renting in Shanghai