Gig work is a warning sign but I honestly think China is far better equipped to deal with this than the West.

In the West, gig work is a symptom that people don't have a livable wage. They either have a day job and have to do gig work to survive. Or they can't find stable work so gig work is the best they can get. And there is an adversarial relationship with the likes of Uber who want to increase profits by stealing money from the drivers, basically.

Literally no government in the West is doing anything to tackle inequality. At the heart of that problem is housing unaffordability. High housing prices do nothing more than steal from the next generation and bring us closer to having a divide between landed and unlanded people.

China is a command economy. There are issues with housing in China but they're far less severe. Hoarding of property basically doesn't happen. China considers housing to be a public right, which it is.

Likewise, China doesn't allow a private company to operate like Uber at just rent-seek from the economy.

China has thus far avoided creating a social safety net, particularly with retirement, forcing people to save for that. That's in direct opposition to create a consumption economy so they rely on exports. And exports are at risk as inequality in the West is a threat to demand and China just can't create new markets fast enough.

The real warning here is that rising inequality is a massive, unaddressed, global problem at the same time as we will likely see the first trillionaire in our lifetimes. War and revolution are the ultimate forms of wealth redistribution and blaming random marginalized groups for declining material conditions will only get you so far before the guillotines come out.

>China is a command economy. There are issues with housing in China but they're far less severe. Hoarding of property basically doesn't happen. China considers housing to be a public right, which it is.

How do you come to that conclusion? As far as I understand it it's the complete opposite, housing is basically the only way the Chinese can invest. Hoarding is rampant, those who got in early have several properties, the rest nothing.

> Hoarding of property basically doesn't happen

This is very untrue. A lot of richer Chinese owners a bunch of apartments that they are holding for speculation, maybe they rent it out (and often not), but it’s still very much hoarding. You got a lot of sweetheart deals that happened 20+ years ago where many connected Chinese were able to acquire apartments, villas, and so on as opportunities.

Also, since the stock market is a hot mess, real estate acquisition was seen as the only real way to hold wealth in China.

> China considers housing to be a public right, which it is

You have more options for substandard housing in the cities (like sub basement room rentals aka “the ant tribe” in Beijing), but I also have no idea where you got this from. Rural hukou have the right to their land, but because they can’t sell it they can’t use it as collaterals in loans and such, making their life even harder.

> There are issues with housing in China but they're far less severe. Hoarding of property basically doesn't happen.

Even the most pro-China commentators don't make up such nonsense.

This does not match my understanding of China. Do you live in China?

> At the heart of that problem is housing unaffordability. High housing prices do nothing more than steal from the next generation and bring us closer to having a divide between landed and unlanded people.

I'd completely agree here. It's difficult to blame democratic governments for this though -- throughout the west nobody wants to build enough supply to deal with the problem.

Your second part of landed vs unlanded. Implement a land value tax and distribute it as a universal basic income, and that solves that problem. Nobody wants that either, they think they like it and then come out "oh of course $favoured_group shouldn't pay it"