[US Trending] The Census Lied Again | Big Data to Find People, the “Social Insurance Tax” Unveiled | After National Day, Rights Defense Incidents Break Out in Multiple Places | The US Uses AI to Write Code, China Uses AI to Shoot Short Dramas? | Chinese-Style School Opening: Security Checks, Phone Inspections, Forced Haircuts, Instant Noodle Penalties
This episode mainly covers multiple trending topics: Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security Vice Minister Li Zhong's statement on mobilizing uninsured individuals through data tracking, which sparked netizen skepticism; post-National Day collective rights defense events breaking out across China, including workers demanding unpaid wages in Fengxian, Jiangsu, land occupation conflicts in Bobai, Guangxi, street vendor evictions in Nanjing, and villagers in Zhangmuchen, Guangxi, defending their rights over accumulated floodwater; strict school controls upon reopening, such as security checks, mobile phone inspections, and mandatory head shaving; bias toward international students in campus recruitment at Taiyuan University of Technology and the
From October 11 to 12, the local government in Nanjing, together with chengguan and police, forcibly expelled street vendors. During the process, multiple vendors were beaten and injured, and some were arrested, leading to fierce clashes at the scene. One of the triggers was that the local government implemented fee-based management and a lottery system for assigning stalls in the night market. However, some vendors were unable to register or win a stall in the lottery because they refused to bribe government officials, or they were assigned poor locations, leaving them facing the loss of their livelihoods. A netizen remarked, "The night market is neat now, but the rice bowls of some vendors have been 'neatly' taken away."
On October 12, multiple netizens posted videos claiming that in Daqi Village, Zhangmu Town, Guangxi, the construction of the Luqin Expressway lacked a planned drainage system, causing long-term flooding on local roads. Villagers had to detour thirty-four kilometers just to get to the town, which triggered collective rights defense actions. Videos from the scene showed a large number of police and anti-riot forces arriving, followed by fierce clashes. It is unknown when the road to the town will be accessible again, but the road for rights defense has already been blocked. A netizen complained: "You have the money to support so many suppression organs? Can't you just build a drainage system?"
As the National Day holiday ended, students returned to school one after another. However, the reopening of some schools in China felt more like being sent back to prison. On October 7, netizens filmed the return-to-school scene at Shijiazhuang Jingying Middle School in Hebei: security screening machines were set up directly at the school gate, and students' suitcases and backpacks were all subjected to machine checks. A netizen complained: "It wasn't even this strict when I traveled from Shenzhen to Hong Kong." After security checks, cell phones had to be inspected as well. Xiamen Xiang'an Middle School checked for contraband by requiring all cell phones to go through security screening, causing students to queue outside the school for over an hour. A netizen joked: "Are they checking for circumvention software and anti-party remarks?"
On September 28, Leiyang No. 1 Middle School in Hunan gathered high school freshmen with "unqualified hairstyles" into a classroom, locked the door, and shaved their heads en masse. Some students climbed over the wall and fled; those who failed to escape had their heads shaved and were even charged a fee by the school. Local media briefly exposed the matter, but the relevant pages were subsequently hidden. A netizen said: "When those who enforce the law and teach the law understand nothing about the law, this place is finished."
On October 10, a netizen reported that a student at Urumqi Middle School was given a major demerit for eating instant noodles; netizens in the comment section noted that similar incidents occurred in schools in the Altay Prefecture of Xinjiang. A netizen complained: "Nowadays, students even have to follow regulations when they are hungry." Ladies and gentlemen, do you know why eating instant noodles is a violation? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Being a student is not easy, and parents shouldn't expect to clock off work either. Wuhan No. 15 Middle School was exposed for arranging for parents to "be on duty" in the classrooms from 7:40 PM to 9:00 PM. A netizen complained: "You draft animals go ahead and give birth, the kids you bring into this world will just be the soft underbelly the Party-State uses to control you in the future."
In the past, studying abroad was a major highlight on a resume, often called gilding. However, amid the prevailing nationalism today, studying abroad has instead become a stain. Recently, at a campus recruitment fair at Taiyuan University of Technology, a recruiter told graduates who had studied overseas that foreign schools are no good, citing concerns that it might affect their "social background" and lead to "foreign capital funding." The recruiter also stated that the institution undertakes national special tasks, so "we would rather not hire them than make a mistake." Currently, the relevant video has been removed. Netizens pointed out that back in the day, Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai were both overseas students. China's new edition of English textbooks is also becoming increasingly "Sinicized." An English teacher posted that nearly 80% of the content in the new English textbooks consists of Chinese culture and ideological-political education, with cultural materials from English-speaking countries visibly reduced; textbook characters have even changed from "Li Lei" to... This teacher believes that learning a foreign language is meant for understanding another culture; true confidence should be about "seeing the world first, then telling China's story." A netizen said: "Unfortunately, in the Celestial Empire, the purpose of education is brainwashing."
1The phenomenon of the CCP maintaining the legitimacy of its regime by altering history has become increasingly absurd. Recently, netizens posted a new version of the junior high school world history textbook titled *The Independence of the United States*. It was found that the new version deleted the phrase from the *Declaration of Independence* stating that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and that if a government infringes upon the rights of the people, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." Netizens sarcastically remarked: "They are just afraid of you waking up." One consequence of the CCP altering history is that young people increasingly disbelieve the history they are taught. Recently, a conspiracy theory suddenly went viral on the Chinese internet claiming that "the Tang Dynasty never existed." Unexpectedly, this heightened the vigilance of the CCP. The Cyberspace Administration of China, state media, and public universities all participated in debunking and fighting back. Foreign media outlet *Newsweek* reported that the CCP attaches great importance to the control of historical narratives, because once young people begin to doubt the history told by the official narrative, they may further question the ruling legitimacy that the CCP maintains through tampering with history. Netizens complained: that the CCP openly changed its description of the 8-year War of Resistance against Japan to 13 years shows that fabricating history has always been a CCP characteristic. The conspiracy theory that the Tang Dynasty never existed is simply the result of the CCP's concoction of fake history.
Next, let us enter the "Foreign Media Looks at China" segment. Just how big of a lie has the CCP told regarding the population issue? One study suggests that China's population may have been overstated by 130 million, equivalent to the population of Mexico. This inflated set of figures may have also made General Secretary Xi even more convinced that "the East is rising and the West is declining," and that China will surpass the United States sooner or later. *The Wall Street Journal* reported on October 13 that a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison believes China's actual population is close to 1.27 billion, rather than the 14 billion announced officially. By cross-referencing census data with school enrollments, hospital birth records, vaccine quantities, and household registration data, he discovered numerous discrepancies.
Take the vaccine accounts, for example. Newborns in China must receive the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis within 24 hours of birth. From 2018 to 2020, China approved an average of 5.8 million vials per year, and vaccines must be discarded half an hour after opening. According to Yi Fuxian's estimates, a single vial can actually only vaccinate an average of 1.2 to 1.6 infants. However, extrapolating from official birth figures, each vial would have to vaccinate about 2.4 people. He argues that such a utilization rate is impossible nationwide. Look at the same cohort of children again. Officials claimed 17.7 million births in 2000, yet the 2010 census counted only about 14.4 million ten-year-old children; by 2015, junior high school graduates numbered only 14.2 million. There is a discrepancy of about 3.5 million between the figures.
How did these numbers grow? It is pointed out that after the central government allocated funds based on student numbers, some schools inflated their enrollment figures by 20% to 50%; rural medical insurance began reimbursing childbirth expenses, and hospital birth records expanded accordingly. When the census used these materials to make upward revisions, the numbers ended up testifying for one another. Today, fertility rates are once again tied to official evaluations and subsidies; reporting high numbers can secure political achievements and potentially more money. The report specifically notes that over the past twenty years, Yi Fuxian's projections have been closer to reality than those of demographic scholars inside the Chinese system. The report indicates that weak demand and the accumulation of debt have already dealt a blow to China's growth model. Yi's research also implies that demographic headwinds may be even greater than official figures suggest.
China's fertility rate has now dropped below 1.0, meaning an average of fewer than one child per woman. Household consumption accounts for only 39% of GDP, far below the global level of about 60%. If the population is even smaller than published figures indicate, the consumers Beijing expects to drive the economy may be far fewer than imagined. It is also believed that inflated population figures have led some economic scholars within the system to predict that China's economy will reach two to three times that of the United States, feeding Beijing's self-confidence; this same set of predictions has in turn made Washington worry that China's surpassing of the United States is inevitable. Raising the fertility rate is difficult, but altering statistical figures is very easy. This remark hits the nail on the head regarding the flaws within the CCP system: subordinates report good news to secure political achievements and funding, superiors judge the world based on the good news reported, and even policy-makers may end up being fooled by their own propaganda. Yet the extra people in the reports do not work, consume, or pay into pensions. Officials can use fake numbers, but the reality of aging and insufficient demand will not disappear, and the cost of misjudgment will ultimately still be borne by the ordinary people.
Has the CCP once again turned gunpowder into fireworks? China takes pride in gunpowder, one of the Four Great Inventions. This irony brings together the two uses of gunpowder: firecrackers and fireworks, versus artillery and bullets. The irony is whether the exact same technology is used to create festive noise or to enhance strength. Today, the United States places more emphasis on using AI for programming, research, and driving enterprise automation; yet in China, the scenarios that consume the most tokens are micro-dramas and video generation, with tokens being the unit used to measure computing usage when processing content.
On June 4, China Economic Times cited data from Chinese Online showing that domestic AI micro-dramas and video generation accounted for 55% of token consumption, e-commerce marketing for 24%, and software development for 15%. On October 5, Hong Kong's ET Net published Tao Dong's article "Different Paths of US-China AI Development." The figures cited by Tao Dong showed that 58% of US token consumption is dedicated to programming development and enterprise automation. He believes that the United States places more emphasis on technological breakthroughs, while China focuses more on turning applications into revenue as quickly as possible while following technological leaders. Tao Dong also mentioned that the scale of annual investment in US data centers is six times larger than that of China. The gap between China's frontier models and those of the United States recently widened again to about six months, primarily constrained by computing power.
AI helps with research and development, improves production, lowers corporate costs, and creates more and cheaper products, while also empowering companies to continue investing and innovating. It can make money,
but if its primary purpose remains generating traffic and competing for attention, the returns will increasingly revolve around the entertainment business. The "fireworks argument" questions whether China can use this round of technological advancement to enhance production capacity rather than simply manufacturing another display of commotion on screens. Looking further ahead, whoever pours more resources into breakthroughs in artificial intelligence may secure the opportunity to rewrite the application market. The traffic money earned right now may not necessarily protect the initiative in the next round of competition.
Next, let us look at a few absurd videos. What is the lifespan of a domestic car? On October 12, a netizen posted a video showing a 2022 Huawei Aito M7. In the video, the bottom of the vehicle is extensively rusted and corroded. The car manufacturers cooperating with Huawei previously only produced low-end cars. How is it that the moment they cooperate with Huawei, they become capable of producing high-end cars and selling million-yuan luxury vehicles? A roadside hole-in-the-wall diner keeps Huawei's storefront and procurement channels completely unchanged, yet it can suddenly serve a Manchu Han Imperial Feast?
Little Pinks can well be described by the idiom of a frog at the bottom of a well. At the opening of a shopping mall in a certain part of China, a woman saw an American uncle and wanted to tease him by asking if he had ever seen such a large shopping mall in the United States. In response, the uncle used a mobile phone translation app to say: "Malls like this were very popular in the US in the 1980s." The woman instantly suffered a mental breakdown. Netizens mocked: "They genuinely believe that LED lights and shopping malls are the pinnacle of civilization. Just you wait, until they experience freedom of speech and other human rights."
At the end of the program, we enter the netizen interaction segment. Hedgehog says: Do not buy products that do not allow reviews, and do not touch brands that do not allow questioning. I will add one more sentence: Do not talk about a government that does not allow discussion. If a coin only has a heads side and no tails side, it must be a counterfeit. Commenting on the broken brake pedal of the Huawei Zun: Huawei is intolerable. Buying Huawei is a patriotic tax, it is an IQ tax! Today's US
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