Incidentally, Apartheid South Africa was a stratified caste system, where the position in life born into could not be changed, while China and most other places are a stratified class system, where changing your position is at least possible. That’s why Apartheid was morally unacceptable–it was its ideology, not the reality of material conditions on the ground.

Not so sure, but I would like to hear it from an Uighur or Tibetan before I believe it. Also, differences in Chinese dialects set people apart in a way that makes it easy to discriminate on the basis of regional origin. Open your mouth and speak in a Sichuan accent in Wuxi and you’ll know what I mean.

Here I’ve got to agree with nanheyangrouchuan - oppression is systematic in China - it’s just not based on race. It’s based on class & one’s place in society instead. You can’t look at what China says (the laws and regulations ‘in place’), you must look at what they do. Even those brave enough to make a trip to Beijing to get a fair hearing are usually turned away.

Your main points are well taken - it can be easy to ignore the vast inequalities in China. To be honest, though, I’m not going to look back on my time in China and forget about the inequality here. If anything, I will rail against the system more once I’m out of China and the consequences are lighter (paranoid a bit?).

Also, while there are vast inequalities and injustices in America, if you want to fight your way out of poverty in America it is much easier than in China. On a scale of injustice toward an oppressed underclass, China is far closer to South Africa during Apartheid than today’s America.

If you are a migrant worker in China, how do you get a better education? How do you get a better job? How do you save up to give yourself or your kids a better life? The answers are: You don’t - there just isn’t enough money to be made or opportunities to be seized. The best you can do is send money back to your family in the countryside, giving them a better life now while you struggle just to survive.

This post is a tough one to tackle - and this and similar topics rarely draw much attention. (Example: 15 or so comments about what they are saying about us in the China blogosphere, 2 comments about this post.)

You mean like the hokou system? Where migrant workers are illegal immigrants in their own country, unable to access the courts, educational or social welfare systems of the big 5-7 cities that they flock to?

“There is rampant corruption, but that is not actively perpetuated, and it is not by design.”
Oh, no, Beijing wouldn’t lock up petitioners from the countryside so that they can’t petition the national courts, then turn them back over to the local authorities sent to retrieve these unpatriotic troublemakers and take them back to an unimaginable fate.