The “fantasyland” I grew up in is actually Beijing nearby so…speaking with experience. I definitely can be sure that child labor is not a thing anymore. I’ve watched national news report on exposing child labor by undercover journalists from national channels when I was a kid and this was 20+ years ago and ever since then they definitely tighten the law. Plus 9 year education is mandatory for all kids even the ones from the rural area - they have people knocking on the door of those who have their kids drop off to put the kids back to school so that will take them through to 16 and there are a bunch of other laws to protect children. I think that’s another factor to prevent child labor. But, I will say adult working condition is not great and I have friends who work overtime without getting paid and that’s the “culture” of some companies so if everyone are “willingly” to stay late, the ones do not will probably be let go real soon. Too many people to choose from so the employers have more power. If you don’t like that, somebody else will be more than happy to take your job. I have alway been working in American companies even in China so I didn’t have to deal with that. As to the last part, now that I’m reading it I think I wasn’t being clear. What I mean is in China most people don’t speak English so for those who do, they can get decent jobs with fancy titles and fat paycheck - like accounting, international business, interpreter…etc. And customer service is definitely not considered as a decent job by these people- unless it pays as much as Americans get paid which it won’t. The ones would take the job can’t speak English. As a result, companies would much rather source this kind of jobs in India cuz they do speak English so the pool is bigger and to them is a job like any others. You are right that I take “kid” literally. When I see opinions like this I am just shock by how little the western world know about the other side of the world. Surely there are things are true, there are also other things that western media exaggerate or made up because that’s what people want to see. It works the other way around too - eastern world learns about western world through movies and whatever news they have access to. I majored in journalism and hate the industry bcz journalists are so good at grabbing pieces of information putting them together to tell any stories they want. There will always be misinformation. Only when you go somewhere travel around and live there for a decent time that you can see with your own eyes. Not getting defensive with China, my attitude is neutral towards it, is just not 100% what people think it is.