this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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What I would be interested in is the domestic help situation. Here in India all middle class gated societies run on the back of mostly female domestic workers who clean, sometimes cook and babysit. I would say 95% of the. In mind theee is an apartheid style checkpoint system at the entrance. The residents get app notifications when a worker enters and leaves. There are a total of two toilets on the permises, one for men and one for women. These toilets are shared by other people who in the society like cleaners and gardener. It is extremely unhygienic. The helps can't use the toilets in the homes they work in because of untouchability. There also aren't many places to get drinking water from.
In Hong Kong (China's capitalism tumor) we have an extremely exploitative situation for domestic workers, who are mostly Indonesian and Filipina imported labour working for very low minimum wage and terrible working hours.
It's extremely difficult for my Filipino side of the family to get visas to enter the mainland side of China as a result, because the government is extremely vigilant against human trafficking and cross-border families trying to smuggle their helpers across the border to do their technically-not-slave-labour on the mainland side.
They mention that people who work for the management company get free residence in the block as part of the job perks @3:36 in the video.
I saw that but the people who do the management are not the same ones who do the cleaning etc.
The management is the grounds care (I.e. the gardeners and landscapers), the security, the facilities managers who are called when things break, and the cleaners that clean all the communal spaces like hallways, paths, communal toilets.
The only ones who wouldn't be included would be any specifically domestic workers who work directly for individual families.
But, I would say the collectivisation of domestic work (cleaning companies, restaurants;cafés;take-out, baby-sitters etc.) is a good thing that capitalism has done that is bad in so far as it relies on the exploitation of the worker's labour and the poor conditions they might be subject to. The concept is good, the execution is what counts.
How do you know this?
Using the footage from the video I can infer most of that, and I've mixed that with my own knowledge of what management fees in apartment blocks usually pay for elsewhere in the world. I accept I might be missing some functions or have incorrectly included one or two in my assumptions.
Just asked cuz that isn't the case here.
Fair enough 👍
I somehow missed that. Thank you for pointing it out. That's actually very cool.
I don't live in China but from what i've seen it doesn't seem like what you are describing is the case in China.
I'm sure wealthy families have domestic help but from what i can see that is not necessarily the case for most middle class families. I also think the degree to which communities can be described as "gated" varies. There are some actual gated communities, but as far as i can tell a lot of apartment complexes in China are mostly free to walk around, just not to enter the building itself without a key/access pass. They do describe in the video though how the apartment complex residents pay a firm to do caretaking duties, but that would be for the building and the grounds around it, not people's individual apartments.
So in a sense, yes, there are lower class workers maintaining this lifestyle. And ordering food delivery is very common, and that is also a form in which those with means pay lower class workers to replace domestic labor. Yes, if you have money you will enjoy more luxuries/services and better living conditions, but i would say that, from what i have seen, it seems significantly more egalitarian than India. A caste system as such doesn't exist (in fact China has a long history of meritocratic traditions, and the opportunity for social mobility continues to be something that is emphasized in Chinese society, hence the almost obsessive focus on educational achievement), but there is still wealth inequality, and elements of patriarchal gender norms persist.
As for childcare, Chinese children seem to be in school and after-school programs for long hours, so there is probably less of a need to pay domestic help for that.