(h/t Yaron Brook for sharing this video via Twitter)

In the fascinating video, journalist Leslie T. Chang talks about some of what she learned spending two years in one of China’s booming mega-cities. In this brief, less than 15 minutes, video she disposes of the idea that we in the West are somehow “exploiting” these workers and explains that they take what we would consider low paying jobs because they are better than their alternatives and give them a chance at a better life. She spoke of some who entered the city ten years before and are now urban middle class.

She sums it up pretty succinctly at the end of the video:

The trajectory is definitely upward. … Certainly the factory conditions are very tough and it’s nothing you or I would want to do, but from their perspective where they are coming form is much worse and where they are going is hopefully much better.