Based on what we were told by our guide, China has a very limited unemployment policy. You are paid unemployment for 6 months. If you do not find a job in that time, the state gives you one. It most likely will be sweeping streets. If you do not, wish to take it, you get nothing and that includes no health carte, no food stamps, no aid to dependent children, zip, nada, zero. You either work or you and your family starve.
Note, there are no power tools in evidence here. It is all hand labor. The only time I saw any power tools at work was in one location where a tree was being cut down. They were using a chain saw.
China has many modern freeways and toll roads. They also have a great number of cars and trucks as well as buses. Traffic was heavy everywhere but did seem to move fairly well. Surprisingly, we saw very few accidents and no serious ones.
Roadways were nicely landscaped. There was very little trash seen anywhere.
Buildings were unique in design. We saw some older ones that seem to have all come out of the same cookie cutter but the new ones were very unique.
I did not see any “Big Box” stores such as Costco, Home Depot, etc”. Everything seemed to be sold from small family owned shops. There were some shopping centers but they were made up of hundreds of small shops in 4-5 story buildings,.
And yes, there were CCTV cameras everywhere. In Shanghai I determined that there was a state owned TV camera for every 50 residents. That does not include those that were maintained by private entices. Apparently the video goes direct to storage and is then recalled if an incident occurred in a specific location.