Chinese workers fight back against AI; the meaning of milk in Rwanda

0:00This message comes from NPR sponsor Raymond James, a firm where wealth management, banking, and capital markets solutions start with the connections between people. That's the power of personal. Disclosures at RaymondJames.com. Today on State of the World, Chinese workers fight back against AI and the meaning of milk in Rwanda.

0:26You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. In a few minutes, do Rwandans need to give up their passion for milk. First, just like in the United States and elsewhere, workers in China are worried about artificial intelligence taking away their jobs. And they're fighting back. This summer, a court in the Chinese city of Guangzhou sided with a graphics designer who was replaced by AI, ruling his dismissal unlawful. Similar court decisions have happened across several Chinese cities, and they're being hailed as victories for workers' rights.

1:06But as NPR's Jennifer Pak in Beijing tells us, with China's push to win the AI race, workers still have plenty to be anxious about. Economics graduate Eloen Wu is no stranger to AI. I use chatbots, she says, to help with my homework before. But when Wu got a recent internship at an AI startup in eastern China's Anhui province, she suddenly felt her AI skills were close to zero.

1:39It was a huge shock for me, she said, because I didn't know how advanced AI was already. I feel very afraid. She's been documenting these feelings on the social media platform Xiaohongshu. Will I be replaced by AI, she writes. It's a similar concern in the U.S. But in China, the push to adopt AI comes from the top leaders. And firms here are deploying AI at a scale that far outpaces those in America. Now the courts are stepping in. Take this case in eastern China's Hangzhou city, as reported by state broadcaster CCTV. A tech worker identified by the court only as Mr. Zhou was a quality assurance supervisor working with AI large language models.

2:30Eventually, AI took over his work, and the company dismissed him, which the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court deemed illegal.

2:41Judge Shi Guoqiang, who presided over the case, told CCTV, introducing AI to reduce costs is not automatic grounds for a company to end an employee's contract. Similar cases in China have seen courts side with workers. Legal protection is necessary, says Student Wu, but thinks it'll take some time to get right. Overall, Chinese laws are very protective of workers, says Guangli at the global law firm Taylor Wessing's Munich office. He specializes in Chinese employment and labor laws. If you compare to Germany, to Europe, to the U.S., to some extent, it is even more protective for employees. The issue is enforcement, says Eli Friedman, professor of global labor and work at Cornell University.

3:32The state does not have the capacity or, frankly, the interest to rigorously enforce its own laws. Chinese workers, he says, are vulnerable. Like Mr. Zhou's story. He may have won his case, but he's also 35. That's considered old for many Chinese tech companies. He might struggle to find work in China's sluggish economy. Nearly one in six grads couldn't find a job in June. Wu's now pursuing a master's degree.

4:03China's job market is already competitive, she says. AI just intensifies that competition. And it's only going to get worse as China and the U.S. are locked in an AI race. Again, Professor Friedman. You can't say that we want to dominate these industries in the future and then start clutching your pearls when people use those things to replace workers. As for Wu, every day she listens to a podcast or watches a video related to AI. to keep on top of the latest. Keep learning, she says. Experiencing AI and learning its limitations might make it less scary. It's keep up, she says, or get left behind.

4:48Jennifer Pak, NPR News, Beijing.

5:00In Rwanda, if you want to grab a tall, cold one at the end of the day, your beverage very well might be milk. Milk bars are a part of daily life, and the drink has cultural significance. But this popular beverage may be causing problems for the population. NPR's Fat Matanas takes us to one of Rwanda's favorite hangouts. We're in a busy, bustling area of Rwanda's capital, Kigali. It's midday, and customers at this milk bar are spilling into the street, holding large glass mugs full of the creamy white drink. The owner of this joint is 52-year-old Moses Sanziman. He's dressed in a lab coat.

5:43He says some milk bars offer options, like hot milk with a dollop of honey, fermented milk, or flavored with chocolate or strawberry or vanilla, low-fat or skim. Here, though, Sanziman likes to keep it simple. He serves cold, whole milk from a large storage tank with a faucet on one end. It's pasteurized. Jean-Paul Sagahutu is a regular consumer drinking about a liter of milk a day. And he's picky about it, too. He'll only drink it at a milk bar or fresh from a cow, he says. I can't drink milk in a box. No way. For me, milk, I don't know the word in English, but it's something sacred. Meaning sacred in French.

6:30Other customers nod their heads in agreement. The sentiment comes from the respect people here have for cows, seen for many generations as providers of sustenance and prosperity. Very long time ago, there was no money, there was no currency. To see if someone is rich, they were counting cows. If you have 10 cows, it means you are rich. I read somewhere that in Rwandan culture, when you want to wish someone well, you say, may you have a cow. Is that true? Kajirinka. In the past 20 years, as Rwanda has experienced economic growth, more people are moving to the city from rural areas. So people want to hold on to that culture of drinking milk, even if they're living in a city and there are no cows.

7:20It's now my turn to drink, says Sansiman. And he brings over a glass, think Oktoberfest beer stein-sized. Okay, so I just took a sip of the milk. And my first thought is this would make fantastic vanilla ice cream. But I am sitting among milk purists, so that might not really be the choice here. But you can really taste the quality of the milk. It's like creamy, well-rounded, rich. This is pretty good. Some of the customers tell me they prefer milk over tea or coffee because it's much more nutritious. But there's one person who's trying to shift this cultural habit. In society, they think milk is everything.

8:01That's Rwanda's health minister, Dr. Sabine Nsanzimana. He sees milk as a part of a variety of challenges that come with urban lifestyle changes. Now we're seeing more of people leaving and always going to hospital for chronic diseases that would have prevented by less milk drinking, less alcohol drinking, and other mobility exercising. So how many cups of milk do you recommend to people a day? He picks up a 16-ounce water bottle. I would say maybe half of this. For now, though, the milk bars of Kigali are pouring one large mug at a time. Flat Matanis, NPR News, Kigali.

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