Even the Communists Treat Their Workers Better

Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court. April 2026. A worker surnamed Zhou. Quality assurance supervisor making 25,000 yuan a month. His job was taken over by AI large language models. The company tried to reassign him at 15,000 yuan. A 40% pay cut. He refused. They fired him with a severance package. He contested. The company sued to avoid paying. The company lost. The company appealed. The company lost again.

The court ruled that AI-driven job replacement doesn’t constitute a “major change in objective circumstances” that would justify termination under China’s Labor Contract Law. The court ruled that the company had failed to demonstrate the contract had become impossible to perform. The court ruled that the pay cut wasn’t a reasonable reassignment.

And there was a prior case. December 2025. Beijing Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security. A map data collector replaced by AI. The arbitration panel ruled that AI replacement doesn’t validate a dismissal. The panel found that the company’s adoption of AI was a voluntary move to stay competitive. By citing AI replacement as grounds for dismissal, the company had effectively shifted the risks of technological iteration onto its employees.

The principle is now established in Chinese law: The costs of technological transformation shouldn’t be borne solely by workers.

This isn’t American law.

The US has no federal law protecting workers from AI replacement. No federal law requiring companies to reassign workers at equal pay. No federal law requiring companies to demonstrate that a contract has become impossible to perform. The US has at-will employment. The right to fire people for any reason. The right to fire people for no reason.

An American CEO can fire an entire department, replace them with AI, and call it optimization. An American company can shift every risk of technological transformation onto its workers and face zero legal consequences. An American worker can be replaced by a chatbot and the only legal question is whether the severance package was compliant.

In May 2023, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced the company would pause hiring for 7,800 roles that could be replaced by AI. Not eliminated. Paused. The jobs would simply not be filled as people left. The humans would leave. The machines would stay. The savings would go to the shareholders. The workers would go to the unemployment line. No legal barrier. No court ruling. No protection. Just a CEO making a calculation and a workforce paying the price.

Klarna replaced 700 customer service agents with an AI chatbot. The company bragged about it. The CEO posted on social media about the efficiency. The shareholders cheered. The 700 workers? Gone. No legal recourse. No court to contest. No principle that the costs of technological transformation shouldn’t be borne solely by workers. In America, the costs are borne solely by workers. That’s the design.

The earnings calls are confession booths. “We reduced headcount by 15% through AI optimization.” “We expect $150 million in productivity savings from AI initiatives.” “We’re leveraging AI to drive efficiency across the organization.” Efficiency means firing people. Productivity savings mean firing people. Leveraging means firing people. The language is sanitized. The result isn’t. The workers are gone. The profits are up. The stock price rises. The CEO gets a bonus. The worker gets a cardboard box.

And who gets replaced first? The low-wage workers. The customer service reps. The data entry clerks. The warehouse workers. The people of color. The women. The workers who are already marginalized. A 2023 report from the National Women’s Law Center found that women hold two-thirds of the jobs most vulnerable to automation. A report from the National Urban League found that Black and Latino workers are overrepresented in the roles most likely to be automated. AI replacement isn’t colorblind. AI replacement follows the existing lines of power. The people who can least afford to lose their jobs are the first to lose them. The people who have the least power to fight back are the first to be replaced. The machine doesn’t see race. The people who build the machine do. The people who deploy the machine do. The people who profit from the machine do. The machine is neutral. The system isn’t.

And the US response to displacement? “Learn to code.” “Upskill.” “Adapt.” But retraining for what? The new jobs don’t exist. The new jobs don’t pay as well. The new jobs are also going to be automated. Retraining is a delay tactic. It shifts the burden onto the worker. It makes the worker responsible for their own obsolescence. The Chinese court said the company bears the cost. The American system says the worker bears the cost.

The tech companies lobby against regulation. OpenSecrets.org documents the millions spent by the tech industry on lobbying against worker protections. The politicians take the donations. The bills die in committee. The industry that profits from the replacement also profits from the lack of regulation. The same companies that build the AI that replaces you also fund the politicians who refuse to protect you. The left hand automates. The right hand lobbies. The worker is caught in the middle. And the middle is where people get crushed.

The US treats any worker protection as government overreach. Any regulation as socialism. But protecting workers from AI replacement isn’t socialism. It’s just protection. The same kind of protection that China just implemented. The “free market” is only free for the people who own it. The workers don’t own the market. The workers are sold in the market. The workers are commodities in the market. And when a cheaper commodity comes along, the workers are discarded.

This isn’t new. The Luddites smashed looms because the looms were replacing them. The automation of manufacturing destroyed the Rust Belt. The gig economy reframed exploitation as flexibility. Each technological transformation has shifted risk onto workers and profit to owners. AI is just the latest iteration. The pattern is the same. The victims are the same. The beneficiaries are the same. The machine changes. The extraction doesn’t. The loom became the assembly line. The assembly line became the algorithm. The algorithm became the chatbot. The tool changes. The hand that holds it doesn’t.

What would an American version of this Chinese ruling look like? What legislation would be needed? The answer is nobody’s proposing it. The answer is everybody’s blocking it. The US doesn’t have a worker protection problem. The US has a priority problem. The priority is profit. The priority is efficiency. The priority is the shareholder. The worker isn’t the priority. The worker is the cost to be minimized. And the cost is being minimized right out of existence.

China. A country we’re told is authoritarian. A country we’re told doesn’t care about human rights. A country we’re told is the enemy of freedom. That country just ruled that workers have more protection from AI replacement than American workers do.

Zhou kept his pay. He kept his day in court. The company couldn’t discard him and call it efficiency. The law said no. The court said no.

In America, 700 customer service agents at Klarna are unemployed. 7,800 roles at IBM will never be filled. The earnings calls continue. The shareholders cheer. The CEO gets a bonus. The worker gets a cardboard box.

The authoritarian country protected the worker. The free country protected the company.

What does freedom actually mean if it doesn’t include the freedom from being discarded by a machine?

Ask Zhou. He knows.

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