this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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Bruh, I had someone told me that "China lifted millions of people out of poverty"
Me, whose family emigrated out of China for both economic and political reasons: "Uh-huh, interesting......" 🤭 "Kinda odd so many people want to go to foreign countries, but few of those foreign countries' Citizens want to immigrate to China... I wonder why..." 🙈
Recently an economist, who writes for an economics paper in China, showed a billion people in China lived on 280 USD, or less, per month, which would mean most of China's population is still in poverty, and their 800 million number was either not true, or that there was a big back slide they have been covering up. He used meta-data from Chinese academic institutes, and the CCP's own reports.
Since that report went viral on Weibo, then the west, the CCP, and foreign groups they operate through, have nearly erased it. When you would search for "billion people in china still in poverty" Google would have like 10 links to articles about it. Now it is buried down page, behind a dozen or so links about China lifting varying numbers of people from poverty. The ones still there are from only less reputable, or less known, sites. So getting to the citation, that is real, is basically dead.
China's response has changed, been contradictory, and has mostly become vague sentiments of anti-Chinese interests.
It went from numerous, well established, media outlets, to me being able to only find this trash article about the censorship on trash newsweek.
The framing is real shit, but the direct info about Li, and what happened are there. However it was originally reported in Caixin, which is a mainstream Chinese financial paper. It wasn't even a hit piece. The guy was citing their demographics issues, plateauing growth, aging population, stress on funds to elderly, etc. He even says that the CCP is very competent in that regard, and projected that, taking this information into mind, they could still double their GDP in record time.
https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-censorship-1-billion-people-monthly-income-2000-yuan-poverty-1856031
They did lift millions of people out of poverty, provided those people qualify to live in a T1 city.
They did. My parents had better lives in the few years before they left, compared to when they were a kid during the Mao era. Still was not a great life, and thats why they took me and my brother and we all left.
People defend a dictatorship and say "Quality of Lifr improved". Well I mean, yea, thats to be expected as time goes on, improvent in quality of life is a global trend in (almost) every country, whether Democratic or Authoritarian, Capitalist or "Socialist". Its not the "Socialism" that made China better, it was the diplomacy that opened up international trade. It was the better leadership after Mao. Mao didn't do shit for China, Deng Xiaoping was who really opened up China and improved people's lives (not saying Deng Xiaoping was a saint or anything, just stating facts). The "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" was just his excuse, since he cant just be brutally honest and call it what it is, Capitalism (with tighter state control).
It wasn't limited to cities. Mostly, government intervention means to help people only in the cities, yes, but one of the really notable things about Chinese modernization is that the government pushed to have it spread out to the rural areas, too, with big investments in modernizing and improving basic quality of life everywhere.
I'm not sure if this is still true, but for quite a long time, they really were invested in trying to uplift the entire country, subject to the usual corruption caveats and provided the citizenry provided unflinching loyalty. The problem is that if you have absolutely no say in any of it, and if you get on the government's bad side for any reason, God help you. It doesn't even have to be anything you did. You're fucked and no mistake.
It's still pretty misleading. Yes, most rural Chinese have toilets and electricity now, but they still struggle to access Healthcare and education. About half of rural Chinese do not finish a high school equivalent degree, because they cannot afford the basics like books and pencils. And because they have residency status which prevents them from attending any college. Likewise, for these people to access real Healthcare beyond traditional woo, they need to find transportation into the city and pay bribes for single appointments with no guarantee of continued care. It's still a very tough life and looks nothing like what the west considers "poor country folk."
Hm, do you have a source where I can read more about this?
Just about health care, I just looked around, and I found some outdated sources, and this: https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12939-023-01908-4
This is what I was talking about. It looks like in 2009, the CCP indentified that there was a problem in rural access to health care, took a big swing at fixing it, and it worked. My sort of stereotype of it is that for all their heinous treatment of anything that “threatens” them, they really do sometimes make sweeping policies which are just aimed at making things better for the average person, which the US as a general rule does not.
But I’m completely open to reading up about it. Maybe I am wrong in my picture.
This is based on personal experience seeing the lines of people outside the hospitals in Shanghai at 6am trying to get on the schedule for specialty care which only exists in the cities, and talking to my in-laws about it. I have personally never actually tried to obtain medical care with a rural hukou. It's possible that my view of this is incomplete, but I know for sure that people do travel long distances and pay bribes for specific kinds of care, since they are technically not allowed to use hospitals outside their residency.
Got it. Makes sense. IDK if "they're sincerely working on it" is even accurate, but if so, that isn't necessarily incompatible with "and it's sometimes still really bad."
Yeah, I've seen that. They love to post up graphs of life expectancy, income, etc, and show it going up and up after the revolutions. It kind of loses its steam when you put those graphs next to the graphs of life expectancy, income, etc, worldwide, during that same time period, and they all go up together as a more or less unified grouping as agriculture and medicine improved and the technology boosted up the whole world.
A lack of world wide wars was also helpfull
Not being poor, does not mean you are rich. China lifted millions out of poverty to what is global average. Obviously migrants prefer to go to the actually rich parts of the world.
it's still kinda low overall (just look at steam's regional pricings), but you were probably above the poverty line, especially if you managed to emigrate. and if you're checking population under the UN poverty line, the statistic does hold up. that just means more people survive, not that more people self-actualize.
Family based immigration to USA, had to wait like 13+ years, paperworks started wayy before I was born. As far as I know, it has nothing to do with how rich you are (well, beside the fact that the relative in the US has to sign a paper to "sponsor" us, basically promising to pay the government in case we took certain government benefits within 5 years of entering, which we we never took any of those government benefits btw). Basically its nust luck.
Edit: Also, I heard that many people, particulary people from Fujian, China, have immigrated to the US without permission. Like, they didn't even get legal permission and could get deported at any time, yet they still came here. Like that's how much people wanted to leave.
Which just think about it, I seemed kinda lucky tbh, most people can't through the legal method, and is at risk of deportation come 2025 (ya know... new administration... honestly I'm not sure if legal immigrants like me are safe... 😖 hopefully, my citizenship status is good enough to not get kicked out.)