Despite the US’s economic success, income inequality remains breathtaking. But this is no glitch – it’s the system
The Chinese did rather well in the age of globalization. In 1990, 943 million people there lived on less than $3 a day measured in 2021 dollars – 83% of the population, according to the World Bank. By 2019, the number was brought down to zero. Unfortunately, the United States was not as successful. More than 4 million Americans – 1.25% of the population – must make ends meet with less than $3 a day, more than three times as many as 35 years ago.
The data is not super consistent with the narrative of the US’s inexorable success. Sure, American productivity has zoomed ahead of that of its European peers. Only a handful of countries manage to produce more stuff per hour of work. And artificial intelligence now promises to put the United States that much further ahead.
This is not to congratulate China for its authoritarian government, for its repression of minorities or for the iron fist it deploys against any form of dissent. But it merits pondering how this undemocratic government could successfully slash its poverty rate when the richest and oldest democracy in the world wouldn’t.
The answer is socialist policies, or social democrat policies, or whatever-the-fuck-you-want-to-name-it-to-come-to-terms-with-it policies. China hasn’t even been particularly good with them, they’ve just managed to have them. That’s all you need, to accept them as good instead of demonizing them. Which makes some trends in the countries that do have them sad.
So did Taiwan, Eastern Europe and dozens of other countries without sacrificing human rights as much as China. So tired of “they’re evil but hey that’s the only way to not be poor!” bullshit that validates dictators.
Expected better from The Guardian than to use this bait to illustrate US’ shortcomings. The world does not revolve around US and to poke america you don’t need to validate dictators.
Sadly, the world does revolve around the US. It seems to be changing with The Stupids in charge, though.
China, in large part, raised people out of poverty at the expense of the so-called “west”…so it’s no mystery that the US was unable to do the same. The wests’ corporations needed cheap labour, and China was happy to accept the jobs. We all know this. Trump got elected because he was the first to overtly acknowledge that reality and propose a solution. Now, his “solution” will only exasperate the problem because he’s ultimately a corrupt fascist…but there’s a lesson there that hasn’t been learned yet.
his “solution” will only
exasperateexacerbate the problemMy eyes are so bad I can’t tell which way either of those words is spelled.
Not by choice but by design. America is capitalist hell hole and it will get worse day by day
when the richest and oldest democracy in the world wouldn’t.
I like that it uses “wouldn’t” rather than”couldn’t”. So relevant to today’s politics
Only a handful of countries manage to produce more stuff per hour of work.
Only a handful of countries manage to produce more money per hour of work.
That’s an important distinction IMO.
Last paragraph basically says it all:
This is not to congratulate China for its authoritarian government, for its repression of minorities or for the iron fist it deploys against any form of dissent. But it merits pondering how this undemocratic government could successfully slash its poverty rate when the richest and oldest democracy in the world wouldn’t.
China’s new 5 year plan says it all too. So does all their previous 5 year plans too. Publicly available too.
In USA affordable EVs from China are illegal. Other affordable green tech from China is made unaffordable.
Maybe it’s not the government that is the problem. Maybe the problem is the people in charge of running the government. And those people’s plan.
Project 2025 is public too. That’s USA’s plan or at least the Republicans plan.
Sounds to me the left needs a plan
Yeah it would really help to have a plan like “tax rich people” “decommodify housing” “trade deals that punish outsourcing” “ban medical debt.” “College that is so cheap it doesn’t need loans” “Corporations posting profits after job cuts and layoffs will have higher taxes” “discourage corporations from selling products in multiple markets” “reduce corporate price fixing through third parties” “force corporations to compete in markets” “disallow investors to buy companies when they hold substantial investment in a corporation that produces any competing product”
One final edit: “Break up regional monopolies”
You need a left first.
The sad part is there is a left, but very few leaders of the left.
Leaders are the ones the feds go after first.
At this point, Chinas goverment may be no more authoritarian than the US government. And China has a lot more social welfare programs than the US. Honestly, when I was in China i felt substantially more free than I did in the US. Far less policed. Far less restricted. Maybe that jsut my experience, but the feeling was real.
Nah, my existence was illegal. I’m the second son in my family. I’d feel very rejected there.
Hukou was also another form of rejection. To them, I’m just a filthy peasant from some village in Taishan. Doesn’t matter if I was born in a hospital in Guangzhou, I get Taishan Hukou. They didn’t me in Guangzhou Oublic schools. We didn’t belong there, just migrants, second class residents. By the start of highschool, the migrants kids have to go back to where their hukou actually is because Gaokao has to be taken there.
Westerners have their privilaged passport to shield themselves because the PRC authorities won’t dare to touch a western citizen. Too much trouble and bad international press. (I mean as long as you don’t actually cross their “red line”, you’re immune) That’ probably why it feels so free.
I mean, even an American Citizen of Chinese descent don’t get that privilage, since they “look Chinese” they get treated like a Chinese national.
interesting point about not wanting to go after westerners. I knew the big no-nos so I stuck well clear of those, but there we so many minor offenses that I would be fined to death on in the US that I know China would have just completely ignored.
Haven’t been to either but authoritarian doesn’t have to mean suppressive. And in both cases it might matter a lot where you go and who you are (as in your wealth, skin colour, connections etc).
This is not to congratulate China for its authoritarian government
Dizzying to see what constitutes “authoritarian” in Evil Foreign Country relative to what is “sensible national security policy” at home.
Almost feels like the complaint isn’t with the policies themselves, but who authors and enforces them.
authoritarian when you refuse to sell out to world bank and IMF and refuse to give up your resources for foreign corporations to exploit.
I like how fast they build infrastructure. I’m still waiting on a subway that was planned to be built 40 years ago
I like how fast they build infrastructure
You mean collapsing within a few years? Three of their largest bridges recently built just collapsed. And a lot of structures over there collapse within a few to several years.
Cope harder. China has the most vast high speed rail network in the planet and it works, for all intents and purposes, flawlessly, as do the immense metro rail systems in big cities.
886 gigawatts of solar too, adding about 250GW a year lately. They’re building solar at a rate that outpaces most countries entire capacities
US has about 200GW (estimated, no official number) and until 2020 was adding about 20GW a year. This number increased significantly and about 120-130GW was added between 2020-2024. This was record growth for the US mainly due to economic policy (which came to a screeching halt in 2024, surprise). But even before 2024s return to coal times China was outpacing us by 2x the growth we saw in a 4 year period in a single year
This does not cover most of the other key quality of life metrics people complain about in America that China has made strides on: poverty and wealth inequality (which the article is obviously about), housing access, healthcare reforms, as you’ve mentioned significant public transit investment. Are these things perfect? No, but considering where China was in 1990 or even 2005 they’ve made significant strides because of active investment in their populace and infrastructure.
In that same time America has spent basically 0 time and money on its populace or land. Income inequality has worsened by 2-4x, our infrastructure crumbles, our healthcare system is failing while mortality rates and prices climb, etc
But point this objectively true data out and you’re a “tankie”. Just let the neolibs handle it, they’ll do the same thing they’ve been doing since 1992: taking bribes from corporations, insider trading, and convincing fucking dummies that they’ll fix it in a few more years if just a few more people vote, because it’s the voters fault you see. Don’t google the increase in my net worth since I took office 5 years ago please!
Regarding solar, you’re forgetting one thing: not only is China the highest installer of solar power, they manufacture 93% of the total world production of photovoltaic panels. Every solar power installation in the west relies on Chinese solar panels.
The USA had every opportunity to be the manufacturer of panels here as well. Funny you mention this. This is one industry that made tons of sense for the US to keep within America as the green energy boom was starting to take hold. The first solar cell was made here. It is a labor light industry, overall.
But starting in the 1990s as it was becoming clear this was necessary what was our response? To mock green energy, political gridlock, and to push the concern to private industry who mostly ignored it in favor of chasing fossil fuels a bit longer. Then US did what it does best and offshored production of panels it did make, weakening manufacturing capability even further (while strengthening China by starting to develop their supply chains, which they later invested billions in)
I feel you. I’m a Spaniard, and for 10ish critical years in the 2000s-2010s, we had a so-called “sun tax” that made people pay taxes for solar energy their home installations output to the electric grid. This essentially killed the solar industry in the largest country in the super sunny southern Europe. We have no fossil fuel deposits, no intention of opening up nuclear plants, and no geothermal energy possibilities, and we killed our best chance at solar.
Goes to show how China’s socialist government model blows anything in Europe and America out of the water.
What am I coping with exactly? I don’t live in the US and I’m not a US citizen.
You’re coping by lying about Chinese infrastructure
And how does that equate to me coping?
One of their largest bridges collapsed because of a weakness in the bridge’s foundation that I think involved a landslide. You know, landslides, which can be seldom predicted ahead of time given climate change changing rainfall patterns that challenge engineers’ “100-year records”.
The Chinese also figured out that the bridge was going to collapse ahead of time, so they evacuated all motorists. Don’t think there were any casualties.
When was the last bridge collapse in the US? IIRC, it was the one near NY/NJ where a tanker/barge ran into a foundation column. How can you predict that? And how many people died as a result?
These things happen. The difference between China and the US is how well both governments react to adversity.
One of their largest bridges collapsed because of a weakness in the bridge’s foundation that I think involved a landslide.
There was another one from earlier this year that involved a number of cars falling with the bridge.
The Chinese also figured out that the bridge was going to collapse ahead of time, so they evacuated all motorists. Don’t think there were any casualties.
You’re right, the most recent one involved no casualties, because the day before someone walking across the bridge noticed a huge crack and posted it to Douyin. Officials noticed it and then closed the bridge.
Maybe, but when they collapse, it’s cheap and quick to put up a replacement!
I haven’t noticed any more shit quality building in China than Korea or Vietnam. Slightly less than Japan, but there’s a reason most buildings there get torn down in like 20 years.
Repression of minorities? Seriously, can anyone in the west even judge any country like that? Why, because you’re the experts in oppressing and repressing minorities?
Bro China has autonomous regions with self-governance for all major minorities. And they still spend a lot of federal funds to develop their regions, building schools, hospitals, power plants, roads, trains etc.
The federal government built one of the largest Buddhist temples in the world in the Dai autonomous region, for the Dai people. They sponsor cultural and religious festivals, spending federal funds to promote minority culture. All minority languages are taught in school in their respective home regions.
When has the US, Canada, Europe ever done anything like that? Japan doesn’t recognize its minorities at all, Sami are repressed in the nordics, and don’t even get me started on native peoples in the US and Canada.
Seriously this is all pure propaganda. It’s literally the meme “China lifts hundreds of millions out of poverty. But at what cost?! 😱”.
seriously, look at what ICE and trump are doing before you start throwing stones in your glass house.
Yes, this current admin is fucked up, but to put things into perspecrive, people during the Wong Kim Ark era faced even worse shit than anything I ever had to face. Migration always results in discrimination and sometimes persecution. Claiming this is the same as before is a huge disrespect to the actual stuggles to my compatriots from those eras in the past had to face.
Regardless of what happened in the past, and regardless of what other countries are doing currently, all forms of repressing minorities are a problem. Though I can agree that it is sometimes frustrating to hear about such concerns from oblivious Americans.
It’s just that I am inclined to not believe the white supremacist colonizers on what counts as “repressing minorities”.
Real criticism based on reality, yes. Empty claims based on propaganda, no.
All minority languages are taught in school in their respective home regions.
Bro they’re slowly killing off the Cantonese Language 💀
Not only they’re not teaching it, they are banning the use of Cantonese in schools. Fucking beijing.
It’s not banned, but it’s not forced. Only mandarin is forced (all other languages are optional to the school), and teachers are forced to pass mandarin exams to teach. And even in Guangzhou most people speak mandarin in a business setting, so parents make their children focus on mandarin even if they are native Cantonese speakers themselves.
But dude, it’s like a much milder version of language consolidation than what happened in France, Spain, Germany or Italy. They literally killed people for speaking the wrong language.
Exactly. Authoritarianism sucks. I wouldn’t want to live in China. But the US (and Canada) can do a fuckload better. In Canada they are also dismantling and privatizing everything and it sucks. Basically paying a lot more to get a lot less.
Eh…
I’m glad my homeland is doing a lot better these days, but still, for my family, we end up doing better in the US (we moved around 2010 for context, way before this admin), the first few years in the US was a struggle, the similar stuggle as before in Guangzhou, but eventually we have a house and then we started saving up and we have a small bussiness and some investments here in the US. So it really depends on personal circumstances…
In China, everyone has an ancestral house, but that is in your village; in the city, unless you are from the city, you probably won’t have housing. Jobs were in cities, so people migrate there, migrant workers… most of them have to rent a small apartment unit, probably in some slum. There are handweitten “for rent” posters everywhere. My family didn’t have to rent, they “bought” an apartment in Guangzhou (bought in quotes because the 70 year lease thing… which we still don’t know how it works… 70 years have not passed), its a very shitty one, in a slum neighborhood, but that was all they could afford. Most had to rent.
Prior to the Opening Up and Reforms, people weren’t allowed to move around, so you’d just get stuck on your farm… and farming manually… which really sucks.
After the Opening Up and Reforms, the relaxed the restriction on movements. But the Hukou still had restrictions.
I was born in Guangzhou, but wasn’t allowed into their public schools, no Guangzhou Hukou, my hukou was Taishan, my mom had to pay for a privately-run one that she said was inferior to the public school. Some migrant workers just left their kids beind in their village to attend school there. So those kids rarely get to see their parents. I did see them because I was going to school in Guangzhou so we didn’t really get separated like those kids did, but usually we didn’t get to see out parents for most of the day, so either grandmother was home to watch me and my brother, or sometimes we just get left at home alone.
I think most of the kids in that school I went to were all kida of migrant parents… because a Guangzhou kids would just go to public school.
Someone with Taishan Hukou also can’t like get any healthcare benefits of Guangzhou.
It’s like a internal passport system. Countries withing countries…
Then there was another issue with me essentially being an “illegal child” since my mother violated the 1 child policy, as I was the 2nd to be born, so my parents had to pay a huge fine before I can even get registered in Hukou and legally exist and have identity documents.
Converting to Guangzhou Hukou was practically impossible. Somehow, getting US citizenship was easier… 🤷♂️
Maybe one day this stupid Hukou thing goes away, because it is stupid af.
Believe it or not, there are plans to “overhaul” the Hukou system.
https://thediplomat.com/2024/08/china-unveils-ambitious-5-year-plan-to-overhaul-the-hukou-system/
Recently I think they make it so couples can register their marriage in any jurisdiction. And not have to go to one of the couple’s birth town.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202505/1333785.shtml
I couldn’t fully understand whether or not their children’s Hukou will now be in the location of their marriage registration. But it’s a good step forward and they saw a brief spike in marriage registration overall.
It’s so weird that they’ve been so stubborn about it for so long, even as their cities expand to accommodate migrants and the population growth is slowed.
Haven’t things changed a lot there since 2010?
Too late, PRC does not do dual citizenships lol. I have US citizenship now so PRC citizenship is automatically revoked. No going back. (It’s not like I want to tbh).
But AFAIK, Hukou issues is still a problem.
Language is probably my biggest issue. My English is literally like 10x better than my knowledge of Chinese, so there’s no way I’d fit in, I mean I could probably read signs, but I can’t do any serious conversations.
I think people are still trying to emigrate, during the Biden admin, there were supposedly a lot of Chinese nationals trying to enter without permission via the Mexican border, I think thery were trying to claim Asylum or something, but with this admin’s autocratization, that went down. But there are still a lot of other (Non-US) western countries people try to go to.
I was there several years ago, working in beijing. Decent apartments were crazy cheap. General cost of living is jokingly tiny in comparison to the US. And the kicker, because I was from the west, they were willing to pay may a salary nearly equivelent to what I was making in the states. I only came back to the US because my wife was there.
What work did you do btw?
And the kicker, because I was from the west, they were willing to pay may a salary nearly equivelent to what I was making in the states.
I feel like this is the important part to remember, the average locals probably don’t get paid as well as you do.
i wont go into my work, but no the locals definitely didnt get paid as much as me. That really doesn’t change the reality how cheap the cost of living is over there though. If I was making the same as the locals over there when I was there, i’d be living just as comfortably there as i currently live in the states. And considering current inflation, I would argue i’d probably be living even more comfortably.
PRC citizenship is automatically revoked
Do they have any way of knowing you’re a US citizen? As long as you use your chinese documents to enter to China and say you’re only a US resident you should be fine. Just don’t flash your US passport.
Alternately, the US tourist visa is 90 days if applying from the US, but the application process sucks and can be renewed just by jumping out of the country or into HK for an hour.
Prior to the Opening Up and Reforms, people weren’t allowed to move around, so you’d just get stuck on your farm… and farming manually… which really sucks.
It’s weird to raise this as a concern relative to the history prior to the revolutionary era. Like folks who bemoaned the loss of the antibellum American South or the Batista Era Cuba or Peronist Argentina.
It’s weird to raise this as a concern relative to the history prior to the revolutionary era.
It’s different because this affected the people who are still alive today.
The reform being talked about started in 1980, and didn’t become available to the broader population until pretty recently. Even today, children aren’t allowed to attend public schools outside of their ancestral home town.
So if you were born in 2000 to parents who had moved to Shenzhen, they’d still have to send you back to whatever rural village your grandparents were from, and didn’t have access to schools or healthcare otherwise. Now, you’re 25 years old and lived most of your life seeing your parents once a year, and still have an internal passport-like document tying you to that ancestral village.
There are more reforms on the horizon, but trying to explain just how pervasive the hukou system still is (and how much it affected the people who are alive today) is really hard to grasp for people not familiar with the system.
The reform being talked about started in 1980, and didn’t become available to the broader population until pretty recently. Even today, children aren’t allowed to attend public schools outside of their ancestral home town
A lot of that is simply issue of capacity and social management. The famines that everyone loves to blame Communism for in the 1960s came out of an urban economic boom that drew in peasant farmers without regard to the ecological consequences. We saw similar catastrophes in Europe and the Americas during early industrial periods, with a bad crop year spiraling into food riots and panics as farmers abandoned their crops in droves.
The fundamental difference between Chinese commune policies and, say, American sharecropping or Cuban sugar plantations is that the workers had no title to their land, not that they couldn’t leave it.
So if you were born in 2000 to parents who had moved to Shenzhen, they’d still have to send you back to whatever rural village your grandparents were from, and didn’t have access to schools or healthcare otherwise.
Your parents would have moved to Shenzhen to take advantage of the enormous export boom out of Hong Kong. You’d be drawn into the factory system just like your parents, with minimal education and poor social services.
But, as a consequence, Shenzhen enjoyed an equivalent dividend in wealth, resulting in the construction of new schools and clinics which were subsequently opened to the public as fast as the state bureaucrats could stand them up.
Compare this to, say, London or Miami or Mexico City during this same period. Wealth wasn’t captured for the benefit of the working classes. Instead, the cities privatized their public amenities and inflated speculative real estate bubbles.
Ten years down the line, people in Shenzhen had access to education, health care, and transit comparable to anything you’d find in the developed world. Meanwhile, Westerners were watching the Housing Crash erode their way of life and imposing brutal austerity measures on their local people.
The fundamental difference between Chinese commune policies and, say, American sharecropping or Cuban sugar plantations is that the workers had no title to their land, not that they couldn’t leave it.
I’m not talking about Chinese commune policies. I’m talking about the hukou system, and its effects on how children were raised in China between 1990 and 2010. As in, the lived experiences of Chinese people between the ages of 15 and 40 today.
It’s absolutely relevant to people today, not least of which was the original comment you were responding to, a firsthand experience of what happened to that commenter’s migrant family in Guangzhou as recently as 2010.
I’m talking about the hukou system
A consequence of early communal capital allocation. The state had already built up a surplus of health and education inventory, having failed to anticipate rapid migration to the cities. Rather than overflow the existing system, they told people to return to their native villages for services.
You can debate the ethics or efficiency of this system. Hardly the first time ranking bureaucrats failed to anticipate a sea change in social behavior and decided punitive measures would work better than short-term rapid expansion of social services. But the state bureaucracy quickly sought to rectify the system by expanding capacity in the cities, culminating in a reform of Hukou in '86 and another in '93.
But this created its own crisis as people back in the rural communities recoiled at what they saw as an abandonment of the Communist ideals of the Maoist Era. So they flooded into the cities in protest, culminating in the famous Tienanmen Square riots and subsequent military repression. Any policy that has a negative consequence is a form of authoritarian villainy, without regard to the intended consequences or broader benefits. When you’re a communist. If you’re implementing unpopular policies on a restive public when you’re a capitalist, the rules are reversed.
a firsthand experience of what happened to that commenter’s migrant family
If I had a $1 for every person on the internet I ran into who had a “I just happen to have a first-hand account that proves I’m right, take my word for it”…
Hell, I’ve got more than a few. I just don’t consider “my personal anecdote” irrefutable proof that an entire country is run by cartoon villains.
But it merits pondering how this undemocratic government could successfully slash its poverty rate when the richest and oldest democracy in the world wouldn’t.
My favorite idea is that the Mainland regime – then under Deng – took their economic development ideas and business customs from Japan – including industrial espionage – and basically modified those for Chinese needs while addressing the problems which led to Japan’s later bubble burst by the late 80s. That local corporations were given first priority, with a lot of incentives, tax breaks, programs to increase productivity and cut away inhibitions, hire young people from the far provinces who are willing to work for less, anything to have the world buy cheap from China. So they treated business like warfare, as essential for national survival and prestige where by 2049 the world must look up to Mainland China, never to be humiliated again.
However, China in its current state has its younger generations in urban areas having to deal with overwork burnout (996工作制 or 996 working hour system for example) and so creating basically its own anti-work culture. That there are godawful displays of wealth by tuhao almost everyday, while most others complain how it’s so expensive to live in, say, Shanghai. I could try to go on, but I put it that it’s still not a happy place as long as there is class conflict.
They have also put millions into poverty.
Citation?
China has pushed huge numbers of people into poverty in different ways over the decades — the Great Leap Forward basically wrecked agriculture and caused a massive famine, the Cultural Revolution tore apart schools and workplaces and left tons of families with nothing, and long-term policies like the hukou system kept rural migrants stuck in low-income situations even as cities got richer. On top of that, big relocation projects for dams or new city districts have displaced whole communities with compensation that often didn’t match what they lost, and pollution from rapid industrialization has hit farmers and fishers hard. Outside China, some Belt and Road projects have piled unsustainable debt onto poorer countries, aggressive fishing in disputed waters has squeezed local fishers in Southeast Asia, sudden trade restrictions have hurt industries in neighboring economies, and resource extraction deals abroad have pushed aside local communities.
References (searchable titles):
- The Great Famine: China’s Great Leap Forward, 1958–1962 – Frank Dikötter
- The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History – Frank Dikötter
- China’s Hukou System and Migrant Workers – China Labor Bulletin
- Dam Displacement in China – Human Rights Watch
- Pollution and Poverty in Rural China – World Bank reports
- Belt and Road Initiative Debt Sustainability Analysis – Center for Global Development
- South China Sea Fisheries and Regional Livelihoods – Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative
- China’s Trade Retaliation Effects – Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Chinese Overseas Resource Projects and Local Impacts – Global Witness
Your sources do be like:
-Freedom Eagle Burger Institute report on China Badness 1990
-Austrian Painter Legacy Institution report 1984
-Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America, Propaganda Department report 2024
-Victims of Communism Memorial Association compilation of Top 10 China Bad arguments
This is basically everything that’s happened in the US the past 100 years. They just did it much faster and rose more people out of poverty by the end.
Still plenty of bad, but it does have me wondering how many nations have industrialized without harming the poorest of society
This is largely Cold War propaganda which neglects the atrocities of the Second World War and subsequent ecological impacts on the population and infrastructure.
You’re displacing the deaths of millions of victims of Japanese genocide onto the next generation, via misinformation published through the John Birch Society and other well known reactionary media institutions.
OK, provide some citations that argue against those, or… Don’t respond
So you fail to make any other argument than calling me a racist? Well, I’ll accept the win and remember this for the future.
China recently lowered the earning amount for poverty to just below what most Chinese people make, thereby “reducing” poverty.
China recently lowered the earning amount for poverty
You want to cite what you’re talking about here?
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202509/1343992.shtml
According to the latest announcement from the State Council Information Office, as of 2024, the average life expectancy in China has risen to 79 years. That’s not an abstract figure - it represents the standard of living and the health of ordinary people across the country.
Now, let’s rewind 20 years. In 2005, the average life expectancy in China was about 72.1 years, while it was 77.6 in the US. That’s a difference of more than five years.
At that time, China was rapidly moving from being an agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse, but the healthcare system was still playing catch-up. Many older adults in rural areas had to walk several miles to see a doctor, and even hospitals in big cities could be cramped and under-equipped.
Fast forward two decades, and China’s life expectancy has surged by almost seven years, from 72.3 to 79.
You want to cite what you’re talking about here?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56194622
I guess that was 4 years ago, but I remember it as more recently.
while it was 77.6 in the US
I don’t live in the USA. I consider the USA a 3rd world country cosplaying as a 1st world one. Healthcare in the USA is one of the most broken and predatory in the world. So it’s not a meaningful comparison IMO.
I guess that was 4 years ago
Ah yes, the time China invested enormous sums in it’s infrastructure to improve the economy and quality of life of it’s poorest residents.
I guess if your devalue that investment, you can claim China cheated
I never said China didn’t invest into their national programs. I said their definitions of “poverty” are in question.
Just to clarify something. People tend to confuse the terms of “absolute poverty” and “poverty”.
The claim of “completely eliminating absolute poverty” (which is a claim the CCP makes) is almost true. Supposedly the number of people in absolute poverty in China is now 0.7%.
However, this is often reported as China “eliminating all poverty”, which isn’t true. The World Bank puts people still living in poverty in China at 13% (exact numbers are hard because of the CCPs information control), which is higher than what China self claims. Because China doesn’t use the World Bank’s definition for poverty.
I’ve been to China and have family from there. Don’t try to make this about some nationalistic nonsense. It would be amazing if people in China had as much access to the things in life everyone deserves, but the CCP isn’t exactly known for being honest.
I’ve been to China and have family from there
I’ve also been to China and I also have family from there.
Taking the train from Nanjing to Wuhan is a fundamentally different experience than driving from Houston to Denver. If you simply refuse to acknowledge the scope of public works and economic development, then dismiss these radical changes by citing the exchange rate between the USD and the Yuan as proof extreme poverty still exists, you’re lying to yourself and to everyone around you.
and enslaved millions more. how are they going to explain the college graduates that dont have jobs in the country while they are gettin mad how the ccp is tring to lure USA talent pool to the country, from what ive heard they over-graduated, enrolled in specific fields so its super saturated. plus they have current population crisis and HCOL issue too. China isnt exactly upfront about its statistics either, they also self-sabotage thier innovation
Seattle alone has spent billions specifically on poverty and yet there is a very large homeless population.
Probably has to do more with the fact that the U.S. can’t force people out of poverty and sugar coat their numbers because there are a lot of checks and balances unlike a communist ran nation.
Apparently some users have misplaced the definition of communism or maybe are having brain farts from huffing too much copium, holy shit…
you are forgetting the fact that red states are literally truncating thier homeless to blue states burdening them, its not by accident theres sudden increases in the homeless population year after year.
I would agree with you on the information control that China has, however I would not call them Communists. They are definitely capitalists. It’s just capitalism without the perceived freedom lol
It is officially a “people’s democratic dictatorship” and a unitary state, where the CCP has a monopoly on political power.
Wtf do you mean “I would not call them communists”?
Do you call cats puppies too while you are at it?
People here really are out of touch with reality, holy shit…
Wtf do you mean “I would not call them communists”?
They have “communist” in their name “Chinese Communist Party”, but they aren’t communist by definition.
You can say we are out of touch with reality but that does not make your reality actual reality. To be a communist country you cannot have billionaires. If you have billionaires then not everyone is equal. That is the end of the conversation
Communism mandates a single-party government, which inevitably becomes a corrupt dictatorship that does not follow the idealized plan. But that’s the problem: the plan is too idealistic and doesn’t account for human psychology. So, you can’t just say, “oh, that society isn’t communist because the outcomes aren’t right. Name one example of a communist country that actually produces the results you expect to see.
Not everything inevitably becomes corrupt. I agree that it is very idealistic for humanity. Greed is far too Irresistible.
Just because there have been no successful forms of pure communism, Doesn’t mean we can start calling China actual communism. That’s changing where the bar is.
China is SINO or, CINO I suppose in this context.
No, see, what you’re doing is making a No True Scotsman argument. Nothing is communism to you unless it achieves the pristine results dictated by the ideal, so any actual attempt that fails, you dismiss as “not communism,” rather than admit that communism is a flawed system that has always produced bad results at scale.
It is officially a “people’s democratic dictatorship” and a unitary state, where the CCP has a monopoly on political power.
That just defines an authoritarian regime, not a communist society. We’re not out of touch of reality, we just know our definitions.
Communism is when the state gives you a home and this is a bad thing
Okay bud
Communism is when the state gives you a home
That’s a Cliff’s Notes, high-level, distilled to one sentence version of the definition. The reality of what communism entails is much larger than that.
And the Chinese CCP is as much a communist government as the United States government is a democracy.
Whoosh
Ok, maybe I didn’t get the context of what you were saying. There’s a lot of craziness happening in these comments
That’s because the billions spent on homelessness/poverty doesn’t go to those experiencing it but to large non-profits so they can get their reservations at 5* restaurants.
Seattle specifically is facing multiple lawsuits such as Kicheon V Seattle for violating those “checks and balances”. However those violations always seem to be in one direction.
Over 90% of Chinese households would be below the US poverty line. Their GDP per capita is only $13k.
Nobody should use GDP to measure the health of a region…all it really measures is how many rich people are present.
Also…how can you compare apples to oranges like that? Income is half of the equation. Are you aware of the corresponding cost of living/spending power over there? You have to know it’s significantly more affordable.
I’ve spent a good amount of time in China. Sure, Chinese household earnings would be below the US poverty line, but you also have to consider that things in China cost about 1/5 to 1/6 of what they do in the US. Their purchasing power completely blows us out of the water. They also have great public transportation, fantastic infrastructure, and free healthcare. And they are at this point more cutting edge than we are with regard to pushing the limits of medical science. The US is a failed state. China is prospering and all the US can do to defend against it is run smear campaigns that propagandize against it.
Free healthcare? When I went to a people’s hospital, I saw people paying. I think they have a public option or something that covers a portion of the cost, and even the uncovered portion is hilariously low to an American, but it didn’t look free.
Sorry, I mispoke on the healthcare. It is nearly free as they have near universal insurance coverage and their out of pocket costs are extreme fractions of what people pay in the US.
Yep, the only thing is free is entering the building. At some point decades ago, a scam like traditional natural shit that was invented in the 50th was free, but even that isn’t free now for the most part.
PR is cheap though.
Even per capita with PPP, China is only $29k. By the same measure, the US is $60k. Also, healthcare is not free in China for most people in most circumstances. If there was any country that had a terrible way of financing healthcare as the US, it would be China. Healthcare bankruptcy is common in China. Chinese healthcare would be a bargain for me, paying with a US income. It is absolutely unaffordable for someone living on Chinese wages.
Germany has a GDP per capita lower than Alabama. Yet the average German has a quality of life that is significantly higher than that of an average person in Alabama. GDP doesn’t tell the whole picture.
You are mistaken, GDP of Germany is greater than Alabama, even moreso when you account for PPP.
I got the data from this Wikipedia page. Which says that nominal GDP per Capita is greater for Alabama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP
Yes, but you also need to look at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). PPP compares the relative value of currencies by measuring the price of a basket of goods in different countries. Accounting for that, China’s GDP per capita is more like $30k. To do that in a little over 70 years, when in 1952 83% of China’s workforce was engaged in agriculture, is nothing short of amazing. They are already well on their way to reducing their dependence on non-renewable energy and seem poised to overtake the US as the technological powerhouse of the world within the next 50 years.
PPP bottom 50% Chinese are more affluent than 50% USians https://wid.world/share/#0/countriestimeseries/ahweal_p0p50_z/US;CN/2019/eu/k/p/yearly/a/false/-4297.1145/8000/curve/false
PPP means how much shiet they can buy locally.
Share of national wealth is not affluence. It is a measure that gets distorted when a country has a disproportionate number of billionaires relative to their own population and to other countries.
If you adjust for purchasing power, the median individual in China is only $29k. By the same measure, the US is $60k.
I guess their point is if you exclude the upper half, China has managed to fare better.
Basically if we torture the numbers either side can get them to say whatever that side wants, by cherry picking criteria or excluding certain portions of the population.
Which is frankly a fantastic outcome for China, where in the past there was no way to make the numbers even close, now things are close enough as to each side being able to point out a way of measuring which makes them look better.
GDP is good measurement only for rich people yacht money though
US cost of life has got nothing to do with Chinese cost of life though.
You need to understand that most basic stuff is cheap, in China. I can feed myself heartily for like a dollar a meal. And that’s if I don’t want to cook!
I appreciate you talk about GDP, but those $13k are more like $130k when you live there. I was earning $20k and that was a comfortable life with no worries, on par with what I have now in Europe around 40k€.Even per capita with PPP, China is only $29k. By the same measure, the US is $60k.
Well, this is confusing then.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. GDP per capita is not really a good measure of quality of life on its own.
Historically the USA has brought a lot of people (most?) out of poverty by the world standard. Recent policy seems to be heading in the opposite direction. Quality of life has been declining for a long time, IMO mostly with our sense of community, the completely broken healthcare system, media consolidation, absurd levels of car dependency, high cost of having children, and a whole bunch of other location-specific factors (like cost of living in metro areas)
I think immigrant desire for relocation speaks volumes of where the greatest opportunity exists. The migration patterns vastly favor the US as being the place for the greater hope for the global poor, as evidenced by their footprints.
The US isn’t even in the top 10 most desirable counties for migrants (as a proportion of their population).
When rent in city center of a T2 city is 300 USD, a meal costs 1USD, and bus/subway fare 14 cents, its easier to make ends meet.
Even per capita with PPP, China is only $29k. By the same measure, the US is $60k.
Your numbers don’t match reality on the ground. You add up rent, transportation, utilities, food, childcare, “healthcare” and its a much higher fraction of your income in America
Well yeah, you’ll get a bigger change having an industrial revolution than continuing to fine-tune an already developed economy.
Not surprised at all. American has done a fantastic job at propagandizing the populace against China.
Does China have major issues? Yes. Does China care more about its own sucess as a whole? Also yes. America invested in individuals, Chain invested in their people. This is the natural outcome.
Those individuals being exxon, Raytheon, and for-profit prison companies.
Excuse me, have you heard of the K shaped economy? It’s the everyday hellscape we now live in, where the rich can’t buy enough, and the poor can’t buy anything. Plane ticket sales down, first & business class have no inventory. Less people than ever can afford a house, and mega mansion sales are booming. We can’t afford groceries, but 5* restaurants have no reservations.
At some point, this shit comes to ahead. My pessimism suggests the rich want to figure out AI / robot security, so they can stop relying on any people at all.
Oh yeah, add in some sycophantic computers telling everyone they are perfect and every solution we have is paradigm breaking or revolutionary. Nothing will go wrong at all.
My pessimism suggests the rich want to figure out AI / robot security, so they can stop relying on any people at all.
Look at the plans to tech-ify Gaza. This is exactly what is planned
I’m not a big Revelation person, but it does seem like we really like to fight over that area. A bunch of billionaires? In one place? Being secured by robots with guns? Nothing can go wrong there either.
Different starting points, it used to be 8/10 Chinese living in extreme poverty.
Yeah, that graph scale is absurd for comparison… I get it, they want to highlight the ‘trend’ but the scale of the US graph is nothing but a neglible slice of the boottom of the China graph, it’s just impossible to intelligently compare the ‘trends’ in that manner…
Also skeptical of a claim of 0.0% for anyone. It looks to me that, by the criteria of the graph, china has managed to effectively tie the US on this sort of metric, and the US has roughly held it flat for the last 30 years.
As others point out, this particular metric may not be a good one, and depending on how you slice the other metrics, either China or US technically comes out ahead, but broadly a more comparable standard of living.
