Comment by shimman
1 day ago
If you can't appreciate or understand what a substantial effort it was to reduce poverty in China, then you aren't a serious person worth paying attention to. It's literally the economic question of the century and something we should seriously study because we have the potential to lift the entire world out of poverty too.
Crazy how people make light of this, when you can see the alternative today: India.
Sorry Indians reading this for throwing shade at India, but I just want to point out that making 1 billion of people not poor is freaking hard.
It's really not that complicated. The government banned people from trading causing extreme poverty and famine in one of the most fertile areas in the world. Then they reversed the ban and let Chinese people trade again. At the same time western companies setup factories in China causing massive capital inflows.
If it's really as simple as allowing trade with the west then why are many other developing countries either stuck at the middle-income trap or not developing quite as fast as China? You're not gonna tell me Chinese are smarter, are you?
"At the same time western companies setup factories in China causing massive capital inflows." This was an intentional policy to split China off from the Soviet union it's well documented the same thing never happened for other countries.
"You're not gonna tell me Chinese are smarter, are you?" No I'm not, but I will say culture does play a massive role, China was not a bunch of roaming tribes living off the land. Turn the clock back a couple of hundred years and it would be peak civilisation. China was literally thousands and thousands of years ahead of somewhere like North Sentinel island.
Calling China a developing country is actually pretty absurd, it's much more like a rebuilding country. GDP was the only undeveloped part because the communist party was terrible at running the economy. Art, science, poetry, fashion, literature, philosophy, culinary arts it was all present and pretty cutting edge up until the communist party ruined things.
It's the same reason Japan, German and the UK bounced back after WW2 except instead of it being war ( Japanese invasion and Chinese civil war aside ) it was self inflicted.
Also I don't think China has escaped the middle income trap. China to this day has horrible wealth inequality and pretty bad social mobility. I actually think this is an intentional strategy they have an underclass of cheap workers for a reason, the government doesn't force a high minimum wage for a reason. Then they have a rich upper class that gets to study in the west and buy a Porsche something that is completely unreachable for the rest of the country.
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The Chinese government did a terrible job of reducing poverty relative to other East Asian nations like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. From a similar starting point the GDP per capita lagged well behind, and even now it still does; it's around $15k, similar to Mexico and less than half of those other East Asian countries. If the argument is "it's harder because the country is bigger", then if the government care about living standards it should have decentralized into lots of smaller countries like Europe, which if didn't do.
> The Chinese government did a terrible job of reducing poverty relative to other East Asian nations like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
Your examples ALL had massive help from the US. So not sure if it is a fair comparison.
Japan literally rose to existence back then due to US influence and then has been declining ever since.
Sorry, splitting up does not work for China, politically, geographically and culturally. Peaceful and prosperous times only come when there's a strong central government. If any current government advocates for splitting up, then they'll be toppled in no time and replaced with new guys, maybe even warlords, who strive for a united China. "The land, long divided, must unite. The land, long united, must divide."
We’re just not talking about that right now
We are talking about open source ai models working really well for the people of the world
Please. Be serious.