12 ms·
China delists all remaining poverty-stricken counties
- absolutelyrad 6y agoThey define 4,000-yuan (about $609) as the national poverty line. Significant milestone. The average annual net income of impoverished people in these nine counties has risen to 11,487 yuan (about $1,740)
- outlace 6y agoPresumably $1740 per annum in rural China is enough to meet basic needs.
- yread 6y agoFor comparison in the US it's at least $12,760. Still, it's a major achievement, even if it was achieved with some highly questionable moves - (forcibly?) relocating 2M people to cities
- cmeacham98 6y agoAverage means approximately half the population makes _less_ than that (In reality, probably more than half, because you need a lot of lower numbers to balance out the population making double/triple/quadruple/more than that).
- Blahah 6y agoI've lived in a country with vast scale poverty and what having an average income of over $1k would really functionally eradicate poverty. People are naturally communal in most places and will share resources within nested communities so that the distribution doesn't matter.
- arnmac 6y agoAnd they also supposedly only have 93k confirmed COVID cases. Not sure I believe this.
- sto_hristo 6y agoBelieve in it as much do you do in their claim that they're not running the largest concentration camps since the Nazi.
- tgb 6y agoWhile I share your skepticism, there doesn't seem to be much room for cover-up here (though I'm sure the initial outbreak was significantly under-counted). My understanding is that restrictions are pretty minimal apart from strict control of travelers. So either there is basically no community spread or it's likely to be rampant - and then the hospitals would be overflowing like they are in the US, which is much much harder to cover up. I don't see how we can come to a conclusion other than that they've been quite successful.
- Out_of_Characte 6y agoWhy do you graciously accept the numbers from the CCP while ignoring any evidence towards a cover-up? Do you actually believe the CCP has the pandemic under control? The amount of propaganda spread by the CCP trough their state controlled media is insane and wholly inaccurate. The CCP also conveniently put the blame squarely at foreign nationals bringing the virus over every single time. as if there are no cases of citizens transmissions at all. Transparency is expected in democratic countries. No such force exists in China. https://www.ntd.com/ccp-covers-up-virus-surge-in-shanghai_528135.html https://www.ntd.com/ccp-covers-up-virus-surge-in-shanghai_52... https://www.ntd.com/chinese-city-goes-on-full-lockdown-after-confirming-two-ccp-virus-infections_507927.html https://www.ntd.com/chinese-city-goes-on-full-lockdown-after...
- tgb 6y agoI'm not accepting the numbers. I'm accepting the "hospitals are not overrun" observation, which is very hard to cover-up. I happen to know someone working in a Beijing hospital and it is not overrun. How else would you explain that except to say that there is minimal community transmission? The only other possibility is a country-wide refusal to hospitalize patients, which seems equally difficult to cover-up. Otherwise the cover-up could only ever be briefly temporary until the spread was rampant again.
- josefresco 6y ago>moderately prosperous society in all respects. >satisfaction rate among locals was over 99 percent >About 1.88 million people living in poor mountainous areas have been relocated to urban areas >Various supporting measures have been taken to ensure that at least one person on average in each relocated household gets employed. Reads like an Onion article.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- free_rms 6y agoWhat's so funny about it? I've been to rural China, and it tracks with the improvements I saw. But maybe that's anecdotal, do you have more insight on the matter?
- throw93232 6y agoMy country had 99% election approval during communism as well. China propably made some progress, but numbers are just propaganda. If anything certain muslim regions are far from happy.
- free_rms 6y agoAh, the "China is exactly like 1979 Poland" gambit. https://twitter.com/fullhomosexual/status/1328804154165391360/photo/1 https://twitter.com/fullhomosexual/status/132880415416539136... The downfall of the US is that we're SO CERTAIN that our way is the only right and good way, and it gives us blind spots.
- godelzilla 6y ago0% poverty and 99% satisfaction? Those sound like totally real stats. These statistics are mostly about how they define "poverty": $609 per year in this case. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-g...
- cbozeman 6y agoWhat I love about Hacker News is that almost none of its readers are dumb enough to believe this.
- absolutelyrad 6y agoCite a reason why you'd think it's dumb. Denying that China has so far been very successful is a fallacy. Compare China to India, China was behind. Now it has leapfrogged ahead. It is yet to be seen if China can reach the developed country status, which would require dethroning the dollar as the world reserve currency. However, just because China has been successful in the past doesn't mean it will be able to achieve this feat.
- taf2 6y agoIf being ahead means running concentration camps similar to Nazi Germany then sure they are ahead [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps#:~:text=As%20of%202018%2C%20it%20was,internment%20camps%20which%20are%20located https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps#:~...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gimpuser 6y agoWe should consider sending Trump supporters to reeducation camps.
- d3nj4l 6y agoThat's a sad attempt at shifting goalposts. Even as an Indian, I can easily admit that China has done far better economically than my country. Their awful repressive policies and authoritarian government are bad, to be sure, but economically there is no reason to complain.
- MichaelMoser123 6y agothe article mentions Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which isn't a lucky place at all..
- juliosueiras 6y agothe article lose any creditability after doing a quick check and realizing that CGTN formally known as CCTV-9, so go figure
- chapium 6y agoMisleading title, this is not what the article is claiming. Original title: "China delists all remaining poverty-stricken counties" Pretty big difference there.
- partingshots 6y agoKeep in mind that CGTN is the English directed channel of China’s state controlled media, CCTV. Take anything you read with a grain of salt.
- hikerclimb 6y agoTitle misleading
- gnagatomo 6y ago'CGTN (China Global Television Network), formerly known as CCTV-9 and CCTV News, is an international English-language news channel based in Beijing owned by China Central Television, a state-owned broadcaster.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGTN_(TV_channel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGTN_(TV_channel)
- jbrun 6y agoNot sure how many of the people on this thread have actually been or lived in China. I have lived there about 2 years and travelled fairly extensively. I cannot speak to these specific villages, but the amount of people lifted out of poverty in China in the last 50 years is probably one of the greatest achievements in human history along with modern science, medicine and rule of law.
- SPBS 6y agoCould you elaborate on why it is such a great achievement? Seems like a pretty natural consequence of their growing economy.
- dzonga 6y agolifting a billion people out of poverty, would be a big achievment in terms of economic planning, logistics and resource planning. those are no small tasks. also while maintaining social integrity. yeah, the ccp takes away a lot of freedoms, but how would you do maintain a cohesive society ?
- _dibly 6y ago>maintaining social integrity >takes away a lot of freedoms pick one?
- bennysonething 6y ago
- n0regret 6y agoI am working in media / intelligence community focused on China for last 7 years. Everyone who believes Chinese official economic numbers, or communist propaganda mouthpiece CGTN, is fooling himself (...and usually, eventually regrets it:) ).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lota-putty 6y agoCGTN is to China what RT is for Russia. Economics is a zero-sum-game; if they lifted everyone in China out of poverty, then poverty is exported to other countries or the nature paid all the costs. Edit: Nature is a silent sufferer in the economics. It acted as cushion to our misadventures, a-bomb(wars), oil-spills, co2 & other gases, industrial wastes, nuclear wastes. For a person to become rich, they have to earn profit dishonestly; if profit is shared equally nobody is richer. Somebody is getting short end of the stick to make someone else richer. If everyone is self-sufficient through out their lives, then technically there is enough to go around. Otherwise, one who holds the resource in high demand won't share it fairly. Simply put : Income disparity will thrive in resource hungry society where resources are held by few members. Even in self-sufficiency, if population grows then nature has to pay the price. Resources are finite for all kinds of life on earth. If one thrives some other suffers. Anyway, now it's downvoted; wasted my time wording it.
- trianglem 6y agoWhat? There is technically more than enough to go around. Why does someone always have to be in poverty in your world view?
- Supermancho 6y ago> Why does someone always have to be in poverty in your world view? The short answer is, "because there has always been". The longer answer is about distribution, effort, and capability for populations. There's also the issue of individuals who choose not to participate or concern themselves with their own well-being. It's almost assured that there is uneven distribution of goods in every economic model leading to a complete breakdown of availability for some. In an egalitarian utopian socialist/communist system, there are inadvertent gatekeepers who create an uneven distribution from corruption and opportunity cost. ie Distribution work that is hard is avoided when there's plentiful and ongoing distribution work^. Any economic system that is not explicitly egalitarian has gatekeepers by design and you end up with uneven distribution. I don't see any way around these issues, even with automation...which has to be maintained by humans and you end up with the same issues. ^I think the USPO is an exceptional marvel as an egalitarian service which actually works, albeit by making cost/benefit choices about what areas to cover. To whit, this is a compromise that still leaves some without mail service, akin to mail-poverty.
- arpinum 6y agoI've been in the mountains of Yunnan recently. I have a hard time believing the Lisu have been lifted out of poverty. I did see party investments in the area, but I can't imagine many locals incomes being improved. Investments in dams might show geographic benefits, but its not reaching minority groups. The tourism investments in construction seem to be falling apart without ever getting much use.
- known 6y agoCapitalism/Socialism/Autocracy/Democracy/Religion/Atheism should accomplish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs2.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_N...
- Nginx487 6y agoYeah, and concentration camps for Uyghurs "officially" do not exist, according to Chinese sources
- exabrial 6y agoYes and No. I've traveled to China several times on extended visits, as recently as 2018. I would say there's an up-and-coming middle class and they've managed to eliminate some _extreme poverty_, but with a lot of asterisks. The methods are not not great (hey the end justifies the means, right? seems to be popular mantra these days, even in the USA) and they sometimes come at great distress to human rights (forced factory staffing... but hey, your'e getting paid right?).
- throwaway4good 6y agoAnd now it is flagged ... gotta love hn on anything China ... Yes. It is the story of the century and a massive achievement. Testament to what good government can do.
- porpoise 6y agodang, can you comment on why this was flagged?
- leetcrew 6y agoprobably not. users can flag anything they want for any reason.
- porpoise 6y agobut dang unflags when it's not flagged for good reasons. And I would think he's awake now.
- detaro 6y agoI don't think he does that very often, since he doesn't know the reasons. You could also try contact him directly instead of expecting him to see a random comment you left.
- porpoise 6y agoare you saying that dang doesn't have an alert that is triggered when a match of \bdang\b is found? I've seen more than once people "invoke" dang by simply drooping his name and then voila! he instantly appeared.
- detaro 6y agoas far as I know he doesn't. The site guidelines even explicitly ask to email.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- redis_mlc 6y agoThe article is ridiculous. Governors were given poverty targets that had to be met, so they just sent in reports that everything was good to avoid losing their jobs. The reality is that: 1) Many peasants (ie. half the Chinese population) don't have enough money to plant their next crop 2) And thanks to the natural disasters in 2020, they never will. From Xi's Maoist perspective, that's a good thing - less mouths to feed. Oh, and HN posters: stop being useful idiots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
- powerapple 6y agoI don't want to discuss anything except something I know as a government sympathizer. The whole thing is more symbolic, but it is their right to celebrate. How poverty lifting work in China is that each city will have a county assigned to them, and these cities will use its resources to help. From city level, the work is then distributed to state-owned entities, each will be responsible for a village for example. Assigned communist party officials from these state company/organizations will stay in the village, oversee the project. It is a multi-year project. Some are successful, some are not. It is a hard problem. I think internet will bring more people out of poverty. The long term successes are those places with new factories/workshops, they can sell produces online or make something. There are no opportunities in some villages regardless, young people have to work somewhere else, farming is not an option for young people. As for concentration camp: [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouobrLVpKIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouobrLVpKIQ
- slmjkdbtl 6y agoDelist first, do the actual poverty lifing later, or not. Xi and the CCP's public image is always more important, there's no way they'll let people know they failed to keep their promise.