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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Over 90% of Chinese households would be below the US poverty line. Their GDP per capita is only $13k.
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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.
Even per capita with PPP, China is only $29k. By the same measure, the US is $60k.
PPP also isn’t an appropriate measure because it partially assumes capitlaism.
You are going to have to explain why PPP isn’t appropriate for non-capitalist countries. Besides, what country isn’t capitalist in this analysis? A country calling itself communist does not make it so.
The first word in PPP is “purchasing”. It should be self-evident.
My comment wasn’t intended to be zero sum. Both countries have elements of socialism and capitalism…but one certainly “leans” more in the capitalist direction.
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
Alabama = $53,061
Germany = 59,993
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
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.
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).
That’s an odd measure. The population of the country being immigrated to doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with which country an immigrant will want to go to. Immigrants want to go to the place that’ll give them the best opportunity. By all measures, the US, Canada, and western Europe are the places people want to go. China isn’t.
it’s an appropriate measure.
You can’t compare a large country with low population density to a small one with high density, for example.
No, not “all measures”…by your words - you appear to be making an American exceptionalism argument. Canada is in the top 10, the USA isn’t. I agree that China isn’t.
Check out this chart. Tell me how migration numbers correlate with density.
No, thank you. I’m not interested in some random chart with no sourcing.
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.
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
Are you familiar with purchasing power parity? It is a measure that specifically takes into account local costs of rent, transportation, food, etc. Check it out --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity
Your numbers do not match reality, I’ve lived in both places. Idk, maybe they’re making bad assumptions like that americans have cheaper food options than reality. Come over here and see, subway fares are 14 cents, meals 1-8 USD, rent is <500 outside Shanghai snd Beijing, you can get an x-ray and doctors consult for like 6 bucks.
Compare that to a 250/mo car payment, 8-20 USD meals, and then rent and healthcare, and its clear your model is flawed or has bad numbers.
These are not my numbers. They come both from the IMF and the World Bank. Chinese GDP per capita PPP is only $29k. By the same measure, the US is $60k. You don’t have to believe it. Yes, China is cheap, but low prices produce low incomes to those selling their goods and services.
And I am telling you the predictions made by your model don’t match observed reality.
GDP is good measurement only for rich people yacht money though
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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?! 😱”.
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.
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.
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.
Any government that relies on individuals to uncorruptly weild concentrated power… is the problem. Society and human nature will see it abused every time.
If your system relies on being run by exceptional people. Success itself is the exception.
Any government that relies on individuals to uncorruptly weild concentrated power…
All governments rely on uncorruptible civil servants to some degree. Nobody seems to know what the threshold for “concentrated power” actually is.
But the Chinese system has this pernacious habit of benefiting domestic Chinese residents. That’s the “corruption” westerners can’t stand. That’s the concentration of authority they object to.
If the Chinese economy was run out of a board room at JP Morgan or through a series is military based commanded by NATO Generals or via a client state like Israel or Japan, we wouldn’t hear any complaints
All governments rely on uncorruptible civil servants to some degree.
This is flat-out false. Systems like anarchism explicitly expect it,and structured accordingly.
But the Chinese system has this pernacious habit of benefiting domestic Chinese residents.
Tanky say what?! Go ask the Uyghurs or the Tibetans or the Hong Kongers or any non-han ethnic group. It’s not an east west thing. It’s a “western nations did identical things to my family that China is doing over there. And I’m not an immature ideology blinded campist” thing. It’s a don’t be a hypocrite thing. But name a more iconic strawman for an ML than not just bigotedly lumping an entire ethnic group, but vast diverse groups as one. Just because they loosely share geopolitical ties.
If the Chinese economy was run out of a board room at JP Morgan or through a series is military based commanded by NATO Generals or via a client state like Israel or Japan, we wouldn’t hear any complaints.
You’re literally projecting. Because I’m here to tell you that’s just as bad. Fuck that shit whoever is doing it. Grow up and stop being an enabling hypocrite.
Systems like anarchism explicitly expect it,and structured accordingly.
Speak specifically. Which anarchist government are you referring to?
Because I can point to plenty of anarchist communities - from Chaz in Seattle to the 1930s Spanish Anarchists - who were as plagued with corruption and abuse of authority.
Never even mind the Anarcho-Capitalists that have been central to the modern era of human trafficking, war profiteering, and environmental pillaging.
Tanky say what?!
Go ask the Uyghurs or the Tibetans or the Hong Kongers or any non-han ethnic group.
Something of a joke over the last few years that the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the civil war in South Sudan has eclipsed the UN’s attention, in large part because the “anti-genocide” voices on China have had to rapidly pivot to being genocide-denialist across North Africa and the Middle East.
If you can find me the equivalent of hospitals being bombed, populations starved into submission, and children with brains blown out by sniper fire as they were carried by terrified parents, I’d be genuinely curious to see it.
Because I’m here to tell you that’s just as bad.
That’s always the game isn’t it? “How dare you defy my political orthodoxy! You’re the real criminal here!”
You can’t stomach the most tepid opposition. The slightest whisper of defiance to the fascist narrative sends you into spirals of invective. When you’re presented with a simple request for clarification, all you can do is scream Red Scare tropes and pound the downvote button.
I never said it eliminated it. Just that it accounted for it. Keeping governance flat and small. So it doesn’t produce corruption on a national level. Or export it.
And in the end, what does it matter. Every ML government has been corrupted and pushed it’s corruption at a much larger scale. That’s the point. The scale and mass of those
And as to your linked investigation, that’s not particularly convincing one way or the other. If China was good as you pretend, they would have a free press. Instead they repress. Foreign press have where they can go severely restricted often accompanied by minders to make sure they don’t get close to what they’re looking for. And finally, it’s very common for those that are abused to deny their abuse as long as they are vulnerable to their abuser. Here’s a link to an interview. Where at one point family and activists confront a CCP rep about the disappearance of their friends and family. Where he convincingly screeches “OnE cHiNa!!!” In response to not having the power to disappear. I know you deny these peoples existence. I bet you’ll even resort to old trusty. CIA or NATO conspiracy!
But the fact is secrecy and suppression is not the hallmark of the innocent.The leaders of ML governments are human just like everyone else. They aren’t divine or infallible. No matter how much ideology blinded campists like yourself, claim otherwise.
Keeping governance flat and small.
Government isn’t a pancake, its a series of publicly administered institutions. “We just need to keep things small” isn’t a meaningful or tangible policy, as evidenced by the catastrophe that’s been DOGE.
Every ML government has been corrupted and pushed it’s corruption at a much larger scale.
When “corruption” in the western lexicon translates to “Poor people getting nice things from the state”, I guess they’re guilty as charged.
But the fact is secrecy and suppression is not the hallmark of the innocent.
Then why advocate for closed-off privatized institutions to manage your economy and your polity?
If the Chinese economy was run out of a board room at JP Morgan or through a series is military based commanded by NATO Generals or via a client state like Israel or Japan, we wouldn’t hear any complaints
Western markets would still be overrun by cheap products (partly because of subsidies and partly because forced labour), Chinese residents would still be supressed by heavy surveillance, Taiwan would still be threatened, Russia would still be supplied with technology to invade Ukraine.
Until 15 years ago China wasn’t considered a hostile state, just an increasingly powerful competitor. All nations benefit their fomestic residents, or at least their domestic corporations.
The real situation in which there wouldn’t be complaints would be when the Chinese benefitted their residents while at the same time didn’t do anything the west didn’t like. But since they’ve become pwerful, they can now do whatever they want (just like other powerful countries) - and some of the stuff they want, is bad for the west.
Until 15 years ago China wasn’t considered a hostile state
The War on Terror set our efforts to crank up hostility against China back by a decade.
The real situation in which there wouldn’t be complaints would be when the Chinese benefitted their residents while at the same time didn’t do anything the west didn’t like.
American politicians made a big show of hating Japan during the 90s for “stealing our jobs” during their economic boom. Being a lapdog of the West didn’t save them from sanctions or racial animus or unfounded accusations of market manipulation.
If China was treating the west back then like it does now, it would definitely not have been as desirable to move production there. Afaik there hasn’t been a single event that changed everything, so the number 15 is a bit random; but the attitude of the west towards China and vice versa definitely shifted. Also Russia was for a short moment not seen as an enemy state (although Russia might have considered the west as their enemy all along)
Japan is a good example of how this doesn’t have to be a two way street. Could also be that US and Europe (where I’m from) don’t always have the same perception, so could be i wrote the west where Europe would’ve been more accurate.
Sounds like we shouldn’t have a government then.
Well, anarchism isn’t the absence of governance. It’s the answerability of governance. We need to abolish unanswerable calcified institutions of power. We can still have governments as long as they are smaller and answerable to the individual’s they govern.
I want to agree, but at the same time i feel the concentrated power at the top is very similar in both countries. The one party system in China is very different to the two party system in the US, but I don’t think that is what makes the difference. I think China genuinely wants the poor to be less poor and the US genuinely want the rich more rich. Different goals obviously lead to different results.
But I do agree the system shouldn’t allow room for power to be abused. The checks and balances system is definitely broken.
Agree or disagree, it’s just a fact.
If China genuinely wanted the poor to be less so. They wouldn’t have allowed the wealth disparity. Industrialization has lifted the base standard of living in every country its happened in. China, England, Russia, the US, currently in India. The problem, is that it has always benefited the owners far more. There’s always a strong plateau to the benefit of the social base in these systems. And no one has managed to fix it long term, not China or anyone else.
In fact, China’s youth right now are facing conditions surprisingly similar to those in the United States and elsewhere. With little economic opportunity for their futures, often jobless. Getting ready to grapple with a level of automation that other countries haven’t even come to terms with yet. It’s infinitely more likely that the next couple of decades will see massive social struggle and over there long before they will ever see communism.
Sounds to me the left needs a plan
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.
This right here. So much this.
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”
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.
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.
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).
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.
Well yeah, you’ll get a bigger change having an industrial revolution than continuing to fine-tune an already developed economy.
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.
Communism works. Who knew?
China is not and never was even approaching communism, never ever tried. That is, if we go by definition of the word, and not by whatever the fuck we decide words to mean this second.
Ok. Socialism works. How’s that?
I’m pretty sure it does. It doesn’t apply to China either, for the most part, but they at least do some policies that socialist country would also do.
I’ll take Republic of China over the People Republic of China anytime. Free West Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong SAR and Manchuria. None of them wanted the CCP and PLA rule.
That’s not true. I mean…I’m sure you’re being hyperbolic, and there’s certainly discontent in a 1 party system…but I have some exposure to ordinary Chinese people as well as regular people in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the sentiment is mixed, at worse.
That’s not true. I mean…I’m sure you’re being hyperbolic, and there’s certainly discontent in a 1 party system…but I have some exposure to ordinary Chinese people as well as regular people in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the sentiment is mixed, at worse.
The sentinment is this: “黑猫白猫，做到老鼠就是好猫。” (“Doesn’t matter if it’s a black cat or white cat, if it can catch mice, its a good cat” “cat” referring to the political system)
Doesn’t matter who’s in power. Mao Zedong or Chang Kai-shek.
Doesn’t matter if it’s Obama, or Hillary, or Trump, or Biden, or Kamala, or Pence, or Vance, as long as they prosper under it, anything is fine.
“Don’t worry son, ICE is only going after the Mexicans and ‘illegals’, just don’t draw attention and everything is fine! What’s there to worry about, we all came legally.”
That’s my parent’s attitude towards politics, no matter what country. Do not be a dissident, is their motto. Low profile, just worry about your self, stop worrying about others.
You know what the irony is. They disagree with the One Child Policy, gave birth to me against policy, then mom got had to get sterilized as a result of the violation and had to pay a huge fine.
Then moments after they tell me about that, they just brush it off like it’s no big deal. Then I criticize CCP and they’re like: “but the party wasn’t able to terminate you, and you’ve alive, so stop talking about it” Already making excuses for a party that they disagree with on policy. I guess its that mentality again: didn’t affect me, I managed to have a second son, who cares about the policy anymore
Thank you very much for this response. I must admit, I’m in over my head when it comes to deep engagement on this issue. I have several friends in the regions I listed who are of middle to low socio-economic importance in their respective areas, and I keep in touch with them almost exclusively online.
I understand and appreciate your perspective and thank you very much for sharing it with me. I’ll definitely be considering it when I think about this in the future.
I think we can credit them for what they’re doing right while holding them accountable for what they’re doing wrong.
Trying to paint it as “i’d rather be here than there” is just a chucklefuck way of ignoring what other places could improve.
Lol.
“West Taiwan” is a funny meme,
but as a anti-CCP Chinese American, I cringe every time I hear white westerners on the internet say this, especially in a serious discussion.
It just make you look un-serious.
I visited Hong Kong SAR and the PRC numerous times for business, which included several 6 to 7 week stays in Guangdong (Shenzhen area). I always looked forward to the weekend in Hong Kong, because I considered the city to be far more civilised than the shit I saw in the PRC. Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are far superior to anything under CCP rule.
I mean, yes I agree that CCP sucks, but please don’t “West Taiwan” under a serious news article lol. You’re not gonna convince any Mainland Chinese when you argue like that.
Usually when you say stuff like that, people double down on their beliefs, so you’d just inadvertently make someone more pro-ccp rather than making them more open minded.
you know these people like to fanatasize about ccp/russia and but never would live there or properly intergrate into the culture. its like that 90-day fiance, the white girl went to russia to pick upa dude, and she was "infatuated’ with russia but would never live there permanently or learn the language.
Where’s the .ml that usually signifies tankie propaganda?
Just pretend it’s there. Then you can go back to sleep and not worry too much about anything beyond your visual range. It sounds like that would be best for you and your… capabilities.
Right… Those famous tankies, The Guardian.
The idea that they have zero poverty is just absurd.
The source is the World Bank. They are extremely unlikely to lie about this as their ideology is diametrically opposed to communism.
I appreciate your fine estimation of TWB, but a study is only as good as it’s data.
Data from the government, by the government. Have conditions and quality of life improved? Yes. But it was only a few years ago the people were buying gross tonnage of cheap fashion clothes during a rather harsh winter so people could survive the cold by burning it instead of coal to heat their homes.
That’s not even counting the hundreds of millions that live life like it’s the great depression, and the conditions in which they work.
Right…but you can’t swing from one extreme (zero poverty) to the other (hundreds of millions living like it’s the Great Depression). Neither are true.
It should be noted that poverty in China isn’t the same as poverty in the USA, ie when you adjust for wages v cost of living it doesn’t tell us much, because the systems are incompatible. All those people in China making below $1.90 US a day (or whatever your metric is) aren’t in the same boat they’d be in in the US, and vice versa.
But all of this ignores the topic of the post: China did indeed raise virtually all of its citizens out of poverty, and the US didn’t. But it’s really weird to just throw that factoid out there without acknowledging that China did it at the expense of the US.
True, I do have a habit of getting overly enthusiastic in my use a metaphor, lmao and humor as I see.
Compared to what life was like pre-80’s? Yes absolutely things have improved, but even if improvement of conditions exist for those into the billion, that doesn’t exclude the relative conditions on the ground.
Unemployment is growing in younger demographics at rates near the peak of what the US experienced in 33. If you compare overall, sustain unemployment year to year is worse. Continuing lack in stability in land value has changed what was a bedrock backing for generational social mobility into a risky hedge for many.
As you well know, and have said, just going off of say strength of the ren for pure purchasing power or daily wages is misleading. Compare the shifts in collegiate achievements, the chosen international schools that the middle class are sending their kids to get their degrees. Look towards the shifts in lower class, especially in the cities, towards day labor over even extended work contracts or proper salary. Look towards the accessibility of central heating, plumbing, electricity. See the treatment of the lower half a billion of Chinese society when they need to access healthcare, when they need the law. What is their commute like?
Source? Seriously, if you’re going to dispute sources you have to provide a better one.
The source: It’s me.
I made it upI work my ass off to keep up on ongoing trade stats and national publications, as well as first hand sources including some colleagues world-wide.If you want to make a hobby of it, I’d recommend putting a little extra spending cash into a good radio receiver and your pick of audio translation software, you can time it to get live updates on policy from almost any country one way or another.
You’re arguing with a guy called American economic think tank.
You say that like it’s a bad thing ♡
Well, biased and stalwart in opinion might be more accurate descriptions.
They might be opposed to communism but probably not authoritarianism. I’m sure China is well past its communist days and far into its world bank days.
China dumped communism a generation ago, in all but the ruling party’s name. Now it’s totalitarian state capitalism. I suspect that the World Bank is just fine with that.
The Terrorist Party needs Americans to be poor and stupid. It’s the only way they get support.
I don’t want to be the “both sides bad” guy, but a lot of, probably most of (if not all) governments directly benefit from you being stupid and poor (within varying boundaries). In the case of the USA, I can guarantee you that the alternative government would be all for making you poor and stupid as well. Sadly, Americans don’t have any sensible alternatives available at this time.
By terrorist party, do you mean the Guardians of Pedophiles?
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
Is that true? Productivity is usually measured in “value” created per hour worked, not in things that were produced. So if the US produces loads of overvalued crap, it will appear more productive, but isn’t.
There is no other way to compare productivity, unfortunately. It used to be measured in tons, but a ton of watches is more productive than a ton of sawn timber, and there’s no such thing as a ton of video games.
True, but that just means the measure is useless.
It’s not useless, but it isnt perfect
So if the US produces loads of overvalued crap, it will appear more productive, but isn’t.
No one makes more Bitcoin than the Americans
You could measure life outcomes instead of economic measures. The economy is the tool to improve life, not the metric itself. Let’s compare the evolution of key quality of life indices like education level attainment, alphabetization, life expectancy, access to healthcare, nutritional values of diets, or even things like government satisfaction.
I guess it is this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_productivity
seems more like it is just hours worked/ gdp
so not really sure if calling it more productive is really fitting…
In the GDP calculation, the Official Inflation figure is used to “deflate” (so, reduce) the Nominal GDP (i.e. in dollars, including inflation) into the Real GDP, which is the Official one and is supposedly free of inflation hence can be compared to previous years.
Now, if you’re in the US (also in other countries, but the US seems to be extra bad in this) look around at the price of your weekly shopping (don’t forget to include shrinkflation) and house prices and tell me that the inflation is really just 2.9%.
Even better, ask somebody old enough to remember how much their salary bought back in the 60s and then use some online inflation adjustment calculator and converts that salary value to present day value (using the official inflation figures over the years) and see how much it buys (hint: what was enough to support a family of 5 with a house and a decent car back then is barelly enough to rent a one-room appartment nowadays).
And this is just how the bullshit Official Inflations pumps up GDP numbers which in turn lets politicians loudly celebrate how much GDP “growth” there was under their administration.
Then go into how the Nominal GDP itself is created - for example house prices feed into GDP via something called “Inputted Rent” were a homeowner is treated as renting their own house from themselves, said “rent” being treated as adding to GDP. Not only is the notion that merelly living in your home actually creates wealth some serious bollocks, but also this process means that realestate bubbles (such as the one that regularly keeps on getting inflated) actually add to GDP - in other words that house prices going up driven by speculation somehow make the real value (i.e. in terms of what it provides to people living it, which how this GDP supposedly is “created”) of properties go up even though those properties weren’t improved in any way form or shape and are just worth more because they’ve become part of an “investment asset class”.
All this to say that US GDP is complete total bullshit.
Same applies to most other Western countries, by the way, but the US seems to be one of the ones where such official numbers are extra fraudulent.
It’s not just for China that one has to look at indirect indicators such as electric power usage to figure out what’s really going on.
thank you, i dont know about economics like this that well
But what about debt? i think it is not part of the gdp, but i feel like it makes a difference… or does it really not matter?
Debt is not part of the GDP directly but it does boost the GDP if it’s used to create what the Official GDP defines as “values” (a significant slice of which, as I pointed above, is bullshit).
Of course the really fun bit is that in the modern age it’s debt that creates most of the money in circulation (over 90%, at least in most countries in the West) - basically when banks make a loan, unlike in the old days when they could only lend depositor’s money, in the era of “money is just a number in a digital ledger” they literally create the money they’re lending, which they destroy when the loan gets repayed. All this is well recognized in Economics circles - you can read a Bank Of England’s paper on this from 2014 called Money Creation In The Modern Economy.
So in practice non-existing money is used to create value (for example when a loan to a company is used to buy machinery that increases their production) which adds to GDP because people are doing work for nothing and goods are being exchanged for nothing, only it’s not nothing, it’s trade tokens created out of thin air and the whole thing works as long as everybody believes it in the value those trade tokens represent, just like at one point they did about tulip bulbs.
The point being that a lot of this shit is done on top of an ever “taller and thinner” house of cards and the present day official “success numbers” like GDP are tied to the whole thing keeping on going: any country that pulls back on Debt will see less “money” being created, circulating and being used to create the value that gets listed in GDP so GDP goes down or not as fast up, so opposition politicians claim the party in power is “bad for the Economy”.
This thing then also feds into and out of speculative bubbles - for example a house “worth” more due to price speculation (i.e. with no improvement whatsoever hence no actual real value increase) when sold is neutral in direct money terms (money just moves from buyer to seller) but generally most of the money from the buyer to the seller is actually created from nothing in a loan so it not only do higher house prices incentivise more money being created but also, indirectly because buyers have access to more money to buy houses thanks to the availability of pretty much (there are some limits, such as bank capital requirements) infinite money for loans, more money for buying houses puts Buy-side pressure on that market which unbalances the Offer-Demand towards Demand hence house prices go up - in other words, it’s a positive feedback circle (which goes a long way to explain why there are house price bubbles in almost all Western countries).
Of course, the really funny bit is that ever less of such loaned money goes into things that do create real value (like my example of machinery used to increase a company’s production) and ever more goes into activities that destroy value (loans for consumption) or offsetting inbalances in the Economy (workers whose salaries are so low that need to get ever more in debt merelly to pay for food and shelter) and bidding up prices in speculative bubbles (for example, “realestate investors” using mainly loans to"invest" in properties or companies using debt to buy their own stock).
When this shit blows it’s going to be something else.
