On this episode of China Uncensored,
if you’re feeling dizzy, don’t worry!
It’s just the spin.
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored,
I’m your host Chris Chappell.
At the beginning of the month,
The World Bank released its 2016
Poverty and Shared Prosperity report.
And Chinese state-run media ate it up.
Why?
Let’s just say,
it made China look pretty good.
According to the World Bank report,
since 1990,
worldwide extreme poverty fell from 35%
to less than 11% today.
And most of that change is from China,
which has a fifth of the world’s people.
According to the report,
since 1978 China
“has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty.”
Even Westerners interviewed by Chinese state-run media agree.
“China has lifted 728 million people out of poverty,
by international standards...
Therefore the contribution to human well-being
made Deng Xiaoping
is unequaled, in my opinion.
I was really deeply moved.
You may even hear my voice slightly waver.”
Yes, this British guy was so deeply moved
that he moved to China,
got a cushy job at Renmin University,
and now writes articles about how China’s economic model
is so much better than what we have in the West.
But I actually agree with him on one point:
It’s a good thing that so many Chinese people
are no longer living in poverty.
He just didn’t tell you the terrible catch.
Just because those 800 million people
aren’t living in poverty
doesn’t mean they’re doing great.
The World Bank defines poverty as
“the international poverty line of a dollar ninety
per person per day.”
In other words,
if you make a dollar and ninety one cents
per day in China,
you’re counted as having been lifted out of poverty.
You’re now called “low-income.”
And according to the Pew Research Center,
China still has about 900 million people
who are low-income—
people who make more than $1.90
but less than $10 a day.
That’s a day,
not an hour.
A day.
So while the version of China you see in the media
looks like this,
with sparking Skylines and...
weird buildings...
..that’s just the part they want you to see.
Most of China looks more like this.
So the great majority of people in China
are still really, really poor.
Just not in “poverty.”
Thus, the Communist Party can brag about
lifting people out of poverty,
and still be technically correct.
That’s the best kind of correct.
They’ve clearly been reading Derrell Huff.
And along with those 900 million really, really poor people,
there is still a huge number of people living in technical poverty.
For example,
the 82 million who make less than a dollar a day.
So the equivalent population of the entire Western United States
is still living on less than a dollar a day in China.
But the Communist Party chooses to focus on the positive.
The people they’ve lifted out of poverty.
It’s just that...
the Communist Party maybe shouldn’t get all the credit.
I mentioned that the World Bank said that since 1978,
more than 800 million people in China
have been lifted out of poverty.
But what happened before then?
Well,
“for a long part of history,
China was the largest and most advanced economy
in the world.”
That’s according to the World Bank.
In 1820,
China had 33% of the world’s GDP.
In fact, during the 1600 through early 1800s,
the world so admired China that the Europeans
were making knockoff Chinese goods.
They called it chinoiserie.
Fast forward through two opium wars,
the Taiping Rebellion,
the collapse of the Qing Dynasty.
And just when the Nationalist government
was starting to rebuild the economy,
there was the communist insurgency,
followed by World War II.
At the end of World War II,
China was in shambles.
And the civil war
between the Communist Party and the Nationalist government
started up again almost immediately.
In 1949,
Mao Zedong took over the country.
And the first thing he did was...
kill one or two million landlords
and other wealthy people who may or may not have been
a threat to his power.
And for the next 30 years,
the Communist Party completely,
and utterly wrecked what remained
of the Chinese economy,
with insane policies like
forcing farmers to make useless steel in their backyards
instead of harvesting their crops.
Tens of millions of people starved to death.
And most of the survivors lived in poverty for decades.
Plus Mao's Cultural Revolution threw the country
into further chaos.
But then Mao died,
his yellowing corpse put on display for all to admire.
And in 1978,
the new leader, Deng Xiaoping,
kind of figured it might be time
to let people make money again.
So he started lifting some of the
communist economic restrictions.
People began selling their extra crops,
starting businesses—
basically doing what they did before
the Communist Party suppressed them.
With hard work and ingenuity,
Chinese people began lifting themselves out of poverty.
That’s right.
The Communist Party backed off,
and people started to make money.
But the flip side is that the Communist Party
also backed off from implementing
meaningful regulation.
So while a lot of poor farmers have been moving to cities
for higher wages,
they are often forced to work long hours
in unsafe conditions for low wages
with no right to unionize.
But still,
the easing of communist restrictions
has been enough for 800 million industrious Chinese people
to lift themselves out of abject poverty—
and into at least no-longer-starving-level poverty.
And you know what?
That’s a great step.
I admire the hard work and tenaciousness
of people in China.
But even so,
China’s economy today is still not as big a share of the world's economy
as it was during the height of the so-called
“backwards” dynasties.
China now makes up 17% of the world’s total GDP,
which is only half as much as it did 200 years ago.
So don’t let the Communist Party take all the credit.
To be clear,
I'm not saying that the Communist Party
wants Chinese people to be poor.
After all,
a huge gap between the rich and the poor
usually leads to social instability,
which would be bad for the ruling Party.
And my point here isn't to debate
which of China's specific market reforms
have been good or bad.
My point is,
looking at the big picture,
the Communist Party repeatedly takes all the credit
for "lifting people out of poverty,"
they're making themselves look great while
glossing over all of the things they did
to put people into poverty in the first place.
It's like a guy who congratulates himself
on the nice new house he built you--
after he set your old house on fire,
made you live in the rubble for decades,
and then allowed you to rebuild it yourself.
But hey,
he gave you a great deal on the bricks.
So what do you think about China’s
“lifting people out of poverty”?
Do you think that’s a fair measurement of progress?
Leave your comments below.
And if you like the show,
please support us on Patreon.
The link is below.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.