Jobs, Houses and Cows: China’s Costly Drive to Erase Extreme Poverty (Published 2020)
www.nytimes.com
China has spent heavily to help its poorest citizens, an approach that few developing countries can afford and even Beijing may struggle to sustain.

Let’s see what this article from 2020 has to say about China successfully managing to eliminate extreme poverty:

"But the village, one of six in Gansu visited by The New York Times without government oversight, is also a testament to the considerable cost of the ruling Communist Party’s approach to poverty alleviation. That approach has relied on massive, possibly unsustainable subsidies to create jobs and build better housing.

Local cadres fanned out to identify impoverished households — defined as living on less than $1.70 a day. They handed out loans, grants and even farm animals to poor villagers. Officials visited residents weekly to check on their progress.

“We’re pretty sure China’s eradication of absolute poverty in rural areas has been successful — given the resources mobilized, we are less sure it is sustainable or cost effective,” said Martin Raiser, the World Bank country director for China."

Hm…unsustainable you say? Well it’s now four years later and it seems things have only continued to get better and better. And not “cost-effective”? Well yes, if you’re a capitalist parasite then spending money to lift people out of poverty probably isn’t “cost-effective”. But the people who no longer have to live in the same miserable conditions they endured before sure seem to think it’s been pretty effective for them.

  • amemorablename
    36·
    2 months ago

    And this is part of why they can’t stand countries like China, who serve as a living example that a better world is possible and it’s not an inevitability of “human nature” for some people to have to suffer horribly. Countries like China who serve as examples that the US and its allies in imperialism aren’t tragically limited, but well-meaning governments - rather, they are parasitic systems that ignore solutions to suffering and write articles about how reducing suffering isn’t in the budget, vilifying and attacking anyone who attempts it.