Comment by dsplittgerber | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsplittgerber | Hacker News Reader

This certainly speaks for itself and is a drastic measure. Be aware of a strong anti-chinese bias in the general US media, though. James Fallows (spent some years in China as senior editor for The Atlantic and has written lots of articles about China) has often argued that it's not as extreme of a picture as is often presented in the mainstream media. The Chinese government has relaxed quite a topics of regulation in the last years (e.g. introduced some kind of property laws for farmers, for the first time ever) and it can be argued that they have indeed helped several hundred million people rise out of extreme poverty, the most in the world. China is just really intend on tightly controlling a few important parts of society, public opinion being one of them. Chinese society in general can probably be said to place more importance on getting out of poverty and growing into materialism than fighting for individual rights with a 'dubious material value' to them.

>Be aware of a strong anti-chinese bias in the general US media

That's what's valuable about this leak. It's not just a Western journalist's subjective, emotional assessment of the state of Chinese politics. It's Chinese politics written by Chinese politicians in their own words, and the leak was made by the Chinese not Westerners. Bias doesn't enter into the reporting.

I'm not going to applaud China for being ever so slightly less evil than they used to be.

You could applaud them for helping several hundred million people get out of extreme poverty, a grand social experiment if there ever was one. I know it's easy to take the moral high ground here, just think about if any other country recently has accomplished something remotely similar. You probably cannot accomplish such a feat by going from socialism to capitalism in a day (simplified).

What you assert is hard to square with things like this:

>China’s remarkable economic development has gone hand in hand with the rise in nepotism which has powerfully distorted the distribution of its benefits. As a result, China’s wealth is concentrated in only a very small share of the population. In fact, despite enormous GDP growth, a large share of the population is not much better off from a decade ago. The book “Capitalism with Chinese characteristics” by Huang Yasheng demonstrates using detailed quantitative analysis that China’s state-directed economic policies since the 1990s are essentially anti-poor. Huang’s book attributes Shanghai’s strong GDP performance not to indigenous private enterprise but rather to state-controlled (and subsidized) corporations and their foreign partners, with the gains flowing to the state – and their favored business people – and overseas rather than to the general population. In fact, Huang documents how Shanghai actively discriminates against private enterprise to protect well-connected state-owned enterprises. When the state plays a bigger role in the process of development, politicians are inclined to rent-seeking. As a result, corruption in China is pervasive. With unethical business practices so common at home, it is unsurprising that such behavior would carry over to its companies’ operations overseas.

http://www.cipe.org/blog/?p=2844

China's growth has been extraordinary put don't imagine that it is some sort of massive poverty reduction program. The party controls massive amounts of the economy and is profoundly corrupt.

"In 1981, 84% of China’s population was below the poverty line of $1.25 a day (in 2005 prices); in 2005 the share was just 16% (see chart). This amounted to a 6.6% proportionate annual rate of poverty reduction-the difference between the growth rates of the number of poor and the total population.

Nobody did as well as China." The Economist http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cf...

I wish that article wasn't behind a paywall, but I don't think I'm disputing people have come out of poverty. You are not addressing any of the issues I was raising though.

You're quoting the statement that a large share of the population is not much better off from a decade ago. The Economist provides facts that a very large part of the population is much better of (not in poverty anymore), as per the statistic I quoted. Also, it's rather unconvincing to argue that the Chinese government is effectively anti-poor, given the same statistic.

Sure, there is widespread corruption and they are stiffling private enterprises. That's not the same as being anti-poor, IMHO.

First, your quote from the economist covers 24 years. During that period a lot of people came out of extreme poverty. That does not mean that a huge portion of them are not poor.

It'd be interesting to be able to look at the original papers and break down what you think is not anti-poor. You've conceded that the corruption is widespread, so please stop acting like this is some sort of charity.

Who put them into poverty in the first place?

Poverty is the default state, so...no-one?

What, poverty is the default state for all humans everywhere, or just China? Is silence part of the "default state" too?

All humans everywhere. It takes rather a lot of work to get out of it; it takes a lot more for newborns to be somewhat reliably not-in-it. I suppose the same would go for silence, too, but the road from silence -> sound is a lot shorter than the one from hunter-gatherer -> first world industrial economy.

I think the big difference here between hunter-gatherer and 3rd world poverty is that your stone-age people weren't living in the toxic waste dumps of an industrializing nation that doesn't care about the environment.

Typical hunter gatherers would have had better nutrition and better access to clean water and the ability to relocate/move without the government forcing them into only certain areas.

no! Poverty is not an absolute state\scale, it is one relative to everyone else at a given time. When their government sabotaged its economy with horrendous policy in the past, it created poverty.

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