They didn’t used to have billionaires, when Mao was in power. Strangely, a lot of Westerners seem to hate what China is now, but also hate what China was before, which seems very strange to me. “The reforms were bad and China should be more Maoist” that is a coherent position, “The reforms were good but should have gone further and become even more capitalist” that is also a coherent position. But “China is bad now because they allow billionaires but they were also bad when they didn’t allow billionaires” isn’t really coherent, it just seems like knee-jerk opposition to whatever they do or don’t do. Anyone who wants to offer critiques should be able to answer the simple question of whether the reforms were good or bad, whether they moved in the right or wrong direction.
On the off-chance that you actually want a serious answer to the question, let’s start with some history. Before the revolution, China’s average life expectancy was in the 30’s, it experienced frequent famines, had no access to medicine, and had had similarly awful conditions for literally thousands of years with no improvement for the average person. The revolution brought about huge improvements in life expectancy and the basic necessities of life (with the failure of the Great Leap Forward being an exception to this general trend).
However, while central planning works for providing basic necessities because the demand for those necessities is very predictable, it is not the most efficient regarding consumer goods. This was one of the failures that caused the collapse of the USSR, the desire for consumer good and the inability to compete domestically. Furthermore, despite the increases in life expectancy, virtually everyone in China still lived in extreme poverty. The reforms in the 80s were intended to address this, and they were wildly successful at it:
In the words of Deng, it doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice. It doesn’t really matter if a policy is ideologically “pure,” so long as it provides clear material benefits for the common people.
Where I’m standing, the whole point of having any sort of political beliefs at all is to figure out which policies will improve people’s lives. And lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the span of 40 years, can you name a more successful policy, ever, in all of history?
And yet, China has delivered substantially lower average incomes than its peers. It’s not even close. The people of Taiwan, despite sharing a common cultural and ethnic history as mainland China, enjoy a substantially higher standard of living than their mainland peers.
Yes, they’ve raised hundreds of millions out of poverty, but that’s been the case throughout East Asia. The whole region saw its standard of living dramatically rise as it industrialized. And the capitalist countries have enjoyed far greater economic success than the communist ones.
The absolute number of people is a red herring. Obviously big countries have more people.
I’m hoping you’re not one of those .ml folks that acts like a Republican and calls every source they don’t like “Fake News.” But in case you are, can you provide your own sources? I would be curious on your thoughts of the per-capita incomes of China vs the capitalist East Asian countries. Can you show that China has performed better than them on a per-capita basis?
The people of Taiwan, despite sharing a common cultural and ethnic history as mainland China, enjoy a substantially higher standard of living than their mainland peers.
This is a ridiculous comparison. Taiwan received substantial foreign aid from the US because of it’s strategic value against the mainland, while the PRC was subject to a massive economic embargo.
Yes, they’ve raised hundreds of millions out of poverty, but that’s been the case throughout East Asia. The whole region saw its standard of living dramatically rise as it industrialized. And the capitalist countries have enjoyed far greater economic success than the communist ones.
Sorry, which countries are we talking about again? There’s not that many countries in East Asia. Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan all benefited from foreign investment and trade, and again, with much smaller populations.
If you’re going to argue that the embargo on China was an inevitable result of its communist policies, well, that’s a big part of why they did the reforms in the 80’s.
The absolute number of people is a red herring. Obviously big countries have more people.
That… what? I don’t follow what you’re saying here at all.
It’s much easier for a small country to modernize in a short period of time, especially with outside help. It’s very difficult to reach all the people in all the rural areas of China, it means more infrastructure has to be built, more people have to be educated, etc.
I’m hoping you’re not one of those .ml folks that acts like a Republican and calls every source they don’t like “Fake News.” But in case you are, can you provide your own sources?
My source is the extremely biased communist newsletter known as The World Bank. Hopefully that’s not too far-left for you.
I would be curious on your thoughts of the per-capita incomes of China vs the capitalist East Asian countries. Can you show that China has performed better than them on a per-capita basis?
I don’t agree that per-capita is the relevant statistic for the above reasons.
I’m also not entirely sure why we’re comparing China to capitalist countries in the first place.
You linked a source repeating your earlier claim about the raw number of people lifted out of poverty. Again, I ask, what about per-capita income?
This is a ridiculous comparison. Taiwan received substantial foreign aid from the US because of it’s strategic value against the mainland, while the PRC was subject to a massive economic embargo.
China received extensive aid from the USSR.
That… what? I don’t follow what you’re saying here at all.
Do you understand what “per capita” means? It would be far more impressive for a country of one million people to lift 950,000 people out of poverty than for a nation of 1 billion people to lift 800 million people out of poverty.
It’s much easier for a small country to modernize in a short period of time, especially with outside help. It’s very difficult to reach all the people in all the rural areas of China, it means more infrastructure has to be built, more people have to be educated, etc.
Why? I see no reason for this. Larger countries have more resources. Everything you need to lift people out of poverty scales with population. If anything, it’s actually EASIER for large countries to lift themselves out of poverty. A tiny micro-nation with a population of 10,000 isn’t going to be building an aircraft factory. There’s a lot of minimum-size requirements on certain national infrastructure. If anything, the bigger, the easier it is to modernize. Yes, the larger population creates greater needs, but you also have more people to address those needs.
And China was not unique in having disconnected rural populations. Small countries and big countries both have isolated rural areas.
I don’t agree that per-capita is the relevent statistic for the above reasons.
It’s the only meaningful way to compare countries. Otherwise you just end up making brain-dead conclusions like, “the big country has the big number. Therefore it’s better.”
You linked a source repeating your earlier claim about the raw number of people lifted out of poverty. Again, I ask, what about per-capita income?
Yeah, because I didn’t make any claims about per-capita income. That’s how sources work. I’m not going to provide sources for claims I didn’t make, if you’re just curious about some random fact, you can look it up yourself.
China received extensive aid from the USSR.
Lol? That’s a joke right?
You never heard about a little thing called the Sino-Soviet split? Even before that, the Soviets had plenty of their own problems, they were nowhere near as wealthy as the US and were struggling to survive and rebuild from WWII, and again, that much smaller aid for a much shorter period of time was distributed to a much larger population.
Also worth noting that the USSR initially supported the KMT over the CPC, seeing the CPC as too small and weak to be viable and the KMT as a lesser evil to the Japanese and expecting China to go through a capitalist stage of development.
Also, I thought we were discussing the Dengist reforms, which happened in the 80’s? The USSR wasn’t even around for much longer, even if they had been aiding them, which they very famously weren’t.
Do you understand what “per capita” means?
Yes I know what per capita means.
It would be far more impressive for a country of one million people to lift 950,000 people out of poverty than for a nation of 1 billion people to lift 800 million people out of poverty.
Not really, no.
Why? I see no reason for this.
Because, for one thing, modernization in developing countries is dependent on foreign technologies that have to spread to a much wider area, and that takes time and resources (resources that China lacked, because so many people were on the brink of starvation). If a big rich superpower says, “Hey, I’m gonna plop a semiconductor factory on your little island” it’s going to have a pretty significant impact on the average income of said island.
It’s the only meaningful way to compare countries.
Otherwise you just end up making brain-dead conclusions like, “the big country has the big number. Therefore it’s better.”
That is not remotely close to anything I’ve said or believe.
I said things about the success of the policy of the reforms and opening up in the 80’s, and you’re bring up all these other countries that I said nothing about and trying to compare them on absolute terms for some reason. I’m not saying one country is better than another country, I’m just looking at the effects of a particular policy. If you want to argue whether your dad could beat up my dad, you’ll have to find someone else to do that with.
Taiwan received substantial foreign aid from the US because of it’s strategic value against the mainland
And? China literally owns the 4th largest land mass in the world. So which variables are allowed in this math and which aren’t? Maybe if you give us a list we can defeat your delusion more swiftly.
Which variables are allowed in the math depends on what the point of the comparison is. And as I said, I’m not really sure what the point of comparing these countries is. It’s pretty apples to oranges and doesn’t really tell us anything about the efficacy of China’s reforms in the context of their specific conditions.
The fact that there’s such a difference in landmass is just another reason why it doesn’t make sense to compare the two. If you want to compare China to another country for some reason, it would probably make sense to compare it to a country with more similar conditions, like India perhaps.
Youre actually completely wrong about extreme poverty AND extreme poverty in China.
Thw World Bank’s definitions of ‘extreme poverty’ are completelt stupid. Thhe World Bank has stated that they consider 1.25USD/day to be ‘extreme poverty’ … who here could live off of 1.25USD /day? Could you live off of that? Even in China? Even in Nigeria you cant live off of that.
ALSO deng’s reforms increased the people in China living beneath the BASICS NEEDS POVERTY LINE which is a much better measure of extreme poverty since the BASIC NEEDS POVERTY LINE or BNPL measures rhe BASIC NEEDS that a person needs
And lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the span of 40 years, can you name a more successful policy, ever, in all of history?
Democracy. I really hate this untestable argument as if we could go back in time and do A|B test to see which framework would have lifted people out of poverty the fastest. Taiwan is richer and more free than China despite being democratic, so is Japan, South Korea - what now? Which dicks do we measure and do we start at the balls or just the shaft?
I really hate this untestable argument as if we could go back in time and do A|B test to see which framework would have lifted people out of poverty the fastest.
What?? Then why even discuss anything about anything?
If you’re criticizing China’s policies, surely the point of that criticism is that you think different policies would have been more effective.
It’s also not entirely an untestable counterfactual because we can examine every other political faction that had a reasonable chance of controlling China, and see what their leadership looked like in practice, and make reasonable extrapolations based on that.
The Nationalists did absolutely nothing to help the rural poor, embezzled foreign aid, and were more preoccupied with hunting down their domestic enemies than repelling the genocidal fascist invaders. Chiang Kai-Shek literally had to be captured by his own bodyguards to be pressured into defending the country. Life expectancy remained completely flat during his rule.
The fascist, genocidal Japanese invaders weren’t a good option for obvious reasons.
How about having no centralized authority at all? That’s what they had during the warlord period, a time of chaos and conflict that left the country vulnerable and did nothing to improve things for anyone.
Before that, there was the Qing dynasty, an authoritarian monarchy which was so assured of its superiority that they completely failed to adapt to foreign innovations and technologies, out of pride, even when it was clear that those technologies were superior.
Then you have the various European powers, carving the country up to divy up the resources between each other, while getting half the country addicted to opium.
And, returning to how things played out historically, we have the one and only faction that had any intention whatsoever of helping the hundreds of millions of starving farmers, which doubled life expectancy within a generation and then adapted to changing conditions and enacted policies which, again, brought 800 million people out of extreme poverty. And the whole reason they won the revolution was because the starving Chinese peasants could tell that they were the only ones who gave two shits about helping them.
Which dicks do we measure and do we start at the balls or just the shaft?
I’m the one trying to avoid this pointless dick-measuring contest between countries with vastly different conditions, despite everyone else trying to draw me into it. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t know why we’re comparing countries. Why don’t you ask WoodScientist whose dicks we measure, since he’s the one trying to measure dicks?
What?? Then why even discuss anything about anything?
I’m confused by your reply here. This is entirely limited to this scenario of false attribution. As we can’t verify this in any meaningful extend due to - as you yourself pointed out - every country and culture being invredibly different. So why are you OK with attributing success to chinese policy but not failure?
At the end of the day the historic justification magic doesn’t matter. I see today how unjust and miserable China is despite what tiktok might paint you. Not having internet is my litmus test and China fails this, I don’t understand how can people justify this. And please don’t try to diminish the great firewall of China - it’s really fucking bad.
As we can’t verify this in any meaningful extend due to - as you yourself pointed out - every country and culture being invredibly different. So why are you OK with attributing success to chinese policy but not failure?
I’m so confused by this conversation. Let’s recap.
Originally, OP asked why China has billionaires if it’s aiming to be socialist. I replied that the reforms that allowed billionaires also resulted in 800 million people escaping extreme poverty. WoodScientist randomly started drawing comparisons between the PRC and Taiwan, and I said that it’s apples and oranges, and that I didn’t see the relevance to what I had said. Then you started providing even more reasons why the comparison isn’t really valid, acting as if that contradicted my position in some way, which was even more confusing. You added that you didn’t like looking at other possible routes China could have gone, because it’s untestable.
Now, having established that you don’t like comparing China to other countries (calling it “dick measuring”), and also that you don’t like comparing other historical possibilities (calling them “untestable”) you’re now accusing me of being unwilling to attribute failure to Chinese policy.
First of all, which failure are you talking about? There are plenty which I’m willing to acknowledge. But also, on what basis could you call any policy a success or failure? You’ve thrown away all your epistemology. If we discount comparisons to other places, and also discount comparisons to other possibilities, then what can we look at to determine if a given policy was a success or failure?
I see today how unjust and miserable China is despite what tiktok might paint you.
Do you? What’s your point of reference for that? Some hypothetical ideal that exists only in your mind?
All I did is call you out that you can’t draw conclusions from n=1 of a policy so you can’t attribute chinese authoritarian policy for “getting people out of poverty”. So your glazing of Chinese autocrats is exactly that - glazing.
That’s completely absurd. This is the dumbest thing anyone’s said this conversation.
The sample size isn’t “n=1” it’s n=800,000,000. It’s clearly visible from the graph that I posted that the reduction in poverty began immediately after the reforms, and then continued extremely consistently on an extremely large scale.
In case you need a refresher on what the data looks like:
You’re just so committed to shitting on every single thing that China does that you’re willing to throw out all reason and logic, completely ignore obvious facts, and throw out any means of evaluating any policy just to avoid the conclusion that China may have done a single thing right.
What other possible explanation even is there? You’re just very objectively wrong.
Wtf are you even talking about? My first comment was about this, and that’s all I’ve been saying this entire conversation. The goalpost has always been exactly where it’s at.
It is entirely you and others who have tried to move the goalposts from “This one policy was successful” to “China is the best country in the world,” which was never my position, because it’s easier for you to argue against that.
You’re completely full of shit. You’ve just defaulted to random accusations and insults based on nothing because you know you can’t argue with the facts.
They didn’t used to have billionaires, when Mao was in power. Strangely, a lot of Westerners seem to hate what China is now, but also hate what China was before, which seems very strange to me. “The reforms were bad and China should be more Maoist” that is a coherent position, “The reforms were good but should have gone further and become even more capitalist” that is also a coherent position. But “China is bad now because they allow billionaires but they were also bad when they didn’t allow billionaires” isn’t really coherent, it just seems like knee-jerk opposition to whatever they do or don’t do. Anyone who wants to offer critiques should be able to answer the simple question of whether the reforms were good or bad, whether they moved in the right or wrong direction.
On the off-chance that you actually want a serious answer to the question, let’s start with some history. Before the revolution, China’s average life expectancy was in the 30’s, it experienced frequent famines, had no access to medicine, and had had similarly awful conditions for literally thousands of years with no improvement for the average person. The revolution brought about huge improvements in life expectancy and the basic necessities of life (with the failure of the Great Leap Forward being an exception to this general trend).
However, while central planning works for providing basic necessities because the demand for those necessities is very predictable, it is not the most efficient regarding consumer goods. This was one of the failures that caused the collapse of the USSR, the desire for consumer good and the inability to compete domestically. Furthermore, despite the increases in life expectancy, virtually everyone in China still lived in extreme poverty. The reforms in the 80s were intended to address this, and they were wildly successful at it:
In the words of Deng, it doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice. It doesn’t really matter if a policy is ideologically “pure,” so long as it provides clear material benefits for the common people.
Where I’m standing, the whole point of having any sort of political beliefs at all is to figure out which policies will improve people’s lives. And lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the span of 40 years, can you name a more successful policy, ever, in all of history?
And yet, China has delivered substantially lower average incomes than its peers. It’s not even close. The people of Taiwan, despite sharing a common cultural and ethnic history as mainland China, enjoy a substantially higher standard of living than their mainland peers.
Yes, they’ve raised hundreds of millions out of poverty, but that’s been the case throughout East Asia. The whole region saw its standard of living dramatically rise as it industrialized. And the capitalist countries have enjoyed far greater economic success than the communist ones.
The absolute number of people is a red herring. Obviously big countries have more people.
I’m hoping you’re not one of those .ml folks that acts like a Republican and calls every source they don’t like “Fake News.” But in case you are, can you provide your own sources? I would be curious on your thoughts of the per-capita incomes of China vs the capitalist East Asian countries. Can you show that China has performed better than them on a per-capita basis?
This is a ridiculous comparison. Taiwan received substantial foreign aid from the US because of it’s strategic value against the mainland, while the PRC was subject to a massive economic embargo.
Sorry, which countries are we talking about again? There’s not that many countries in East Asia. Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan all benefited from foreign investment and trade, and again, with much smaller populations.
If you’re going to argue that the embargo on China was an inevitable result of its communist policies, well, that’s a big part of why they did the reforms in the 80’s.
That… what? I don’t follow what you’re saying here at all.
It’s much easier for a small country to modernize in a short period of time, especially with outside help. It’s very difficult to reach all the people in all the rural areas of China, it means more infrastructure has to be built, more people have to be educated, etc.
My source is the extremely biased communist newsletter known as The World Bank. Hopefully that’s not too far-left for you.
I don’t agree that per-capita is the relevant statistic for the above reasons.
I’m also not entirely sure why we’re comparing China to capitalist countries in the first place.
You linked a source repeating your earlier claim about the raw number of people lifted out of poverty. Again, I ask, what about per-capita income?
China received extensive aid from the USSR.
Do you understand what “per capita” means? It would be far more impressive for a country of one million people to lift 950,000 people out of poverty than for a nation of 1 billion people to lift 800 million people out of poverty.
Why? I see no reason for this. Larger countries have more resources. Everything you need to lift people out of poverty scales with population. If anything, it’s actually EASIER for large countries to lift themselves out of poverty. A tiny micro-nation with a population of 10,000 isn’t going to be building an aircraft factory. There’s a lot of minimum-size requirements on certain national infrastructure. If anything, the bigger, the easier it is to modernize. Yes, the larger population creates greater needs, but you also have more people to address those needs.
And China was not unique in having disconnected rural populations. Small countries and big countries both have isolated rural areas.
It’s the only meaningful way to compare countries. Otherwise you just end up making brain-dead conclusions like, “the big country has the big number. Therefore it’s better.”
Yeah, because I didn’t make any claims about per-capita income. That’s how sources work. I’m not going to provide sources for claims I didn’t make, if you’re just curious about some random fact, you can look it up yourself.
Lol? That’s a joke right?
You never heard about a little thing called the Sino-Soviet split? Even before that, the Soviets had plenty of their own problems, they were nowhere near as wealthy as the US and were struggling to survive and rebuild from WWII, and again, that much smaller aid for a much shorter period of time was distributed to a much larger population.
Also worth noting that the USSR initially supported the KMT over the CPC, seeing the CPC as too small and weak to be viable and the KMT as a lesser evil to the Japanese and expecting China to go through a capitalist stage of development.
Also, I thought we were discussing the Dengist reforms, which happened in the 80’s? The USSR wasn’t even around for much longer, even if they had been aiding them, which they very famously weren’t.
Yes I know what per capita means.
Not really, no.
Because, for one thing, modernization in developing countries is dependent on foreign technologies that have to spread to a much wider area, and that takes time and resources (resources that China lacked, because so many people were on the brink of starvation). If a big rich superpower says, “Hey, I’m gonna plop a semiconductor factory on your little island” it’s going to have a pretty significant impact on the average income of said island.
I don’t really understand why we’re comparing countries.
That is not remotely close to anything I’ve said or believe.
I said things about the success of the policy of the reforms and opening up in the 80’s, and you’re bring up all these other countries that I said nothing about and trying to compare them on absolute terms for some reason. I’m not saying one country is better than another country, I’m just looking at the effects of a particular policy. If you want to argue whether your dad could beat up my dad, you’ll have to find someone else to do that with.
And? China literally owns the 4th largest land mass in the world. So which variables are allowed in this math and which aren’t? Maybe if you give us a list we can defeat your delusion more swiftly.
Which variables are allowed in the math depends on what the point of the comparison is. And as I said, I’m not really sure what the point of comparing these countries is. It’s pretty apples to oranges and doesn’t really tell us anything about the efficacy of China’s reforms in the context of their specific conditions.
The fact that there’s such a difference in landmass is just another reason why it doesn’t make sense to compare the two. If you want to compare China to another country for some reason, it would probably make sense to compare it to a country with more similar conditions, like India perhaps.
Youre actually completely wrong about extreme poverty AND extreme poverty in China.
Thw World Bank’s definitions of ‘extreme poverty’ are completelt stupid. Thhe World Bank has stated that they consider 1.25USD/day to be ‘extreme poverty’ … who here could live off of 1.25USD /day? Could you live off of that? Even in China? Even in Nigeria you cant live off of that.
ALSO deng’s reforms increased the people in China living beneath the BASICS NEEDS POVERTY LINE which is a much better measure of extreme poverty since the BASIC NEEDS POVERTY LINE or BNPL measures rhe BASIC NEEDS that a person needs
Citations here and in the description of the video : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RStKklOC-Z4&t=926s&pp=ygUqYWxsIHlvdXIgcHJvYmxlbXMgaGF2ZSBzb21ldGhpbmcgaW4gY29tbW9u
Be better.
You’re losing
PROVE that Im losing.
You’re doing that for me, thank you!
Democracy. I really hate this untestable argument as if we could go back in time and do A|B test to see which framework would have lifted people out of poverty the fastest. Taiwan is richer and more free than China despite being democratic, so is Japan, South Korea - what now? Which dicks do we measure and do we start at the balls or just the shaft?
What?? Then why even discuss anything about anything?
If you’re criticizing China’s policies, surely the point of that criticism is that you think different policies would have been more effective.
It’s also not entirely an untestable counterfactual because we can examine every other political faction that had a reasonable chance of controlling China, and see what their leadership looked like in practice, and make reasonable extrapolations based on that.
The Nationalists did absolutely nothing to help the rural poor, embezzled foreign aid, and were more preoccupied with hunting down their domestic enemies than repelling the genocidal fascist invaders. Chiang Kai-Shek literally had to be captured by his own bodyguards to be pressured into defending the country. Life expectancy remained completely flat during his rule.
The fascist, genocidal Japanese invaders weren’t a good option for obvious reasons.
How about having no centralized authority at all? That’s what they had during the warlord period, a time of chaos and conflict that left the country vulnerable and did nothing to improve things for anyone.
Before that, there was the Qing dynasty, an authoritarian monarchy which was so assured of its superiority that they completely failed to adapt to foreign innovations and technologies, out of pride, even when it was clear that those technologies were superior.
Then you have the various European powers, carving the country up to divy up the resources between each other, while getting half the country addicted to opium.
And, returning to how things played out historically, we have the one and only faction that had any intention whatsoever of helping the hundreds of millions of starving farmers, which doubled life expectancy within a generation and then adapted to changing conditions and enacted policies which, again, brought 800 million people out of extreme poverty. And the whole reason they won the revolution was because the starving Chinese peasants could tell that they were the only ones who gave two shits about helping them.
I’m the one trying to avoid this pointless dick-measuring contest between countries with vastly different conditions, despite everyone else trying to draw me into it. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t know why we’re comparing countries. Why don’t you ask WoodScientist whose dicks we measure, since he’s the one trying to measure dicks?
I’m confused by your reply here. This is entirely limited to this scenario of false attribution. As we can’t verify this in any meaningful extend due to - as you yourself pointed out - every country and culture being invredibly different. So why are you OK with attributing success to chinese policy but not failure?
At the end of the day the historic justification magic doesn’t matter. I see today how unjust and miserable China is despite what tiktok might paint you. Not having internet is my litmus test and China fails this, I don’t understand how can people justify this. And please don’t try to diminish the great firewall of China - it’s really fucking bad.
I’m so confused by this conversation. Let’s recap.
Originally, OP asked why China has billionaires if it’s aiming to be socialist. I replied that the reforms that allowed billionaires also resulted in 800 million people escaping extreme poverty. WoodScientist randomly started drawing comparisons between the PRC and Taiwan, and I said that it’s apples and oranges, and that I didn’t see the relevance to what I had said. Then you started providing even more reasons why the comparison isn’t really valid, acting as if that contradicted my position in some way, which was even more confusing. You added that you didn’t like looking at other possible routes China could have gone, because it’s untestable.
Now, having established that you don’t like comparing China to other countries (calling it “dick measuring”), and also that you don’t like comparing other historical possibilities (calling them “untestable”) you’re now accusing me of being unwilling to attribute failure to Chinese policy.
First of all, which failure are you talking about? There are plenty which I’m willing to acknowledge. But also, on what basis could you call any policy a success or failure? You’ve thrown away all your epistemology. If we discount comparisons to other places, and also discount comparisons to other possibilities, then what can we look at to determine if a given policy was a success or failure?
Do you? What’s your point of reference for that? Some hypothetical ideal that exists only in your mind?
All I did is call you out that you can’t draw conclusions from n=1 of a policy so you can’t attribute chinese authoritarian policy for “getting people out of poverty”. So your glazing of Chinese autocrats is exactly that - glazing.
That’s completely absurd. This is the dumbest thing anyone’s said this conversation.
The sample size isn’t “n=1” it’s n=800,000,000. It’s clearly visible from the graph that I posted that the reduction in poverty began immediately after the reforms, and then continued extremely consistently on an extremely large scale.
In case you need a refresher on what the data looks like:
You’re just so committed to shitting on every single thing that China does that you’re willing to throw out all reason and logic, completely ignore obvious facts, and throw out any means of evaluating any policy just to avoid the conclusion that China may have done a single thing right.
What other possible explanation even is there? You’re just very objectively wrong.
Lol keep moving the goal post boot licker
Wtf are you even talking about? My first comment was about this, and that’s all I’ve been saying this entire conversation. The goalpost has always been exactly where it’s at.
It is entirely you and others who have tried to move the goalposts from “This one policy was successful” to “China is the best country in the world,” which was never my position, because it’s easier for you to argue against that.
You’re completely full of shit. You’ve just defaulted to random accusations and insults based on nothing because you know you can’t argue with the facts.