China Tries To Censor Data About Nearly 1 Billion People in Poverty::Chinese government censors tried to control discussions about the country’s economy this week.
1 billion people in China living in poverty?? I find that almost hard to believe that’s ~66% of their population
If it’s propaganda it’s coming from within
“In his article for the business outlet Yicai, Li cited data from a 2021 research paper by the China Institute of Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University, which placed the number of people living on less than 2,000 yuan a month at 964 million, or nearly 70 percent of the population.”
Most certainly easy to believe. China is not that far off from DPRK anymore. Look at what they did during covid (welding people in their apartments, killing all pets, arresting people for curfew violations, etc). Look at their typical workday (14x6) and wage (a few $/day). How do think we get cheap products like $25 microwaves and $15 coffee makers. CCP wants a slave population, not citizens.
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TIL Chinese people are “brown skinned”.
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Either way I find it funny that the same anti westerners who say China is fair to its workers, are the same ones who always mention that my phone is made by slaves. Sometimes in the same discussion.
Bruh. Are you smoking crack?
Your view of how COVID-19 mitigation worked is skewed by breathless, click-baiting media reports (known by most as “lies”) made by people who could not, at a very deep, very primal level, admit to even themselves that brown-skinned people outperformed white-skinned people by orders of magnitude and made up shit to placate their humiliation.
What are you even talking about?
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I was in China during the pandemic. In 2022 everyone got COVID. Literally everyone in every big city.
So they should have opened up after omega became the dominant variant. No point in locking people down when they lost anyway.
It was a good response in the beginning, but they doubled down on it for three years
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They stopped tracking cases in December, so how do you know it’s one third?
They literally told us to stay at home and not go to the hospital even if we have it
Wow, a real, live tankie!
The CPC […] is by no means a good government and the people in it are not good people at any level above the community cadre level […]
They’re vile authoritarians […]
Do you actually fucking READ before reacting you utter fuckwit?!
Talking with Americans is like talking with ADHD-addled toddlers for fuck’s sake!
I mean
A: you’re an asshole, even if you had a point.
B: your whole argument is an appeal to your own authority and a dismissal of anyone who disagrees with you as an idiot.
And C:
You spent the whole comment praising China and dismissing criticisms in specific details. Then tacked a few vague complaints that noone would disagree with on in the end. This is a very common tactic used to make it look like you haven’t “taken sides”.
Wow, a real, live, tankie!
That’s because it’s being applied to Western standards. China spends a crazy amount of money on social welfare and government assistance. Minimum wage is around or less than 2000 Yuan a month around the country, yes. But, that’s completely ignoring currency exchange rates and cost of living.
Cost of living in Shanghai and Beijing are around 4,500 Yuan. Which means a couple or two roommates can live on minimum wage in the biggest cities. Compare that to minimum wage and cost of living in New York City or LA which is $1,280 a month, costing $4,300 and 1,342 a month, costing $5,576 respectively.
Tldr: how much money you make is only relevant when compared to your cost of living. It’s not hard to live in China on $300 a month.
So by relative purchasing power, why would China want to censor information if it didn’t actually put them in a negative light?
Well I think this article and comment section is a clear indication of the power of this information when used for propaganda.
This was my first thought. Seems unlikely. I’d see this just as likely being propaganda.
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Mao-like administrations tend to do that. Undoing whatever progress Deng fulfilled
why is this related to technology?
Economics and technology are intrinsically related.
I feel like Technology community is overused for unrelated topics in Lemmy. This article for example should belong to a community like worldnews news or something in that nature.
the bot posting this isn’t really giving a shit probably
Mods, on the other hand, should.
Alternative headline: “The Vast Majority Of Chinese People Are Poverty Stricken”
This is really really really REALLY not good.
I haven’t looked since 2021 but I was under the impression that poverty alleviation in China had been remarkable and almost single-handedly responsible for making it look like the UN hit the Millennium Development Goals or whatever they were called. Maybe it’s a matter of degree, and people are still poor but not ultra poor?
It would be wise to keep the exchange rates and purchasing power in mind. A dollar in America doesn’t get you an equal amount of goods as a dollar’s worth of yuan in China could get you. That being said, from what I gather, most people in China live on an income that is under 2000 yuan a month, and the rest of their income is subsidized with social assistance. Even so, that’s not a great long term economic strategy if people’s basic income isn’t enough to live on.
I checked, it was alleviation of extreme poverty and the success was historically unprecedented in such a short period of time. But that leaves regular poverty, which still isn’t great.
There’s not a single statistic that comes out of the chinese government that’s accurate by any measure.
For reference on their economic numbers versus reality: https://www.moneymacro.rocks/2022-10-27-china-smaller/ Macro economics professor’s report on the matter and the CCP accidentally admitting the fact they doctor all their statistics: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-wikileaks-idUSTRE6B527D20101206/ as well as an in depth research report on their reported GDP versus country-wide activity https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/BFI_WP_2021-78.pdf
China’s GDP is at LEAST 60% smaller than they’ve reported. They’re still the second largest economy but by no means are they ANYWHERE near the USA in economic growth, stability or reliability.
Sure, but what I’m referring to is pretty well established. I’m not talking about anything particularly recent.
Why the fuck am I now sitting here reading US economic/political propaganda on the technology feed? GTFO
Yeah, a couple of decades ago China was a miracle as western institutions repeatedly redefined the poverty threshold to make global poverty look like it was improving. Back then it was touting the power of the free market, with most of the gains being in China. Now that they want conflict with China, those numbers are no longer good enough. I’m not saying China doesn’t have a poverty problem, I’m just saying this is illustrative of propaganda changing the narrative.
It’s no secret that the Chinese economy is faltering. How many of their “too big to fail” corps have gone tits up in the past 2 years? We’ve all seen the videos of people struggling to even afford living in cages. Also, calling it propaganda when you have no data to back up or refute the claims made in the article just makes you look like a tankie.
