this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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The Chinese government is responsible for the biggest and fastest uplift of people out of poverty ever seen in history.
And they are also responsible for horrible horrible human rights violations against minorites and dissidents and they caused millions of needless deaths during the cultural revolution.
The second fact however does not negate the first one because they did, in fact, pull almost their entire population out of poverty and into a modern industrialized economy.
Please learn to make some space in your head for uncomfortable facts that cause conflicting emotions.
OP was right, they are an extremely successful government with a surprisingly broad support within the population because most Chinese have living grandparents that where still farmers and had no industry at all. And they now live in modern cities with modern amenities. The transformation happened in two generations.
And India is doing it even faster.
That's a good point, India is currently also in a fantastic trajectory
The German government took their country from a destitute postwar state staring down perpetual crippling debt to a restored world power in just a few years, all while having a less than stellar attitude toward minorities...but I'm not seeing too many praising them overall.
Just because a take might be pragmatic doesn't mean it's not a bad take.
But that's even worse a comparison.
First of all, the German recovery after WW2 is called "miracle of the Rhine" (or Wirtschaftswunder) for a reason. It WAS very impressive.
At the end of WW2 Germany had a gdp of 160 billion dollars, a fully literate und educated population and a reduced but existing industrial base.
Wikipedia: "When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, more than 400 million of the country's more than 500 million people were illiterate, and the illiteracy rate was about 80 percent, including over 95 percent in rural areas."
Per Capita GDP in china was 10% of that of post war Germany and china had no major industry to speak of and was mostly agrarian.
I never said that other countries did not do impressive things, but I think there is merit to the claim that few improved the lives of the population as thoroughly and fast and at a scale as china did.