Posted on 06/16/2021 8:16:19 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A newly released Swiss-sponsored study reveals that China has not eradicated poverty, a “miracle” that Chinese leader Xi Jinping claims to have achieved.
On Feb. 25, the Chinese regime organized an awards ceremony, in which Xi announced China had eradicated poverty, based on China’s poverty standards.
“[China] created another miracle in the annals of history,” Xi commented on the eradication of poverty. “[It’s a] major historic achievement.”
On April 6, the Chinese regime released a white paper titled “China’s Practice in Human Poverty Reduction.” With this paper, the Beijing authorities want to set China as a role model to the world.
“China has not eradicated poverty—even extreme poverty,” Bill Bikales, former UN lead economist in China, writes in the report Reflection on Poverty Reduction in China (pdf) that was published on June 8.
Bikales pointed out that poverty is dynamic, but the Beijing regime only focuses on the people who were from rural areas and were registered in 2014-5 as poor, without updating the list in the years since nor covering the majority of the Chinese population, which live in urban areas.
“No statistics were ever released [in China] regarding newly poor households due to the income shock that occurred [due to the pandemic] and assistance to non-registered poor households was limited,” Bikales wrote. “To accurately capture the impact of COVID-19 on poverty anywhere other than in the already identified counties and villages would have required systems that were simply not in place.”
The Chinese regime claims that if a person’s income is higher than 3,218 yuan ($500) per year, he or she can’t be counted as poor. If a poor person’s income reaches 4,000 yuan ($625), he or she is removed from the list of those eligible for social security benefits, and can never again be counted as poor. China claims that because the cost of commodities in China is low, individuals do not require a high income to live free of poverty.
In the past months, interviewees from mainland China told The Epoch Times that they still couldn’t obtain clean water, enough food, and public transportation, but the regime refused to pay social security benefits because China had supposedly eliminated poverty.
Chinese state-run media has revealed that even the delisted poor people are still living in extreme poverty, and the local authorities have lied to the central authorities.
A large number of Chinese in rural areas don’t have clean water to drink and don’t have enough money to buy meat and other foods that are rich in protein and fat, according to interviewees. There are Chinese people in urban areas who also can’t feed themselves and their families.
“My father and his fellow villagers don’t have money. They eat what they planted and don’t have meat in general. My father doesn’t have enough money to pay for electricity, not to mention the sanitation facilities, bathing,” a woman surnamed Wang told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on Feb. 25.
Wang lives in a city and has electricity, water, internet, and telephone. Her father lives in Taohe township in Xichuan County, in central China’s Henan Province, which is in the mountains.
“They don’t have tap water. They rely on a small-size reservoir [which can save the rainwater] and water that is shipped from outside,” Wang said. “They don’t have money to pay for hospitals, clinics, or even medicine. They simply fight diseases by using their bodies’ immune system. Once they are seriously ill, they just wait for death at home.”
A different Wang is a Beijing migrant worker who is from northern China’s Hebei Province. He told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on March 2 that farmers in Hebei don’t have money to pay for medical insurance in general, the regime doesn’t supply free medical service, and farmers don’t have money to treat diseases.
“For us, we just visit a small clinic if we have some non-fatal diseases. Once we are very sick, we will try to borrow money from relatives. If we can receive some money, we will visit a hospital. Otherwise, we just stay at home and wait for death,” Wang said.
The majority of Chinese poor people don’t have a phone, nor a computer, and the regime’s censorship doesn’t allow relevant facts to be exposed online.
However, evidence of extreme poverty can be found from what people report in conversation, as well as in the media’s reports on other topics.
On Dec. 12, 2020, a social media account posted a long article on WeChat, in which it talked about children in urban areas who suicided because their families were too poor to pay for their education, feed them, or treat their diseases.
Bikales wrote in his study that 63 percent of Chinese people live in cities, and these people have never been included in China’s poverty list. And, contrary to Xi’s claimes, even the poor people in the list haven’t escaped poverty.
In April, CCTV reported cases in Luonan County, northwestern China’s Shaanxi Province, in which people don’t have a safe home to live in and don’t have clean water to drink. The local officials lied about the situation, and tried to grab the reporter’s cell phone, which the reporter used to record the scene.
Luonan was removed from the poverty list in February 2020, which means all residents in the county are said to earn an income higher than the poverty threshold.
In the middle of April, when CCTV arrived at the county, the reporters found an old man Leng who lived in a small and dilapidated brick one-room house. The house has no kitchen, no bathroom, and no heating.
Leng was on the poverty list. He told CCTV that the brick house used to be a storage space for his relative. Because his mud house is cracked and may fall down at any time, his relative allows him to live in this brick house. Leng has no income and has no money to rent a room.
CCTV visited two villages in Luonan, both didn’t have drinking water. Villagers need to drive a long way to buy water from other towns, and this water needs to be filtered before use.
Because villagers are poor in general, most of them don’t have money to buy water frequently. They save rainwater and in their daily lives try to save any drop of water that they can.
The Shanghai-based news website The Paper reported another case from southwestern China’s Yunnan Province on Nov. 19, 2020.
The local regime in Zhenxiong County, Zhaotong City removed villager Jiang Tongxun from the poverty list in October 2020 because the regime said Jiang’s gross income in 2020 would be 5,811.76 yuan ($908). This is higher than the 2020 income level of 4,000 yuan ($625), under which the person can remain eligible for the poverty list.
Jiang disagreed with the regime and refused to sign the paper to give up his right to receive any more social security benefits.
According to the regime’s data, Jiang earned 3,000 yuan by working as a migrant worker, received 2,568 yuan social security benefits from the regime, and 243.76 yuan subsidies from the regime, which was used to buy farming seeds and fertilizers.
Jiang said he didn’t receive benefits from the regime, and the poverty alleviation funding from the central regime or provincial regime was allocated to the villagers who have good relationships with officials. The report said Jiang lost his poverty qualification and was criticized by the regime.
Chinese people told The Epoch Times in phone call interviews that 4,000 yuan isn’t enough to maintain a basic life.
Zhou, a retired man who lives in Shanghai city, told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on Feb. 25: “The minimum cost of food is 500 yuan per month per person in Shanghai. You need to spend 200 yuan for transportation, and over 2,000 yuan to rent a room … 4,000 yuan per year means 333 per month. You can’t survive with this income.”
Hu Ping, honorary editor-in-chief of New York-based Beijing Spring magazine and China affairs expert, told The Epoch Times on Feb. 26: “China is still extremely poor in this year … How much grain does China have now? Including other agricultural products, China needs much more than it has [to feed people].” poverty, a “miracle” that Chinese leader Xi Jinping claims to have achieved.
On Feb. 25, the Chinese regime organized an awards ceremony, in which Xi announced China had eradicated poverty, based on China’s poverty standards.
“[China] created another miracle in the annals of history,” Xi commented on the eradication of poverty. “[It’s a] major historic achievement.”
On April 6, the Chinese regime released a white paper titled “China’s Practice in Human Poverty Reduction.” With this paper, the Beijing authorities want to set China as a role model to the world.
“China has not eradicated poverty—even extreme poverty,” Bill Bikales, former UN lead economist in China, writes in the report Reflection on Poverty Reduction in China (pdf) that was published on June 8.
Bikales pointed out that poverty is dynamic, but the Beijing regime only focuses on the people who were from rural areas and were registered in 2014-5 as poor, without updating the list in the years since nor covering the majority of the Chinese population, which live in urban areas.
“No statistics were ever released [in China] regarding newly poor households due to the income shock that occurred [due to the pandemic] and assistance to non-registered poor households was limited,” Bikales wrote. “To accurately capture the impact of COVID-19 on poverty anywhere other than in the already identified counties and villages would have required systems that were simply not in place.”
The Chinese regime claims that if a person’s income is higher than 3,218 yuan ($500) per year, he or she can’t be counted as poor. If a poor person’s income reaches 4,000 yuan ($625), he or she is removed from the list of those eligible for social security benefits, and can never again be counted as poor. China claims that because the cost of commodities in China is low, individuals do not require a high income to live free of poverty.
In the past months, interviewees from mainland China told The Epoch Times that they still couldn’t obtain clean water, enough food, and public transportation, but the regime refused to pay social security benefits because China had supposedly eliminated poverty.
Chinese state-run media has revealed that even the delisted poor people are still living in extreme poverty, and the local authorities have lied to the central authorities.
China is doing very well.
We need to stop talking cr@p about them, and get serious about them.
Now.
RE: China is doing very well.
Can you elaborate?
Have you no idea?
China is kicking our butts.
RE: China is kicking our butts.
In which area?
Mark
You are serious?
Tell me you are not seriouss
China has been building EVERYTHING sold in America for 10 years, and almost everything sold in America for twenty years.
Look at the country, it has been developing in every single way.
You are 20 years behind on China, if you really believe what you are writing.
We are getting our b@tts whipped by china, every single year, for more than thirty years.
Completely!
One of the multiple reasons that a war with Taiwan is unlikely. China knows that such a war would be catostrophic for its export based economy, would result in significant economic contraction, and cause severe internal political instability.
All of your points on Taiwan are valid, but on the other side of scale is this:
It may be now or never.
China cannot count on the US having a senile dolt as President as a long term strategy.
Marxism hasn’t worked yet.
Bkmk
where is that tiny violin gif?
Sad if true. I wonder about those without water in the rural areas...can they dig wells for water? Maybe would have to dig too deep to hit water or some other issue; the article didn’t say or I overlooked it.
A couple of months back I watched several documentaries on China and the development that’s taken place in the past 25 years. As someone has already commented, China has been building, building, building for years now. It has massive modern cities now, more than in the US. And China also has become the international headquarters for computer hardware manufacturing along with other industries. President Trump tried to even the playing field, but the globalists succeeded in putting a stop to his efforts.
RE: China has been building, building, building for years now.
Yes, and how many of these mega projects are actually profitable? How are they financing it and are they economically viable? How much does it cost to maintain them? How much debt did they incur to build the project?
Beware with the build, build, build strategy of trying to boost the economy and trying to emulate China .... anyone can build anything, it’s the viability of the project that will count in the end.
RE: Marxism hasn’t worked yet.
China has abandoned Marxism since the time of Deng Xiao Ping. Today, it is more like STATE CONTROLLED CAPITALISM.
RE: You are 20 years behind on China, if you really believe what you are writing.
I am fully aware of what China is doing. I have been there many times and can speak the language and can even read and write some.
Look BEYOND the veneer of their externals. Read my Post #14.
Besides stealing or imitating USA technology, what have they done?
They manufacture more than the USA, but, in US Dollar output, one USA industrial worker produces FOUR times as much value as one Chinese worker.
From memory, Chinese industrial out put is about 10% higher than the USA.
However, the USA has roughly 15 million industrial workers, and the Chinese have at least 75 million industrial workers.
China can have a billion people living in dire poverty and the other 400 million dwarfing and out-performing our middle- and upper- classes at the same time.
Not for long.
When I said build, I mostly meant the huge cities and skyscrapers that now adorn parts of China. The influx of citizens from rural to these mega cities. The many corporations now manufacturing in China. In fact, here is a long list I found after a brief search of American companies manufacturing in China (not exporting to China). Their post reads:
This is a list of companies who either own factories, or have contract factories producing their products
in China. Some of the companies produce 100% of their products there, and others only produce parts,
or certain ingredients for their products.
AT&T
Abercrombe & Fitch
Abbott Laboratories
Acer Electronics
Ademco Security
Adidas
ADI Security
AGI- American Gem Institute
AIG Financial
Agrilink Foods, Inc. (ProFac)
Allergan Laboratories
American Eagle Outfitters
American Standard
American Tourister
Ames Tools
Amphenol Corporation
Amway Corporation
Analog Devices, Inc.
Apple Computer
Armani
Armour Meats
Ashland Chemical
Ashley Furniture
Associated Grocers
Audi Motors
AudioVox
AutoZone, Inc.
Avon
Banana Republic
Bausch & Lomb, Inc.
Baxter International
Bed, Bath & Beyond
Belkin Electronics
Best Buy
Best Foods
Big 5 Sporting Goods
Black & Decker
Body Shop
Borden Foods
Briggs & Stratton
Calrad Electric
Campbell ‘s Soup
Canon Electronics
Carole Cable
Casio Instrument
Caterpillar, Inc.
CBC America
CCTV Outlet
Checker Auto
CitiCorp
Cisco Systems
Chiquita Brands International
Claire’s Boutique
Cobra Electronics
Coby Electronics
Coca Cola Foods
Colgate-Palmolive
Colorado Spectrum
ConAgra Foods
Cooper Tire
Corning, Inc.
Coleman Sporting Goods
Compaq
Crabtree & Evelyn
Cracker Barrel Stores
Craftsman Tools (see Sears)
Cummins, Inc.
Dannon Foods
Dell Computer
Del Monte Foods
Dewalt Tools
DHL
Dial Corporation
Diebold, Inc.
Dillard’s, Inc.
Dodge-Phelps
Dole Foods
Dollar Tree Stores, Inc.
Dow-Corning
Eastman Kodak
EchoStar
Eclipse CCTV
Edge Electronics Group
Electric Vehicles USA, Inc.
Eli Lilly Company
Emerson Electric
Enfamil
Estee Lauder
Eveready
Family Dollar Stores
FedEx
Fisher Scientific
Ford Motors
Fossil
Frito Lay
Furniture Brands International
GAP Stores
Gateway Computer
GE, General Electric
General Foods International
General Mills
General Motors
Gentek
Gerber Foods
Gillette Company
Goodrich Company
Goodyear Tire
Google
Gucci
Guess?
Haagen-Dazs
Harley Davidson
Hasbro Company
Heinz Foods
Hershey Foods
Hitachi
Hoffman-LaRoche
Holt’s Automotive Products
Hormel Foods
Home Depot
Honda Motor
Hoover Vacuum
HP Computer
Honda
Honeywell
Hubbell Inc.
Huggies
Hunts-Wesson Foods
ICON Office Solutions
IBM
Ikea
Intel Corporation
J.C. Penny’s
J.M. Smucker Company
John Deere
Johnson Control
Johnson & Johnson
Johnstone Supply
JVC Electronics
KB Home
Keebler Foods
Kenwood Audio
KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken
Kimberly Clark
Knorr Foods
K-Mart
Kohler
Kohl’s Corporation
Kraft Foods
Kragen Auto
Land’s End
Lee Kum Kee Foods
Lexmark
LG Electronics
Lipton Foods
L.L. Bean, Inc.
Logitech
Libby’s Foods
Linen & Things
Lipo Chemicals, Inc.
Lowe’s Hardware
Lucent Technologies
Lufkin
Mars Candy
Martha Stewart Products
Mattel
McCormick Foods
McDonald’s
McKesson Corporation
Megellan GPS
Memorex
Merck & Company
Michael’s Stores
Mitsubishi Electronics
Mitsubishi Motors
Mobile Oil
Molex
Motorola
Motts Applesauce
Multifoods Corporation
Nabisco Foods
National Semiconductor
Nescafe
Nestles Foods
Nextar
Nike
Nikon
Nivea Cosmetics
Nokia Electronics
Northrop Grumman Corporation
NuSkin International
Nutrilite (see Amway)
Nvidia Corporation (G-Force)
Office Depot
Olin Corporation
Old Navy
Olympus Electronics
Orion-Knight Electronics
Pacific Sunwear, Inc.
Pamper’s
Panasonic
Pan Pacific Electronics
Panvise
Papa Johns
Payless Shoesource
Pelco
Pentax Optics
Pep Boy’s
Pepsico International
PetsMart
Petco
Pfizer, Inc.
Philips Electronics
Phillip Morris Companies
Pier 1 Imports
Pierre Cardin
Pillsbury Company
Pioneer Electronics
Pitney Bowes, Inc.
Pizza Hut
Plantronics
PlaySchool Toys
Polaris Industries
Polaroid
Polo (see Ralph Loren)
Post Cereals
Price-Pfister
Pringles
Praxair
Proctor & Gamble
PSS World Medical
Pyle Audio
Qualcomm
Quest One
Radio Shack
Ralph Loren
RCA
Reebok International
Reynolds Aluminum
Revlon
Rohm & Hass Company
Samsonite
Samsung
Sanyo
Shell Oil
Schwinn Bike
Sears-Craftsman
Seven-Eleven (7-11)
Sharp Electronics
Sherwin-Williams
Shure Electronics
Sony
Speco Technologies/Pro Video
Shopko Stores
Skechers Footwear
SmartHome
Smucker’s (see J.M. Smucker’s)
Solar Power, Inc.
Spencer Gifts
Stanley Tools
Staple’s
Starbucks Corporation
Steelcase, Inc.
STP Oil
Sunkist Growers
SunMaid Raisins
Sunglass Hut
Sunkist
Subway Sandwiches
Switchcraft Electronics
SYSCO Foods
Sylvania Electric
3-M
Tai Pan Trading Company
Tamron Optics
Target
TDK
Tektronix, Inc
Texas Instruments
Timex
Timken Bearing
TNT
Tommy Hilfiger
Toro
Toshiba
Tower Automotive
Toyota
Toy’s R Us, Inc.
Trader Joe’s
Tripp-lite
True Value Hardware
Tupper Ware
Tyson Foods
Uniden Electronics
UPS
Valspar Corporation
Victoria ‘s Secret
Vizio Electronics
Volkswagen
VTech
Walgreen Company
Walt Disney Company
Walmart
WD-40 Corporation
Weller Electric Company
Western Digital
Westinghouse Electric
Weyerhaeuser Company
Whirlpool Corporation
Wilson Sporting Goods
Wrigley
WW Grainger, Inc.
Wyeth Laboratories
X-10
Xelite
Xerox
Yahoo
Yamaha
Yoplait Foods
Yum Brands
Zale Corporation
_______________
Source for list: Shipping database. US Customs database. Chinese government publications/database.
Website with list: http://jiesworld.com/international_corporations_in_china.htm
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