On Poverty Reduction

Hey Laowinners!

Hope you guys had an awesome week! 

Olivia got sick, and has been running a high fever, but after one bad night, she's acting totally normal, so maybe she is just hot blooded! 

There is no doubt that China was incredibly poor in the past, yet has managed to gain immense wealth in a very short amount of time.

Watch this fascinating infographic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwteoEWGrJs

President Xi has pushed this reduction of poverty thing very hard recently,  but like all massive Chinese initiatives, there are caveats.

As with all big government projects in China, figures and quotas have to be met. Top down politics at its finest.

With Mao, you had people melting their pots and pans and turning it into useless pig iron, all while deforesting an entire nation to provide fuel for the backyard furnaces ALL in order to hit that quota that Mao put out.

This, in part, caused the nation to enter a massive famine and led to the deaths of millions. But, ya gotta get those numbers!

No one is upset that China is "lifting people out of poverty", but how they are doing so mirrors the top down Mao approach that when uncovered, shows a totally different side.

   "On February 21, 2019, the neighbors of a resident in her 90s from a village under the jurisdiction of Tanzhuang town in Shangshui count in Henan, found the woman dead in her small house. She did not die of natural causes: The old lady hung herself out of despair after a local government official ordered her to move out of her house to meet the area’s poverty alleviation quota.

According to the neighbors, the day before, the official visited her at home and said that the national poverty alleviation policy demands the seniors to live with their children. “In the coming days, superior government officials will be here for an inspection. You have to move out,” the official threatened.

“Where will I move?” asked the elderly lady, sobbing to the point of practically being unable to speak, but the official ignored her pleas. Her neighbors recalled that they heard her crying in the middle of that night."

As I suspected. Nothing can be taken at face value in China. 

Quotas.

It's always about quotas. 

Every year, in my city of Huizhou, they have a "civilized city week", and a quota about how many motorcycles they can confiscate, how many criminals they catch, how many street vendors they shut down. 

The cops wear pristine white gloves on that week.

When "civilized city week" ends, the farce is revealed, and typical lawless chaos comes back.

So here we have another quota. Poverty quotas.  

If there are too many poor households in a village, they seal the doors and windows to show CCP officials that they are not actually houses, but "abandoned residences". 

   "The villager’s concern is not unfounded. To cater to inspections by their superiors, on February 21 and 22 alone, the local government reportedly sealed off 25 houses of the elderly people who were designated as impoverished households. Some of the elderly have nowhere to go, so they secretly sneak into their homes at night to rest."

China's progress is nothing to scoff at, but just realize, when you read something, positive or negative about China, I promise you that the truth will be quite a bit different from what you read.