China Tries To Censor Data About Nearly 1 Billion People in Poverty
(www.newsweek.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 30 Dec 2023 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/10137456
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 30 Dec 2023 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/10137456
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.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Internet censors in China worked around the clock this week to suppress online discussions about poverty in the country after an economist revealed nearly 1 billion people were living off less than $300 a month.
On Weibo, searches for the now disabled hashtag returned a notice reading: “In accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies, the content of this topic cannot be displayed.”
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.
Li nonetheless concluded that competent government leadership could enable further economic growth, possibly doubling China’s GDP by 2035.
“Although 40 years of reform and opening up have greatly improved the country’s comprehensive strength and level of national income, as of today, the fact that we have a large population, few resources and very uneven development is still obvious, and a considerable number of residents are still close to the poverty line,” Wang and Meng wrote.
At the end of 2020, China’s President Xi declared a “complete victory” over absolute poverty in the country, which Beijing defines as living off 2,300 yuan a year.
The original article contains 579 words, the summary contains 217 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
1 billion people in China living in poverty?? I find that almost hard to believe that’s ~66% of their population
This was my first thought. Seems unlikely. I’d see this just as likely being propaganda.
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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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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.
TIL Chinese people are “brown skinned”.
I know right, we are yellow or fair
I assume they mean from the point of view of the people in the media they’re criticizing.
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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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You need to relax. You can just explain your points without calling people fuckwits etc.
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!
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Wow, a real, live, tankie!
I’m in China as well and you’re talking out of your ass, or arrived post-covid.
I’ve experienced lockdowns, pet killings and welded doors; know plenty of 996 companies, and the local salaries are garbage.
I arrived in China 2001.
I experienced the harshest and largest lockdown in all of history: Wuhan, January 23rd, 2020. A real lockdown, not the cosplay bullshit you experienced outside of China. (Yes, this is me saying you’ve never fucking set foot in the country.)
The rest you’re just flat-out lying about. Sorry, Sparky. Did pet killings happen? Yes. They were not the mass shit that the press you’re so obviously reciting acts like they were. Did some doors get welded? Yes. But nowhere near you and, again, nowhere near in the masses the press you’re basing your lies on made it seem like. The local salaries are garbage iff you’re a fuckwit sitting in the west applying western prices to Chinese salaries. (Which, naturally, you are, good little fuckwit liar that you are.) And you’ve changed your tune from 14 hours to 12 hours really fucking quickly there, Sparky, not to mention using the proper slang only after I gave it to you.
So yeah, you’re just a west-dwelling fuckwit lying about being here. Go toddle off in your China Watcher corners and play with the rest of the intellectual children you belong with. There’s a good boy.
LOL. Ok champ. You’re just the sorry twat I thought I left behind on reddit, so I’ll withdraw from this exchange.
Bro I hate to break it to you but there’s way more CCP apologist tankies on Lemmy than Reddit. That you won’t escape by coming here.
Yep but luckily most of them stick to instances that I can fully ignore.
Bruh. Are you smoking crack?
What are you even talking about?
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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.”
Mao-like administrations tend to do that. Undoing whatever progress Deng fulfilled
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.
“Saving face” is a big thing in their culture, as well as in other Asian cultures.
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.
why is this related to technology?
How do you think they’re detecting what to sensor, how are they censoring it?
if such a thing is happening, the article utterly fails to address the technologies they are using to censor this. it just mentions some disabled hashtags.
it does not belong to a tech community.
I Should’ve read the article, it doesn’t belong here
i dont know, the article says absolutely nothing about it.
just that china bad.
Economics and technology are intrinsically related.
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: 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: reuters.com/…/us-china-economy-wikileaks-idUSTRE6… as well as an in depth research report on their reported GDP versus country-wide activity bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/…/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.
There is no poverty in Ba Sing Se.
Yeah… Avatar was rather spot on with the depiction of China-like Ba Sing Se.
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.
Are any of these not bots?
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