China still has millions of poor people — poor by U.S. standards where many that live in poverty often drive cars and have TVs.
However, contrary to the belief of many gloating China bashers and Sinophobes, the Communist Party did not create this situation and has been working hard since the early 1980s to solve this challenge.
The Guardian.co.uk says, “The report, by authors from the China Institute for Reform and Development and other think tanks, describes the nation’s progress over the past 30 years of reform as a miracle in the history of poverty reduction….“
In fact, in 1949, most of China still lived in an environment similar to Europe’s middle ages.
To escape this poverty, many Chinese still immigrate illegally to the US. The reason so many do this is because there is a myth in China that America is “Gold Mountain”.
Golden Venture, a documentary about the US immigration crises, says, “The first major waves of Chinese immigrants came to the U.S. after hearing of the “Golden Mountain” or “Gum Saan” when California’s Gold Rush began in 1848.”
However, the US is not the mythical Gold Mountain.
Steve Lendman says, “On September 16, the Census Bureau reported that US poverty rose to 43.6 million in 2009, an increase of 3.8 million in the past year – the largest total since the first 1959 estimates. It shows one in seven Americans are impoverished, the official 14.3% rate the highest since 1994, by the Bureau’s conservative measures.”
Of China, the United Nations says, “Both national and international indicators show that China has already achieved the goal of halving the number of people in extreme poverty by 2015 set by the UN as one of eight Millennium Development Goals. Remaining poverty is however becoming increasingly difficult to address, as the rural poor are now concentrated in remote regions with difficult natural conditions.”
“China also accounts for nearly all the world’s reduction in poverty. Excluding China, (global) poverty fell only by around 10%.” Source: Global Issues
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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