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Originally Posted by aceventura3
The separation in living standards between what you call the urban filthy rich and the rural destitute is not as great as that difference in the US. It is interesting in my view that the hundreds of millions of people in China considered rural and impoverished actually control farm-able land. they may not have access to many of the commercial goods western nations have come to expect, but given access to land that they control they are less dependent on the state than the poor in the US.
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Consider how well known it is in the U.S. that there is a great disparity of wealth. Now consider that the ratio of the top 20% of earners vs. the bottom 20% of earners is greater in China than it is in the U.S. (12.2 vs. 8.4). Even the U.N. has data that shows income inequality as being worse in China.
Despite the control over farmland, I'm not sure this is a good measure for comparison in the U.S. It's my understanding that there are more rural people as a percentage in China than there are in the U.S. (More than half of the Chinese population is rural, vs. less than a quarter in the U.S.)
Anyway, the bottom line is that wealth inequality in China is greater plus the government is oppressive. This is why I don't see comparisons to America as being particularly useful, unless you want to point out the stark differences, with America generally being better off.
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Perhaps an alarming trend, similar to what happened in the US with the demise of the family farm, in China rural farmers are loosing control of their farm-able land to corporate interests. This may be a misstep in the context of living standards for the poor as they will grow dependent on government and corporate interests and will only have cheep unskilled labor to offer. This trend is moving at a faster pace than the nations ability to educate the rural poor.
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Many Chinese have been moving to urban areas to avoid poverty. I think this was a similar trend that happened in North America when the economy advanced and technology modernized (i.e. the shift from industrialized to information-based).
What this will do to the political makeup of China, I'm unsure. I think you can't avoid profound changes on all levels when your economy and society shifts so rapidly.