I'm calling BS. East Asia basically just means China, because it dwarfs other populations. IMHO >60% of Chinese were certainly not living in extreme poverty in 1990, unless economically defined via free market rhetoric and bad statistics. The reality is that people used to grow more of their own food and buy less, so the need for free-market capital was limited. Perhaps this is the source of the mistake.

There was and still is far more extreme poverty in South Asia.

This actually sounds interesting as a fact but I would like to see some evidence/links.

Just look for photos of any place in China in the 1990s, or ask someone who lived there.

Pretty much exactly this. Global reductions in poverty equate to reductions in $2/day income threshold in two countries: China and India.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/china-i...

Accomplished at the cost of tremendously increasing resource consumption, particularly energy:

China: https://m.imgur.com/Vj5VwS9?r

India: https://m.imgur.com/elFJjGP?r

So in your opinion what percentage of Chinese were living in extreme poverty in 1990?