malaeisd
I grew up extremely poor and despite being upper-middle class now, I know my past influences how I see things.
Also, my experience working in China and with other Mainland Chinese just paint a different picture than what people tend to see in the Western media. (I'll add that I made it a point to avoid the expat bubble, so perhaps my perspective there is different from other expats as well.)
> I would also point out that the prison (government) created the great famine (that made you hungry).
Just to clarify, the government that created the great famine (Mao) is very different than the one that started to feed the people (Deng)
In fact, the Mao tried to have Deng assassinated several times.
So yeah, I would say it's an improvement since the CCP is now saying the Cultural Revolution was wrong.
I guess I see it as progress. If you take a look at countries like South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, all three were dictatorships until the 90s, when their quality of life improved enough for them to turn to democracies.
So I guess we'll just have to see where the Chinese people take themselves.
So they hear stories from their grandparents and parents about people starving to death because of the famines.
These things will take time. As the Chinese get more comfortable, those younger people will join the system and change it form within.
Remember that South Korea, Singapore, and even Taiwan were dictatorships that improved their quality of life significantly before they became democracies.
The Taiwanese still consider themselves a part of Chinese culture, in fact, they actually feel that they are the true "practitioners" of Chinese culture because the Mainland Chinese went through the Cultural Revolution.
> kinda how we think Canadians are basically Americans
I think an even closer analogy would be between American Northerners vs. Southerners.
As in, after the Civil War each side considers themselves to be "more American."
The best way to explain it is this: If you ask a Taiwanese person to know the greatest works of art "his people" have created "in their history," then he will name works of art created in Mainland China, but authors and artists that lived and died in Mainland China.
Somehow not seeing your family members starve or die in childbirth isn't an improvement if they don't have other things you deem important?
> Its like saying if you sent me to prison my life expectancy, security, and perhaps even literacy might improve. Would I count being in prison an improvement? No.
Let's say I consider this prison to be an improvement to me dying of hunger, then would you be able to accept my perspective? Or would you consider me brainwashed?
Just curious, but do you perceive living in China to be the same as living in North Korea?
If that's the only reason, then why is the quality of life so much better in China than in India, the world's largest democracy?
For example,
- Life expectancy at birth in China is 73.5 years; in India it is 64.4 years.
- The infant mortality rate is fifty per thousand in India, compared with just seventeen in China.
- The mortality rate for children under five is sixty-six per thousand for Indians and nineteen for the Chinese.
- Maternal mortality rate is 230 per 100,000 live births in India and thirty-eight in China.
- Only 66 percent of Indian children are immunized with triple vaccine (diphtheria/pertussis/tetanus), as opposed to 97 percent in China.
- The mean years of schooling in India were estimated to be 4.4 years, compared with 7.5 years in China.
- China’s adult literacy rate is 94 percent, compared with India’s 74 percent.
- India's literacy rate for women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four is still not much above 80 percent, whereas in China it is 99 percent.
Source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/05/12/quality-life-indi...