China’s transformation in the last three decades is a historic achievement, having saved nearly a billion people from extreme poverty ($3 a day or less) and effectively resetting global development benchmarks. The shift from 1990 to 2019 is one of the largest poverty-reduction successes ever recorded.
This triumph contrasts with the US, which has simultaneously allowed its extreme poverty rate to triple to over four million citizens. The US problem is exposed as one of policy choice, as its immense wealth fails to reach the most vulnerable.
The political engineering of inequality is visible in the income data: the poorest 10% of Americans receive a negligible 1.8% of national income, a share worse than that received by low-income populations in numerous developing nations.