China’s Poverty Reduction: Who Really Deserves the Credit?
China's President Xi Jinping at Fourth Plenum in Beijing. (Image China MFA, X)
David Fishman Rebukes Claims Downplaying China’s Role in Poverty Reduction
By TRH Foreign Affairs Desk
New Delhi, November 8, 2025 — A sharp exchange erupted on X over how credit for China’s poverty reduction should be attributed, after commentator Han Yang argued that the phrase “China lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty” was “propagandistic” and overstated the government’s role.
Yang wrote, “The phrase implies passive recipients and an omnipotent state. The people—through grit, entrepreneurship, and benefiting from policy U-turns—did the heavy lifting. Of course the government’s role was pivotal, but mostly in reversing its own failures and enabling markets. Crediting individuals isn’t insulting; it’s empowering. Denying that to glorify the state is the real disservice to history and developing nations.”
Energy analyst David Fishman forcefully disagreed, calling such claims “excessively and abundantly wrong” and “deeply insulting” to nations still grappling with poverty. “It’s like you’re telling them that it’s their own fault for not pulling themselves out of it,” he said in one post.
Fishman went on to criticize both Yang and journalist Lingling Wei, who had expressed similar views, describing their arguments as “ignorant and dishonest.” He maintained that China’s success in reducing poverty was inseparable from government-led reforms that fostered economic growth and stability.
“The Chinese government deserves its due for engineering and perpetuating the most spectacular economic rejuvenation of modern history,” Fishman wrote, urging readers to consult scholarship such as Yuen Yuen Ang’s How China Escaped the Poverty Trap for a deeper understanding of institutional reform.
He also encouraged critics to visit China’s rural areas directly: “Ask people to whom they assign the credit for their improved situation. Good or bad, they’ll tell you. But you aren’t going to learn about it from your office in California.”
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