This comment is so frustrating 😅 one of the only concrete statements you make about Chinese policy is “i cant imagine them handing out free food to anybody”. Literally political criticism based on vibes.
By all means there’s lots to criticize about the Chinese government but at least actually make criticisms, not just “I know China to be evil and therefore they must not do good things” 😅 also that last paragraph is such an insane over generalization. As though the entire world experiences a uniformly lower standard of living than the US. There are people in the US who live in absolute near starvation squalor with literally no rights whatsoever. Not to their health, their freedoms, nor their labor.
China is also not a uniform state. There are parts of China with higher overall quality of life and lower overall quality of life. China as a nation has improved their overall quality of life at one of the fastest rates over the past 5 decades by pretty much every metric. They have cheap electric vehicles, they have much better housing options than they used to, they have some of the largest and most technically modern public transportation systems in the world.
They aren’t doing every single thing wrong. They have done a lot of things right. Again, not that I support or endorse a lot of their politics, but dismissing it all as backwards starving impoverished who cannot fathom American opulence is both very stupidly elevating the miserable reality of being poor in America, and erasing any progress the country has made. The end goal should be a better world for all workers. This includes those in China and those in America. Dismissing progress is completely counter to that goal.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 1 day ago
You’re welcome to provide any information, instead of complaining and providing absolutely nothing.
LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I don’t understand why it’s on everyone else to research baseless claims you are making, but sure, whatever lmao.
So to even answer the question you have to specify what exactly you mean by food bank. Providing food for people who are impoverished takes many different forms. From individual meal based facilities like soup kitchens, to dry and preserved goods providers, to international warehousing of emergency food relief supplies.
So assuming the question at hand is, does the government of China provide its citizens with any kind of nutritional assistance? Yes, they do. The available facilities vary by region, city, and even district levels. Most of the development of large organized food relief organizations has been relatively recent, with the first to adopt a “food bank” label starting in Shanghai in 2015. Between 2015 and 2023 the Oasis public food bank setup facilities across China formalized as a national network of food relief facilities.
At the same time the government of China has worked with public enterprises in China including restaurant chains and grocery stores to implement “Surplus food programs” to reduce food waste and redistribute food to relief programs and facilities.
This was all information I found on my own with pretty basic cursory searches in about 20 minutes. There is far more public information out there and I would encourage you to use free resources to research subjects yourself before making foundationless statements like that.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 8 hours ago
You’re a tool and you’re holding up a strawman argument, and you’ve even changed your own story now.
You started out with:
Which I am sure it is for you. It doesn’t really say anything negative or concrete about china, AT ALL. It makes no claims about china. And you even acknowledge it… but try to stir up some shit without actually finding anything to stir up. It’s like you’re just a propagandist trying to say america bad, which they are for a myriad of reasons, but it’s not because people can’t be admitted to hospitals or they are dying from overwork - which is what I replied to originally.
I didn’t make a “concrete statement” about anything. And you conveniently omitted the first part of the sentence that literally said "I don’t know the food situation in china" didn’t you? Because you’re holding up the imaginary argument of “china doesn’t have even a single food bank” as your strawman argument, and you had no clue either way, because you had to google it, idiot.
China’s median wage is close to 6k/year. Chile and Uruguay is close to 12k/year. The dominican republic is ~7400/year, and they absolutely do not have any kind of real food assistance program outside of the smallest scope. Chile does have something a lot more substantial, but they make wayyyy more. Given that china is poorer in terms of median wage than any of these, that’s going to be the case for a lot of workers away from wealthy median areas.
The fact that China is even on the Global Hunger Index site shows that hunger is still a challenge. They are near the top of the chart with many of the latin american countries i’ve listed. Globally hunger has been much less of a problem in the past 10 years than ever before, only in truly troubled countries do you find horrific levels, like in Haiti or Somalia - and nobody is saying china is anything like those in the overwhelming majority of the country. Not having food banks is way less than mass food insecurity… it’s the missing gap between healthy income levels and
China does have a dibao system for an extremely area by area “basic income” where they give people a pittance per month that can partially subsidize what they have, but there’s no real federal style food assistance beyond that. China spends more money on food than any other category in rural areas by a huge margin, and you don’t need to take my word for it. You can check the PRC’s own statistics instead of “googling it” like an ignorant moron.
Overall Median income is ~41k yuan or ~5,900. About 1.4 billion people in total.
Urban Median income is ~54k yuan or ~$7,800. This is about 952 million people.
Rural Median Income is only ~23k yuan or ~$3,300 or so. This is about 452 million people.
That rural amount is despairingly low and since it’s median half of the people in rural areas make less…this is unbelievably below poverty level in so many countries around the world. Food insecurity must be a major challenge in rural areas since with that kind of income food costs become tantamount to all others.
The statistics I linked from the CCCP also call out rural spending on “food, tobacco and liquor” because clearly food is in the same category as getting lung cancer sticks and fucking your body up with booze (priorities right) and that comes out to 6226 yuan, or just shy of $900 a year. When ~32% of your income is going to just food, smokes and booze, losing a job puts you in dire straits. In poorer rural areas the “basic income” from dibao is only 200($28) to 300($43) yuan a month, and you still need to have clothes, a place to live, etc. 3600 yuan ($519/year) - I think everyone knows this isn’t going to be nearly enough.
There’s no way food banks originating from extremely wealthy urban areas ten years ago are suddenly reaching the majority of Chinese. It’s not even a state sponsored thing (yay communism, helping the people!) I still have substantial doubt as to how much food assistance there is even in many urban areas, because I know how tough food tends to be when money is tight in countries that are generally poor (but not troubled like Haiti.) Food assistance programs can only subsidize a small portion, as we see with SNAP in the US. Wait.. snap is the american government food assistance program? Who are the communists again?
LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
You said “I feel like China wouldn’t give out free food.” in the context of food banks. I made no claims about America. I made no claims about anything other than your statement “I feel like China wouldnt give out free food.” I was frustrated because you are making a feelings based statement about verifiable factual information that is accessible online.
You go to great lengths in this comment to say that China has had issues with citizens not having enough food, which makes sense, why else would they make food banks if no one needed the food???
I also stated exactly how recent these developments are in my previous comment. These are ongoing changes based on the literature I found and read on the subject. Nowhere in my comment did I suggest that no one in China is dealing with nutritional problems and nowhere did I suggest that China was doing everything in its power to solve those problems.
I only responded to your feelings based statement with verifiable information I was easily able to find online. You said something that suggested that there are no food relief programs in China, that suggestion was wrong. I clarified it for you when you refused to clarify it yourself. I am entirely uninterested in engaging with you on any other point here. Frankly a lot of your language betrays a very strong emotional bias in this discussion and I do not think you are interested in a legitimate discussion about food relief problems and existing programs in China.