Maybe I read the thread too fast. Where was the orientalism?
In the immediate assumption that something must be fishy about these data, it can't be the case that China has been consistently on a path of eradicating poverty at home and in its relief work in Africa and elsewhere, because that would mean they are actually genuinely trying to build a society where people don't go hungry and aren't constantly in fear of invasion by Western powers. That would defeat the narrative that the Chinese cannot be trusted, and are a hivemind devoid of independent thought, such that even when they overwhelmingly voice their support for party policy it must be due to brainwashing or Orwellian subterfuge. It's simply too bizarre, too "counterintuitive", to think that a state emerging from the dust of centuries of colonialism would prioritize its poor people over its rich people. Westerners project their own broken social priority system onto everybody else and use it as a barometer even when it doesn't apply.
