- Joined
- Mar 24, 2013
Many Westerners have the image of China being entirely modern and urbanized like Beijing and Shanghai since they do have insanely massive urban centers there and the CCP has worked for decades to sell that image. The fact is that China is a massive country like the US or Russia, and even with their gargantuan cities China is still largely rural. There are still countless small, remote, rural towns in China with few or no modern conveniences like running water, internet, connection to the electrical grid, etc. Towns where the people would consider a prosperous year to be one where they made the equivalent of $100 per person. The CCP is loathe to have the rest of the world know that these tiny, poor, remote towns without indoor plumbing exist because for years they've been trying to sell the image that they are a modern and prosperous super power that is so successful that they've abolished poverty and starvation. FYI: there is no official metric agreed upon by the world community to determine if the population of a country is mostly living above the poverty line, but unofficially it's assumed that if a citizen of a country is making more than $10 per week or something like that then they are considered "out of poverty".
So, yeah, I have no doubts that there are still plenty of very poor Chinese, both in the major cities and the tiny far-flung towns no Westerner has ever heard of, who are still starving in the modern day and have had to resort to some very drastic measures to feed themselves. I'm sure some have even resorted to cannibalism in the 21st century.
Starvation, TRUE starvation and not the kind of "starving" a gluttonous lard golem like Phil has had where they may have had to miss one or two meals in their entire life and had a little rumbly tummy, is absolutely horrific. It's miserable, painful, agonizing, maddening, and all-consuming. When you're genuinely starving all you can think about is the hunger, the pain, and how you are slowly dying. Real starvation has driven people literally insane and caused them to do terrible things, like murder and cannibalism. It's malicious, plodding, and monotonous misery, and some have even talked about actually being able to feel their body consume itself essentially from the inside out just to keep itself alive. It's one of the most horrific and agonizing ways to die.
