From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Why China’s Censors Are Deleting Videos About Poverty   
   By Li Yuan, May 4, 2023, NY Times   
   China says it is a socialist country that aims to promote common prosperity.   
   In 2021, its top leader, Xi Jinping, declared “a comprehensive victory in   
   the battle against poverty.” Yet many people remain poor or live just above   
   the poverty line. With    
   the country’s economic prospects dimming and the people’s increasing   
   anxiety about their future, poverty has become a taboo subject that can draw   
   ire from the government.   
      
   In March, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet   
   regulator, announced that it would crack down on anyone who publishes videos   
   or posts that “deliberately manipulate sadness, incite polarization, create   
   harmful information that    
   damages the image of the Party and the government, and disrupts economic and   
   social development.” It bans sad videos of old people, disabled people and   
   children.   
      
   Behind the ban is a government eager to keep all talk about China positive.   
   The Communist Party brags about how many people it lifted out of poverty in   
   the past four decades, while refusing to mention how it had thrown the entire   
   nation into abject    
   poverty under Mao Zedong.   
      
   Poverty alleviation is a medal the party flaunts to claim its legitimacy. But   
   despite China’s rise as an economic power, it has a drastically inadequate   
   social safety net, and the government is eager to block any discussion of the   
   conditions poor    
   people face.   
      
   Searching the Chinese word “pinkun,” or poverty, on the country’s   
   biggest news portal, qq.com, the top news item is about research that shows   
   poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. The news   
   media seldom report about    
   poverty’s systemic causes in China.   
      
   Hu Chenfeng recorded the footage that was removed from the Chinese internet.   
   On popular video sites, he had posted a recording showing an elderly woman   
   living on barely $15 a month. In the words of many social media commenters, he   
   was revealing too much.    
   “This subject is untouchable,” one commenter wrote on a now-deleted   
   discussion thread on Zhihu, a site similar to Quora. Another wrote, “His   
   account was censored simply because he showed what life is like for many   
   people.”   
      
   In the video, which survives outside the Chinese internet on YouTube, Mr. Hu   
   interviews the woman, a 78-year-old widow, on the street in the southwestern   
   city of Chengdu. She said she planned to buy only rice, about the only thing   
   she could afford. She    
   hadn’t eaten meat for a long time. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she   
   recounted her financial hardship. The two walk through a grocery store. They   
   bought rice, eggs, pork and flour. The bill came to 127 yuan ($18). Mr. Hu   
   insisted on paying.   
      
   He was emotional, too, signing off with “a heavy heart.”   
      
   The video was removed from the two biggest user-generated video platforms in   
   China. Mr. Hu’s accounts were suspended.   
      
   Even a discussion thread on Zhihu about why the government doesn’t allow   
   videos about the poor was censored. “Because theoretically there’s no poor   
   people in China,” one social media user speculated in a written post before   
   the thread disappeared.   
    “China has eliminated poverty.”   
      
   “Because this society only allows you to celebrate prosperity,” another   
   commenter wrote. “You have to shoulder all the sufferings yourself and not   
   share them online.”   
      
   Income inequality is a problem in many countries, including the United States.   
   In China, the biggest divide in wealth is among rural and urban residents. The   
   gap is created by government rules that peg social benefits, including   
   schooling, health care    
   and pensions, to where a person was born, not according to their residence,   
   income or needs. The policy hurts retirees in particular.   
      
   In 2021, older people from the countryside received on average $27 a month in   
   social security benefits, according to a government report. That pension is   
   merely about 5 percent of what the average urban retiree gets.   
      
   One viral video about seniors struggling to make ends meet took place in one   
   of China’s most populous provinces, Henan, where the government raised   
   monthly pensions for rural residents from $16 to $18 this year. The video   
   shows two porters in their 70s    
   unloading a truckload of cement using their hands and shoulders.   
      
   In China’s go-go years of miraculous economic growth, straddling the 1990s   
   to mid-2010s, poverty wasn’t a topic that people paid much attention to.   
   Now, with the country’s economic engine sputtering, Chinese who are new to   
   the middle class are    
   worried that they could fall back into poverty, part of the reason these   
   videos attracted attention.   
      
   Because of propaganda and censorship, many of them weren’t aware of the   
   depth and prevalence of poverty in the country.   
      
   When the premier at the time, Li Keqiang, said in 2020 that 600 million   
   Chinese — 40 percent of the population — had monthly income of less than   
   $150, some people, who didn’t know where the numbers came from, called it   
   fake news. The official    
   People’s Daily had to call on the State Statistics Bureau to confirm it was   
   true. The official Chinese press seldom mentioned the inconvenient number   
   again.   
      
   Another reason poverty is seen as a novelty among the middle class is that   
   local governments usually chase beggars and homeless people off the streets.   
   They become invisible in big cities. A friend’s daughter in Beijing asked   
   her last year what a    
   beggar was. I recently met a 13-year-old new Chinese immigrant in San   
   Francisco who was shocked by the sight of homeless people. She said she’d   
   never seen one in Beijing.   
      
   The Beijing government does not only bar beggars and homeless people from   
   staying in the city. In the winter of 2017, it kicked many low-income people   
   out of their apartments to get rid of what it called “low-quality   
   population.”   
      
   Now with video streamers roaming the country, trying to find revealing facts   
   that attract online attention, the public can see the poor and some of the   
   unpleasant aspects of life in China. That is one reason for the censorship.   
      
   In addition to poverty, the government doesn’t want the public to dwell on   
   another big social problem: youth unemployment, which the government says has   
   reached nearly 20 percent.   
      
      
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