Ursula K. Le Guin Calls on Fantasy and Sci Fi Writers to Envision Alternatives to Capitalism

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. The reduction in poverty in China happened after Mao

As already mentioned, the most impressive reductions occurred in China.
Since 1979, China’s economy has experienced high and sustained growth following
successful land and economic reforms. Over the last 25 years, China
successfully moved from agriculture to manufacturing activities and saw an
annual trend of real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of just under 10 per
cent (Ghosh, 2008a). China’s manufacturing sector doubled its share of the
workforce and tripled its share of output. The rate of extreme poverty at the
national level declined from a high of 84 per cent in 1981 to a low of 16 per
cent in 2005. The decline occurred in both rural and urban areas: the rural
poverty rate fell from 94 to 26 per cent and the urban poverty rate fell from
45 to less than 2 per cent during this period.

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/rwss/docs/2010/chapter2.pdf

Arguably. the difference was that China turned to capitalism in that period.