Wow, so you think lifting a nation out of poverty somehow demeans the people. That's a bizarre view of reality.
It sure is. How did you find that in my claims?
Right here where you said:
Raising "people" out of poverty places some special emphasis on "people" and makes them different from animals. And it can't do that without at some point granting "people" some kind of absolute right to be.
That's the observation that raising people out of poverty is neither here nor there if "people" is not a morally relevant category or item. Which observation was made as a way of highlighting - pointing out, even - that achievement requires some touchstone or measure to exist and be called "good". That touchstone, ideally, would not be some culturally relative norm, but some absolute value of some kind. Making the original observation was a way of saying there are absolutes somewhere.
Check your own history if you want to see some horrible things. For example, ask a native Australian how well they've been treated from the arrival of the first ships all they way up until today.
And the reason for claiming absolute values exist is to go ahead and observe that whatabouts are not the measure of nations. Two nations, equally parlous in deed, are not exonerated by the existence of each other. They just both fail to reach the ideal. I can check my history as much as I like, it tells me nothing about Chinese inadequacy. At best, it makes it hard - politically - for me to do the finger pointing, even when fingers are rightly to be pointed.
Deeds speak much louder than words, and advancing a country economically about 100 years during a 40 year period is unprecedented. Eliminating the lowest level of poverty is unprecedented.
So... thanks, globalisation? China wasn't spending money it made by itself. It needed a world to want goods. And a changes to the definition of "poverty".
But so, the ends do justify the means, though? It's a laudable result, de-povertying the place, who cares if there was theft along the way? Probably, no one, in fact. Probably no one should care if the means were corrupt, inefficient, murderous in some places, callous in others. It genuinely probably does not matter. If that is where the bad stuff ended too. More importantly, no one should care about the bad stuff if it was all limited to the creation of good ends and is no longer a feature. Which is why talking about good deeds is irrelevant to bad deeds. The accounting doesn't square that way - the goodness of the good deed is supposed to have some morally relevant connection to the badness of the bad deed for them to tally or cancel in some way. In fact, trying to tally unrelated deeds only works if "people" is a shifting value, sometimes important sometimes not, which tends to undermine the meaning of the original good deed, eh?
So, what magical standard does China need to meet to be able to launch a rocket on live television and internet feeds without having people say "I hope it blows up" or "It's fake"? What standard does it have to meet to eliminate the lowest tier of poverty (which included the majority of the populated 40 years ago) without having this somehow being inadequate? How about the opening of the economy. If any other country jumped from being an impoverished agricultural nation to the world's second largest economy in 40 years, that would be hailed as an economic miracle. Instead, governments that produce far poorer results want to heap scorn on it.
Is the only magical cure for China to embrace a governmental system like the US or Australia? Neither of those could match what China's done, and the national governments of both countries are falling into gridlock due to factions refusing to work with each other (not to mention the US is currently having an onslaught of "legal coup" attempts to try to overturn their previously cherished concept of democratic elections).
I will admit that China's system is not perfect. But, not one government on Earth can make that claim. Every system of government is a system of tradeoffs. What I do see is the Chinese people are no longer a nation with 80+ percent of the people in grinding poverty (and ZERO percent of the people in the worst possible poverty) and an economy that continues to expand to support a growing middle class. I also see people and politicians in the west working hard to denigrate China's economic success (and all other successes), even major investment firms around the world place financial wagers based on the Chinese economic numbers are somehow "fake."
I think the flagrant double standards have less to do with flaws in the Chinese system and more to do with the fact that the Western system hasn't faced serious competition from a different political system since winning the race to the Moon in 1969. Nearly 50 years as "the" way to best run the country (and the world) is now being threatened. "Our way is the best way and all other ways are wrong, fake, and/or illegitimate" has been the mantra of quite a few in the West for a long time, so the urge to discredit anything positive from any other political systems is deeply ingrained.
The magical standard is whatever whatever counts as soft power. Whatever makes the country generally admirable. Apparently making poor people less poor isn't it. And you'll have to know it isn't that because those good deeds are tarnished by ongoing or recent enough bad deeds and bad faith elsewhere. Or maybe it's racism, you know? Perhaps the white nations don't want to give yellow people that kind of credit. Maybe the Africans will.
I think probably it's not enough to say China has some severe moral transgression in its past, and arguably in its present as well. All sorts of white nations have gotten away with genocides for example and still retain, somehow, a modicum of worldwide good standing. China, I think, has not found a way to make people think the evil is eliminated. Great Leap Forward? Sure, bad call. We wouldn't do anything like that again.... Massacre a bunch of squares? Yeah, not these days, couldn't happen again. Imprison a generation? No, that's work experience in the butt end of the rooster of our great nation, that's all. Reduce life expectancy, intellectually cripple, maintain the largest police state known to eternity? That's not even happening.
Those whatabouts... I wonder, could it be that Chinese political philosophy really does believe the lack of existence of an ideal state is reason enough to not be ideal. They can be bad, perhaps they reason, because westerners have been bad. That would seem to explain a lot of international relations, certainly.
How awesome is that? Chinese soft power is "lowest common denominator, bitches!" plus a complaint about why don't you love us any more.