And whilst I used to be impressed by this "lifted a billion people" take, the reality is that lots of countries industrialized, modernized and huge numbers of people left behind agrarian poverty. This isn't unique or special and in fact when ranked against other countries like Taiwan, Korea, Japan - let alone countries like the USA or UK - China has turned in one of the worst performances. China still has widespread poverty and in many ways is still a developing country, 80 years after Europe utterly destroyed itself in WW2 and Japan had two of its major cities leveled by atomic bombs.
There's really nothing impressive about China beyond the sheer number of people the government has managed to hold back. If your foot is constantly on the brake of a very large vehicle, lifting your foot even half way will cause a lot of mass to start moving. That doesn't mean you get credit for it.
