I mentioned above that the MDGs moved the baseline year back in a manner that claimed China’s gains against poverty during the 1990s, which had nothing at all to do with the MDGs. If we take China out of the equation, we see that the global poverty headcount at $1.25 actually increased during the 1980s and 1990s, while the World Bank was imposing structural adjustment across most of the global South. In 2010 (the final year of the MDGs' real data), the total poverty headcount excluding China was exactly the same as it was in 1981, at just over one billion people. In other words, while the MDGs lead us to believe that poverty has been decreasing around the world, in reality the only place this holds true is in China and East Asia. This is an important point, because China and East Asia are some of the only places in the developing world that were not forcibly liberalised by the World Bankand the IMF. Everywhere else, poverty has been stagnant or getting worse, in aggregate.
These poverty lines suggest that global poverty is much worse than the official narrative would have us believe. Most analysts recognise that the $1.25 line is too low, but it remains in favour at the World Bank and the UN because it is the only line that shows any progress against poverty – at least when you include China. Every other line tells the opposite story.
The neoliberals are lying and simply taking credit for China's success.