Ignoring China’s Poverty Alleviation Success Is Costing Us All

Image by Nuno Alberto.

Over the past month, Chinese social media platforms like Xiaohongshu and Bilibili have begun dismantling the myth of the “American dream,” replacing glossy imagery with firsthand accounts showing that life in the so-called “land of the free” is far from bright and picturesque. In its place, a new concept has emerged, borrowed from video games, when a character’s health drops so low that a single hit can end everything. It’s called the “kill line,” and the term has...