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[1]: SourceWatch. (2026, June 17). American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved from https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute.

“Ties to DonorsTrust, a Koch Political Network Conduit DonorsTrust is considered a "donor-advised fund," which means that it divides its funds into separate accounts for individual donors, who then recommend disbursements from the accounts to different non-profits. Funds like DonorsTrust are not uncommon in the non- profit sector, but they do cloak the identity of the original donors because the funds are typically distributed in the name of DonorsTrust rather than the original donors. Very little was known about DonorsTrust until late 2012 and early 2013, when the Guardian and others published extensive reports on what Mother Jones called "the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement." DonorsTrust Funding The American Enterprise Institute received $19,840,954 from DonorsTrust between 2002 and 2011. A report by the Center for Public Integrity exposes a number of DonorsTrust funders, many of which have ties to the Koch brothers. One of the most prominent funders is the Knowledge and Progress Fund, a Charles Koch-run organization and one of the group's largest known contributors, having donated at least $8 million since 2005. Other contributors known to have donated at least $1 million to DonorsTrust include the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation, Searle Freedom Trust, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation. Since its inception in 1999, DonorsTrust has been used by conservative foundations and individuals to discretely funnel nearly $400 million to like-minded think tanks and media outlets. According to the organization's tax documents, in 2011 DonorsTrust contributed a total of $86 million to right-wing organizations. Many recipients had ties to the State Policy Network (SPN), a wide collection of conservative state-based think tanks and media organizations that focus on shaping public policy and opinion. In 2013, the Center for Media and Democracy released a special report on SPN. Those who received DonorsTrust funding included media outlets such as the Franklin Center and the Lucy Burns Institute, as well as think tanks such as SPN itself, the Heartland Institute, Illinois Policy Institute, Independence Institute, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, South Carolina Policy Council, American Legislative Exchange Council, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, and the Cascade Policy Institute. ”

[2]: SourceWatch. (2026, June 17). American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved from https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute.

“1. Searle Freedom Trust – $13,800,000 (2012–2022); 2. Donors Capital Fund – $13,373,843 (2010–2020); 3. Sarah Scaife Foundation – $11,450,000 (2012–2022); 4. Bertha And John Garabedian Charitable – $11,094,500 (2017–2020); 5. Schwab Charitable Fund – $8,738,120 (2017–2022); 6. Asness Family Foundation – $6,720,000 (2018–2021); 7. National Philanthropic Trust – $4,782,595 (2017–2022); 8. Robert D And Patricia E Kern Family Foundation – $4,076,800 (2020–2021); 9. DonorsTrust – $4,011,350 (2010–2022); 10. Diana Davis Spencer Foundation – $3,500,000 (2014–2015); 11. Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund – $3,354,264 (2019–2022); 12. Hintz Family Fund Inc – $3,200,000 (2017–2021); 13. Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation – $3,180,000 (2012–2022); 14. Charles Koch Foundation – $2,398,967 (2004–2019); 15. Adolph Coors Foundation – $2,275,000 (2009–2021)”

[3]: SourceWatch. (2026, June 17). American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved from https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute.

“Over the decades, AEI’s trustees have included Lee Raymond, the former head of ExxonMobil, who served as vice chairman of the board, and the institute has received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil overall, including $240,000 in 2007 alone. Among major hedge fund executives, Clifford S. Asness, the managing and founding principal of AQR Capital Management, currently sits on AEI’s Board of Trustees, while his family foundation ranks as the sixth largest disclosed donor with $6.72 million between 2018 and 2021. The document does not mention Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family, or any opioid crisis related figures; however, it does list the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry’s main trade association, as a donor contributing $400,000 from 2017 to 2021.”

[4]: American Enterprise Institute. (n.d.). Board of trustees. https://www.aei.org/about/board-of-trustees/. “Here is the Board of Trustees list without numbers, formatted as clean, pasteable text. --- Daniel A. D'Aniello, Cofounder and Chairman Emeritus, The Carlyle Group Clifford S. Asness, Managing and Founding Principal, AQR Capital Management LLC Peter H. Coors, Chairman of the Board, Molson Coors Beverage Company Harlan Crow, Chairman, Crow Holdings Ravenel B. Curry III, Chief Investment Officer, Eagle Capital Management LLC Dick DeVos, President, The Windquest Group Robert Doar, President, American Enterprise Institute Behdad Eghbali, Managing Partner and Cofounder, Clearlake Capital Group LP Martin C. Eltrich III, Partner, AEA Investors LP Tully M. Friedman, Managing Director, Retired, FFL Partners LLC Christopher B. Galvin, Chairman, Harrison Street Capital LLC Harvey Golub, Retired Chairman and CEO, American Express Company Frank J. Hanna, CEO, Hanna Capital LLC Raymond J. Harbert, Executive Chairman, Harbert Management Corporation Bill Haslam, Former Governor of Tennessee Deepa Javeri, Chief Financial Officer, XRHealth Joanna F. Jonsson, Vice Chair, Capital Group, President, Capital Research Management Company Marc S. Lipschultz, Co CEO, Blue Owl Capital Drew McKnight, Co CEO and Managing Partner, Fortress Investment Group Robert Murley, Vice Chairman and Senior Advisor, UBS Pat Neal, Chairman of the Executive Committee, Neal Communities Ross Perot Jr., Chairman, Hillwood Development Company Geoffrey S. Rehnert, Co Chief Executive Officer, Audax Group Matthew K. Rose, Retired CEO/Chairman, BNSF Railway Edward B. Rust Jr., Chairman Emeritus, State Farm Insurance Companies Wilson H. Taylor, Chairman Emeritus, Cigna Corporation William H. Walton, Co Founder, Rockpoint Group LLC Will Weatherford, Managing Partner, Weatherford Capital Emeritus Trustees: Kimberly O. Dennis, John V. Faraci, Robert F. Greenhill, Bruce Kovner, Kevin B. Rollins, D. Gideon Searle”

[5]: Alfani, F., et al. (2025). June 2025 update to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP): What's new. World Bank. https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099060325033540333.

“This update also includes the adoption of the 2021 Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs), which were published in May 2024 by the International Comparison Program. The adoption of the 2021 PPPs also implies a revision to the global poverty lines: The three global poverty lines have been revised from US$2.15 to US$3.00, from US$3.65 to US$4.20, and from US$6.85 to US$8.30. In keeping with the existing methodology, the global poverty lines are based on countries’ own national poverty lines. The PPP revision reflects the most recent data on these national poverty lines which imply an upward revision by more than suggested by pure price changes, especially for the international poverty line (defining extreme poverty), as well as the typical poverty line of upper- middle-income countries (see Foster ⓡ al., (2025) for more details). Due to India’s population size, the methodological revision to its historical series as well as the inclusion of the new 2022 survey data, significantly affects the estimates for South Asia and the world. The overall revisions to the previously published global poverty estimates reflect the combined effect from these different forces. Sections 2 and 3 below expand separately on the effects that these revisions have on the global and regional estimates presented in this first section.” (p. 2)

[6]: Hickel, J. (2018, August 30). The moral egregiousness of poverty is worse than ever before in history. Jason Hickel. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/8/30/the-moral-egregiousness-of-poverty-is-worse-than-ever-before-in-history. “Over the past few decades, the proportion of people living under $7.40/day, which is the minimum necessary to achieve basic nutrition and normal life expectancy, has fallen from 71.8% in 1990 to 58.1% in 2013. Not a great improvement, but certainly some progress. But if we look at it in terms of absolute numbers, a very different story emerges. The number of people living under $7.40/day has grown from 3.78 billion in 1990 to 4.16 billion in 2013. With numbers like that on the table, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that there’s something wrong with the progress narrative.”

[7]: Hickel, J. (2018, August 30). The moral egregiousness of poverty is worse than ever before in history. Jason Hickel. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/8/30/the-moral-egregiousness-of-poverty-is-worse-than-ever-before-in-history. “In 1990, it would have cost 10.5% of world GDP to lift everyone above the poverty line. In 2013, it would have cost only 3.3%. Our capacity to end poverty has improved by a factor of 3.18. Meanwhile, the poverty rate has improved only by a factor of 1.23. This means that the moral egregiousness of poverty is 2.58 times worse than it was in 1990. Pogge is right: by this metric, poverty is worse now than ever before. Our world is replete with unprecedented riches, and yet we cannot ensure that everyone has a decent basic share of it. Morally, we have regressed as a civilization. But this is a crude way to think about our capacity to end poverty. We shouldn’t be looking at the cost of ending poverty as a percentage of total world income, but rather as a percentage of the income of all the people who are not poor; say, those who live on more than double the poverty line. In 1990, it would have cost 12.9% of their total income to end poverty. In 2013, it would have cost only 3.9%. According to this measure, our capacity to end poverty has improved by a factor of 3.31. By this method, the moral egregiousness of poverty is 2.69 times worse than it was in 1990. The difference between the two results is due to increasing global inequality; because the incomes of the global rich have grown more than the incomes of everyone else, the cost of ending poverty is a faster-shrinking share of their income compared to total world income. The numbers above are all rounded off for easy reading, and so you can repeat the calculations yourself. The graph below is based on the actual figures associated with the second method (all data is derived from the World Bank). It gives us a visual depiction of the egregiousness of poverty since 1990.”

[8]: Hickel, J. (2019, April 27). At this rate, it will take 200 years to end global poverty. Jason Hickel. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/4/27/200-years-to-end-poverty.

“While it is true that the average incomes of poor people have increased since 1981, there are two crucial caveats to this that we need to pay attention to. 1) First, the increase has not been steady. Indeed, there have been long periods over the past few decades where the average incomes of the global poor (those living on less than $7.40 per day, the minimum necessary for decent nutrition and normal life expectancy) didn’t rise at all, and quite often actually fell. Here are a few examples: In Latin America and the Caribbean, the average income of the poor fell after 1981 and didn’t recover its previous level until two decades later. In the Middle East and North Africa, the average income of the poor fell after 1990 and didn’t recover its previous level until a decade later. In South Asia, the average income of the poor fell after 1996 and didn’t recover until 2008. And in Sub-Saharan Africa the average income of the poor declined after 1981 and didn’t recover until more than two decades later, in 2005. Crucially, these periods of decline and stagnation happened almost entirely during the 1980s and 1990s, as neoliberal structural adjustment programs were imposed across the global South. In other words, the imposition of Washington Consensus capitalism during this period not only caused the number and percentage of poor people to rise (as I have described elsewhere), it also caused the incomes of the poor to decline and stagnate. 2) Second, the increase that has happened has been at an astonishingly slow pace. Since 1981 poor people’s daily incomes have increased by only about 2 cents per year, on average.”

[9]: Hickel, J. (2019, April 27). At this rate, it will take 200 years to end global poverty. Jason Hickel. https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/4/27/200-years-to-end-poverty. “This is a striking position to take, when you consider that poverty could be ended right now, forever, simply by shifting $6 trillion of existing global income to the poorest 60% of humanity. This would be enough to lift every human on the planet above the $7.40 line. For perspective, the richest 1% capture more than $18 trillion each year in income, according to the World Inequality Database. In other words, we could tax the 1% a mere third of their income to put an end global poverty, and still leave them with an average income of $175,000 per year”

[10]: Hickel, J. (2017). The Divide: A brief guide to global inequality and its solutions. William Heinemann. “One reason is that the theory of free trade is so remarkably compelling. The keystone of modern free-trade theory comes from David Ricardo, the early-19th-century British economist. Ricardo argued that the global economy would operate most efficiently and productively if every country specialised in producing the goods in which they have a comparative advantage over other countries, given their particular set of technologies. If Portugal is better at producing wine and England is better at producing cloth, it doesn’t make any sense for England to waste its time producing wine – it should just focus on cloth and import the wine from Portugal. The more modern version of the theory – known as the Heckscher–Ohlin– Samuelson theory – shifts the comparison from relative endowments of technology to relative endowments of ‘factors of production’. It argues that in order to achieve maximum efficiency in the global economy, countries that have an abundance of cheap labour should specialise in labour- intensive goods, while countries that have an abundance of capital should specialise in capital-intensive goods. According to the theory, the only way to ensure this happens is to remove any ‘distortions’ in the trade system, such as subsidies and tariffs. Once exposed to the tough reality of market competition, industries will sink or swim depending on their relative competitiveness, and each country will naturally gravitate towards the things they’re relatively better at. This will lead to increased trade, income and consumption across the board. The Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson model sounds so reasonable, on the face of it. It seems so obviously correct. But it has the insidious effect of naturalising global inequalities. The model assumes that each country has a natural endowment of factors of production. In other words, it wants us to believe that rich countries have a natural abundance of capital relative to poor countries, which have a natural abundance of cheap labour, as though this arrangement has always been the case – as if it was written in the stars or handed down by the gods. But of course it is not written in the stars. We have to ask: why is labour so cheap in poor countries in the first place? And why is capital so abundant in rich countries?” (p. 159)

[11]: Hickel, J. (2017). The Divide: A brief guide to global inequality and its solutions. William Heinemann. “In a famous 1848 speech, a well-known German economist made a barbed critique of free-trade theory – and of European imperialism – with the following words: We are told that free trade would create an international division of labour, and thereby give to each country the production which is in most harmony with its natural advantage. You believe, perhaps, gentlemen, that the production of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West Indies. Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble herself about commerce, had planted neither sugar-cane nor coffee trees there.” (p. 159-160)

[12]: Hickel, J. (2015, November 1). Global poverty is worse than you think: Could you live on $1.90 a day? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/nov/01/global-poverty-is-worse-than-you-think-could-you-live-on-190-a-day. “A few weeks ago the World Bank changed the international poverty line from $1.25 to $1.90 per day. Normally, changes to the poverty line slide by without attracting much attention, but for some reason this time people got excited. At first glance, it looks as if the bank has finally admitted that the old line was just too low, and has raised it to a more meaningful standard. But the reality is closer to the opposite. The World Bank didn’t raise the poverty line at all – it simply “rebased” the old line to adjust for depreciation in the purchasing power of the dollar. The bank claims that the new poverty line is roughly equivalent to the old line, in real terms. But in effect it is actually significantly lower, and therefore makes it seem as though there are fewer poor people than before. This is why the bank has suddenly announced that the global poverty headcount has decreased by 100 million people overnight, and that the poverty reduction trend has been declining more rapidly than we used to believe. Nothing has actually changed in the real world, of course; there are just as many poor people as there were before. But the development industry has been happy to take the new story on board, claiming gains against poverty that haven’t actually happened. The NGO community is celebrating the fact that, according to the bank’s new line, the poverty rate will dip below 10% this year. Jim Yong Kim has called this “the best story in the world today.” It’s a PR coup for the World Bank: the poverty line appears to have been raised to a more humane level and the number of poor people is lower than before”

[13]: State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. (2021). Poverty alleviation: China’s experience and contribution. http://english.scio.gov.cn/whitepapers/2021-04/06/content_77380652.htm. “Over the past 100 years, China has contributed to global poverty al- leviation under the leadership of the CPC through its own development – from winning the people’s liberation to meeting their basic needs, from ensuring them a moderately prosperous life to building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Since reform and opening up, more than 770 million of China’s rural population living below the current poverty line have been raised from poverty, accounting for more than 70 percent of the global total over the same period according to the World Bank’s international poverty standard. Against the backdrop of severe global poverty and a widening gap between the rich and the poor in some countries, China has won the battle against extreme poverty and achieved the poverty alleviation goal set on the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule.” (p. 58)

“In the early years after the founding of the PRC, China made great efforts to break an external blockade and carry out international ex- changes and cooperation in order to win the support of the international community.” (p. 59)

[14]: State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. (2011). China’s rural poverty reduction. https://govt.chinadaily.com.cn/s/201111/16/WS5cc6b794498e079e6801f525/new-progress-in-development-oriented-poverty-reduction-program-for-rural-china_1.html. “The outlays of the central finance on agriculture, the countryside and farmers increased from 214.42 billion yuan in 2003 to 857.97 billion yuan in 2010, representing an annual increase of 21.9 percent on average, indicating that the public finance is quickening the pace of supporting the countryside. Some state policies that strengthen agriculture and benefit farmers and increase their incomes were first carried out in impoverished areas. Of them, some policies were first carried out in key counties in the national development-oriented poverty reduction programs, and these policies included the pilot project to abolish the agriculture tax, the policy to exempt rural students in compulsory education from poor families from paying tuition and miscellaneous fees, and to provide living subsides for boarders, and the policy to reduce or cancel the required supporting funds to be supplied by local governments at and below the county level for the new public-welfare infrastructure projects listed in national plans. Poor areas and poor people were given top priority in the implementation of some policies that strengthen agriculture and benefit farmers. The central government gave considerable financial support to central and western regions in terms of subsistence allowances for rural residents, new cooperative medical care and new social endowment insurance for rural residents. In 2010, the civil affairs departments paid a total of 1.4 billion yuan in subsidies to 46.154 million people in the new rural cooperative medical care scheme, or an average of 30.3 yuan per person.”

[15]: State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. (2011). China’s rural poverty reduction. https://govt.chinadaily.com.cn/s/201111/16/WS5cc6b794498e079e6801f525/new-progress-in-development-oriented-poverty-reduction-program-for-rural-china_1.html. “Thanks to efforts made over the past decade, the problems of subsistence, food and clothing for China' s rural residents have been basically solved, the production and living conditions of the poor have been markedly improved, infrastructure in poor areas has continuously improved, the level of social development has been enhanced, and ecological degradation has been initially brought under control. The problems of subsistence, food and clothing for rural residents have been basically solved. In line with the increase of economic and social development level and based on the changes in price index, the state gradually raised the national poverty line for rural residents from 865 yuan in 2000 to 1,274 yuan in 2010. Based on this change, the poverty-stricken rural population decreased from 94.22 million at the end of 2000 to 26.88 million at the end of 2010; and their proportion in the total rural population decreased from 10.2 percent in 2000 to 2.8 percent in 2010. Economy in poor areas has developed in an all-round way. The industrial structure in poor areas has been further optimized; specialty and competitive industries developed rapidly, and the comprehensive economic strength of poor counties grew constantly. From 2001 to 2010, 592 key counties in the national development-oriented poverty reduction programs have seen their per-capita gross regional product grow from 2,658 yuan to 11,170 yuan -- an average annual growth of 17 percent, and per-capita local budgetary revenue grow from 123 yuan to 559 yuan - an average annual growth of 18.3 percent. The per-capita net income of farmers has grown from 1,276 yuan in 2001 to 3,273 yuan in 2010, an average annual increase of 11 percent (not taking inflation into account). All these figures of growth are all higher than the national average. Production and living conditions in poor areas have been greatly improved. The state has constantly increased investment in infrastructure construction in poor areas to improve production and living conditions there. From 2002 to 2010, 592 key counties in the national development-oriented poverty reduction programs saw their basic farmland increased by 52.456 million mu (approximately 3,497,067 ha), the mileage of newly constructed, renovated and extended roads by 952,000 km, and their buildings for education and health care by 35.061 million sq m, in addition to the solution of drinking-water problem for 56.757 million people and 49.993 million head of livestock. By the end of 2010, in the key counties in the national development-oriented poverty reduction programs, 60.9 percent of rural households had access to tap water or well water, 88.1 percent of villages had access to roads, 98 percent had access to electricity, and 92.9 percent had access to telephones. In addition, their per-capita housing space reached 24.9 sq m, and 88.4 percent of the rural households had hygienic latrines”

[16]: State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. (2011). China’s rural poverty reduction. https://govt.chinadaily.com.cn/s/201111/16/WS5cc6b794498e079e6801f525/new-progress-in-development-oriented-poverty-reduction-program-for-rural-china_1.html. “Over the past ten years, the central and local governments have been constantly adjusting their structures of financial expenditure and gradually increasing the financial input into poverty reduction programs. The financial input increased from 12.75 billion yuan in 2001 to 34.93 billion yuan in 2010, with an average annual growth rate of 11.9 percent, and the accumulative input totaled 204.38 billion yuan in these ten years. For a breakdown, funds appropriated by the central government for poverty reduction programs increased from 10.002 billion yuan in 2001 to 22.27 billion yuan in 2010, with an average annual growth of 9.3 percent, and the accumulative input reached 144.04 billion yuan over these ten years. The distribution of poverty relief funds reflected the priority principle. The accumulative financial input to the key counties in the national and provincial development-oriented poverty reduction programs over these ten years reached 145.72 billion yuan, accounting for 71.3 percent of the total input and with the average in-put for each county reaching 136 million yuan; the central government appropriated a total of 135.62 billion yuan for poverty reduction in 22 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government), including 87.7 billion yuan for 12 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) in the western regions.”

[17]: World Bank. (2022). Four decades of poverty reduction in China: Drivers, insights for the world, and the way ahead. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/37727. “China’s poverty reduction story since the late 1970s is fundamentally a growth story, com- plemented, particularly in more recent years, by targeted poverty reduction policies and pro- grams.1 From 1978 to 2020, China’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) grew 8.2 percent per year on average while the poverty rate fell by 2.3 percentage points per year.2 Economywide policies implemented since 1978 spurred rapid economic growth, improving agricultural pro- ductivity and expanding nonagricultural sectors, which created more and better-paying jobs. Accompanied by an accelerated demographic transition, increased migration from rural to urban areas, and the significant expansion in access to physical infrastructure as well as educa- tion and health care, the process of structural change allowed the poor to take advantage of emerging economic opportunities. In the past decade, when the share of poor people in rural areas fell below 10 percent, targeted poverty alleviation policies became more important. Rural poverty declined consistently over the four decades since 1978. Based on the official 2010 poverty standard applied to the rural population only, on average, there were 18.7 million fewer poor people in China every year since 1978 (table 2.1). The largest yearly decline was in the 2000s, when economic growth reached almost 10 percent and close to 30 million people were lifted out of poverty every year. Poverty reduction continued to be strong after 2010, even as economic growth slowed, thus reflecting a higher growth elasticity of poverty. Since 2013, as the rural poverty rate fell below 10 percent, the annual average fall in the number of poor people naturally declined at a time when per capita GDP growth also slowed. For every percentage point of economic growth, rural poverty has declined, on average, by 1.4 percent. High and sustained growth has brought significant income gains across the distri- bution, making growth shared. However, China does not stand out in terms of the efficiency with which growth was translated into poverty reduction (what is known as the elasticity of poverty with respect to growth or the growth elasticity of poverty). Indeed, fast growth came alongside increasing inequality, driven by rising urban-rural disparities as well as disparities across regions, which reduced the effect of growth on poverty reduction, at least until 2010.” (p. 5)

[18]: World Bank. (2022). Four decades of poverty reduction in China: Drivers, insights for the world, and the way ahead. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/37727. “Over the years, the regional contributions to poverty reduction shifted from coastal areas to the western and central regions. The establishment of special economic zones and the Coastal Development Strategy in the mid-1980s followed the government’s strategy to develop the country’s more prosperous coastal provinces by boosting their participation in international trade and foreign direct investment flows. By 1999, the eastern region’s GDP per capita was twice as high as in the rest of the country. Despite having a quarter of the country’s poor in 1995, the region accounted for 40 percent of the total rural poverty reduction between 1995 and 2002, with 79 million fewer poor people.8 In the 2000s, the government implemented the Western Development Program to close regional gaps by directing considerable government resources, including infrastructure investment, fiscal transfers, and subsidies, to lagging regions (Fan, Kanbur, and Zhang 2011). Consequently, the western region accounted for 50 percent of the total decline in rural poverty between 2002 and 2007 (while representing less than one- quarter of the country’s population). Since 2013, rural poverty had fallen below 10 percent based on the 2010 official poverty threshold and became increasingly concentrated in remote areas in the western and central regions. For the remaining pockets of poor households, further poverty reduction was no longer driven by rising labor incomes but, instead, by the increasing role of private and public transfers (figure 2.2). Reallocation of employment out of agriculture and the growth of earnings among those in the bottom quintile slowed. As migration to urban areas accelerated, family transfers (remittances) became increasingly important to the relatively worse-off rural households at the end of the 2000s. Basic education fees were also waived for rural households beginning in the mid-2000s. Moreover, a new rural collective medical scheme was piloted in 2002 and scaled up in 2006. Since 2009, the central government has strengthened social policy by extending the cover- age of a basic noncontributory pension to rural areas and scaling up other social assistance transfers, which were complemented after 2012 by additional cash and in-kind support under the targeted poverty alleviation campaign. Consequently, public transfers became increasingly important in 2013–18 to lifting the most deprived out of poverty. The share of public transfers in total household income doubled (from 10 percent to 20 percent), driven by the increased coverage of rural pensions, the introduction of universal health care with a basic reimbursement package extended to rural areas, the expansion of social assistance, and social insurance and social assistance benefits (albeit benefit levels remained low).” (p.8)

[19]: Gowans, S. (2018). Patriots, traitors and empires: The story of Korea's struggle for freedom. Baraka Books. “If anyone deserved to lead a newly independent Korea it was Kim, or Koreans like him, who had devoted their lives to achieving Korea’s freedom from foreign domination, and fought long, arduous battles against the country’s Japanese tormentors. In contrast, Washington installed Syngman Rhee as the head of its new Korean state, a man who had spent nearly four decades in the United States collecting degrees from Ivy League universities, including a Ph.D. from Princeton. When he was finally driven out of Seoul by exasperated Koreans, he returned to the bosom of his imperial master’s embrace, accepting a comfortable retirement in Hawaii. The new South Korean government designated the DPRK not as a state, but as an anti-state organization, deemed to be illegally occupying territory north of the 38th parallel, a designation that remains to this day. The Soviets withdrew from Korea on December 25, 1948, three and a half months after the founding of the DPRK, leaving North Koreans free to manage their own affairs (which Soviet occupation forces had largely allowed them to do anyway), and the peninsula free from at least one occupying power. The other occupying power, the United States, declined to quit the country, making a brief show of exiting the peninsula in the summer of 1949 by withdrawing combat troops, but leaving hundreds of military advisers behind and secret protocols in place to keep Korean forces under US oper- ational control. US combat forces in large numbers returned a year later. The US military, then, has had a continuous presence on the Korean peninsula since the summer of 1945. Astonishingly, a US general continues to exercise wartime operational control over the South Korean military, an uncomfortable reality that disproves the comforting myth (for South Koreans and US citizens) that the ROK is a sovereign country and not—what the North Korean media never grow tired of pointing out—a puppet of Washington.” (p. 19)

[20]: Turse, N. (2013). Kill anything that moves: The real American war in Vietnam. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Co. “In recent years, careful surveys, analyses, and official estimates have consistently pointed toward a significantly higher number of civilian deaths. The most sophisticated analysis yet of wartime mortality in Vietnam, a 2008 study by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, suggested that a reasonable estimate might be 3.8 million violent war deaths, combatant and civilian. Given the limitations of the study’s methodology, there are good reasons to believe that even this staggering figure may be an underestimate. Still, the findings lend credence to an official 1995 Vietnamese government estimate of more than 3 million deaths in total—including 2 million civilian deaths—for the years when the Americans were involved in the conflict. 39 The sheer number of civilian war wounded, too, has long been a point of contention. The best numbers currently available, though, begin to give some sense of the suffering. A brief accounting shows 8,000 to 16,000 South Vietnamese paraplegics; 30,000 to 60,000 South Vietnamese left blind; and some 83,000 to 166,000 South Vietnamese amputees. As far as the total number of the civilian war wounded goes, Guenter Lewy approaches the question by using a ratio derived from South Vietnamese data on military casualties, which shows 2.65 soldiers seriously wounded for every one killed. Such a proportion is distinctly low when applied to the civilian population; still, even this multiplier, if applied to the Vietnamese government estimate of 2 million civilian dead, yields a figure of 5.3 million civilian wounded, for a total of 7.3 million Vietnamese civilian casualties overall. Notably, official South Vietnamese hospital records indicate that approximately one-third of those wounded were women and about one-quarter were children under thirteen years of age.” (p. 16-17)

[21]: National Security Archive. (2017, October 17). Indonesia declassified files outline US support for 1965 Indonesia massacre. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/indonesia/2017-10-17/indonesia-mass-murder-1965-us-embassy-files. “According to a November 1965 file, US officials were informed that the killing of the six army generals was not necessarily the doing of the PKI, but may have been an “intra-government operation to seize [a] limited group of top generals”. “The generals’ murder on September 30 [1965] is the central event to the Suharto regime’s narrative,” said John Roosa, an Indonesian history scholar at the University of British Columbia. “It is remarkable that US ambassador at the time, Marshall Green, was aware [that the plot was exaggerated] in 1965, and in fact gave credence to it, according to these documents.” The files also show that US officials were informed that many confessions from suspected communists had been falsified by the Indonesian military. The declassified files comprise most of the US embassy in Jakarta’s daily record between 1964 and 1968 — a restive period that saw Indonesia transition from the autocratic, postcolonial government of its founding president Sukarno to Suharto. One declassified embassy report from 1967, when Suharto was firmly ensconced as a leader, states that the US had a “heavy stake in the outcome” of the authoritarian regime’s success. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International has called Suharto, who embezzled more than $30bn from Indonesia during his lifetime, one the most corrupt leaders in modern history. The files also contain further evidence of the US’s role in the allocation of Indonesia’s natural resources in the years following the massacre. The Indonesian economy had collapsed during the regime change, and two documents from 1967 show the Suharto administration trying to entice western companies to return to the country.” (p. 2)

[22]: Gordon RE. Development Disrupted: The Global South in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press; 2022. “Traditionally, organized labor has been weak in Asia and popular class and mass organizations find it difficult to gain traction, as state entities resist organized unions and other mass actions. Thus, state planners and business leaders have not had to face popular protests. All three countries systematically reduced class divisions and, through the education system, enhanced “eco- nomic egalitarianism and individual mobility.” Formal education credentials became a widely recognized means to enter government or larger firms. The government also focused on education to train technicians, engineers, and businesspersons, which aided economic growth based on manufacturing. Education also furthered mass socialization, which included national cohesion to realize economic growth, abetted by “pervasive anticommunism in all three countries.” External US aid was also critical. Exporting goods to the United States and other advanced industrialized countries, and the strategic sustenance the US military bestowed on all three regimes, were essential to economic success in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This permitted taking advantage of relatively open international markets, while American strategic geopolitical policies gave them space to pursue domestic economic policies as opposed to expending resources on national defense undertakings. EADS governments are quite different from European, or even other Global South, governments. Japan, an advanced industrialized state, has never experienced the “social welfare state” stage; nor has it had to accommodate organized labor. Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea do not rely on competition as the driver to expand choice and lower prices for domestic consumers. They have fashioned capitalism with few national political guarantees for organized labor, little movement toward a social welfare state, a high degree of mercantilism, and limited foreign investment. There are few of the problems linked to European planning or extensive public entitlements. This form of capitalism was dependent on access to the US market and Korea and Taiwan also depended on Japan. Moreover, successful agrarian reforms in all three countries eliminated one of the most powerful impediments to growth centered on rapid industrialization. The strategies employed by East Asian nations differed substantially from the prevailing neoliberal dogma of free markets and government non-intervention, although Western theorists and policy-makers found this difficult to accept and there was considerable debate about the role of industrial policy.” (p. 49-50)