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The answer is that none of this is true, China was literally never (in historical record) as backward as Africa, despite value judgements of some racist whites who pooh-poohed remarkable Chinese traits as «mere» industriousness and servility or some such. China was in a very bad place very recently; but it has not been barbaric for millenia.
It's disingenuous to compare, say, modern North Korea (73 years life expectancy, universal literacy, zero AIDS, regimented functional society, nukes, ≈$1300 GDP per capita) and Mozambique (61 years life expectancy, 63.42% literacy, 13% AIDS, anarcho-tyranny, no industry, $1300 GDP per capita), and claim this is an argument against HBD. This is an argument against GDP, if anything. Likewise disingenuous, only for more complex reasons, to compare China and Africa as a whole.
See what?
65 years life expectancy, 86.82% literacy, 20.8% AIDS, all economy runs on a De Beers mining contract. Botswana is maybe a big success by African standards, but that success belies the hypothesis that Africans with unusually good policies would just converge with non-Africans in all other things that matter – matter for maintaining stability, peace and good policies, too. So it will not be a huge surprise if Botswana one day just fails.
Why are you pointing out AIDS? Like, yeah, it's a problem, but I'm not sure it's in the top 10 priorities for nations to worry about. And I'm skeptical that North Korea is at 0% anyways.
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I never said that it was.
Good thing I didn't make that comparison.
Who is arguing against HBD? I never questioned it. The point is that, with respect to economic success or failure, there just isn't a lot or anything for HBD to explain once you account for bad policies and history. Bizzarely, many responses have been "Ah, but those facts you cite are due to bad policies and history."
My figures were out of date: in terms of GDP per capita, China has caught up with Botswana in the past 10 years. However, at Botswana's independence in the late 1960s, they were the same, and until recently, China was behind:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10gui
China is ranked 31st for "Ease of Doing Business", Botswana is ranked 87th. So, even in China's catch-up, there just doesn't seem to be much if anything for HBD to explain. That doesn't mean that HBD is false, and AFAIK the evidence for HBD is psychometric rather than macroeconomic (and much the better for that fact). What doesn't do well is trying to explain differences in the wealth of nations in terms of IQ rather than cultural and historical explanations.
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