[patricius]

Right. We could choose not to buy from them, helping them stay in poverty. That's always an option.

[loa_in_]

Currently Dollars only serve the Chinese government as a way to put pressure on the competition (USA). They are still eating their own food and living in their own technology based buildings built from their local resources by their local workforce. America doesn't help keep Chinese from poverty, because China isn't incapable of it in the first place. If anything, the political pressures just created perverse incentives there.

[samatman]

That's not even remotely true.

China isn't self-sufficient in calories, be they fuel or food. If they don't get dollars for foreign trade, they starve in the dark.

[loa_in_]

Correction: Dollars only serve the Chinese government as a way to put pressure on the competition, and means to buy microelectronics

[pantalaimon]

Not buying new stuff so often would be a start.