They "eliminated" extreme poverty caused by communist control in the first place, by going to a capitalist system.
There were tons of economic low-hanging fruits by building out large infrastructure projects, which corruption happily siphoned off of.
The ROI of these infra projects have been gone for a while, yet they continued. Also it's been stealing intellectual property, trade dumping, exporting deflation. Soaking up the manufacturing oxygen of everyone else through subsidies, elite capture, then using the leverage gained and veiled threats against others to force them to yield resources, market access and political control.
China benefited greatly from the US-led globalism order that's been going on since WWII.
Another way of saying it is China took the most advantage. And it has gone way overboard in taking advantage. So the backlash is expected and necessary.
Part of fixing things involve doing things that seem like it's destroying the order that the US created itself.
By racking up debt of epic proportions, with no return on investment in sight.
All the while going into a demographic death spiral. Partly cause by the draconian 1-child policy, which attempted to fix the pronatalist policies of Mao.
"debt"? You mean the balancing item from money creation? Question: To which bank does the government owe the liabilities created when it creates the money? (clue: the government owns it).
Nothing is really stopping other countries from doing the same, to be honest. People are just scared to give legitimacy to what China has done for their citizens in a very short amount of time, because that would be against their own beliefs and morals.
I'm not saying China is the best and whatever, just saying they've proven every "China is about to fall" headline that has been circulating around for the past 15 years. Maybe we should learn some things from them.
Debt is not fundamentally bad. But the financing has to be justified by positive return, be it in the service itself that makes money back to pay off the debt, or as a public good, returns in the form societal benefit as a result of the service.
When you have massive buildups with no hope of returns, it's a a bad financial decision and the public carries the debt burden.
There were tons of economic low-hanging fruits by building out large infrastructure projects, which corruption happily siphoned off of.
The ROI of these infra projects have been gone for a while, yet they continued. Also it's been stealing intellectual property, trade dumping, exporting deflation. Soaking up the manufacturing oxygen of everyone else through subsidies, elite capture, then using the leverage gained and veiled threats against others to force them to yield resources, market access and political control.