Its easy to improve people's lives if they're starting from a shitty position. We'll see how that changes now that they're playing in the big leagues.

When's capitalism planning to do that for everyone in the global south then? If you remove china from the statistics on poverty alleviation poverty has been almost stagnant for the last 50 years. China is responsible for almost all of the vaunted "improvement" in poverty. And they've done it without bombing dozens of countries per decade!