Things that are so obvious and ingrained that no one even thinks about them.
Here’s a few:
All US americans can go to Mexico EASILY. You’re supposed to have a passport but you don’t even need one (for car/foot crossing). Versus, it’s really hard for Mexicans, who aren’t wealthy, to secure a VISA to enter the US. I’m sure there are corollaries in other geo-regions.
Another one is wealthy countries having access to vaccines far ahead of “poor” countries.
In US, we might pay lip service to equal child-hood education but most of the funding pulls from local taxes so some kids might receive ~$10000 in spending while another receives $2000. I’m not looking it up at the moment, but I’m SURE there are strong racial stratas.
Hmm, interesting question. That depends if you think that the society they have now is better than the one preceding? The two situations aren’t entirely analogous since one involved separation from a foreign power while the other involved dismantling of the old culture and society in order to make a brand new one. I think that China is more powerful now than they would be otherwise, had they not gone through their cultural revolution, but it came at a great cost where centuries of culture was destroyed. I don’t think it was worth it, but that’s also easy for me to say because I don’t live there and because my perception is certainly skewed by Western perspectives. I think they lost something of great value with how the cultural revolution played out and the Chinese people are irrecoverably different as a result. Makes me a little bit sad, but we can’t change the past, so it doesn’t really matter.
You think “destroying centuries of culture” outweighs abolishing extreme poverty, ending feudalism in a country of more than a billion, redistributing land to the peasantry, taking the country from a cycle where every few years millions would die in a famine to being an economic super power, leading the world in space age scientific progress?