Yes, I'm aware of the white man's burden parallel, but... no. Just... no. It's called teaching, providing technological know-how, materials where it's needed. Bringing the rest of the world up to parity instead of sitting here exploiting them. Not colonization and exploitation. Mankind's (obviously theoretical/unpracticed, but it's in most of the books!) moral obligation to mankind, to see suffering reduced when possible. You're legally culpable in the states if you just sit there and watch when a person is being tortured or murdered. There's a moral parallel there.
Or do you actually think just... letting what's happening in places like China happen is a good thing? That not providing the tools and knowledge base to modernize agricultural practices is a moral action? That "benign neglect" is the right way to go?*
I'm not invoking white man's burden. I'm not saying, "Hey, you have to end up exactly like us." I'm saying, "HEY! We've fucked up doing what you're doing before. Let us show you how to avoid our screwups!" And then helping them get the point they can at least punch a little in the big leagues. We can help people skip a few steps on the industrialization ladder, steps that caused us a whole hell of a lot of problems. We can also help the reach the point they're not completely defenseless and exploitable by more industrialized countries.
Because if they can afford to do that in on a material level, economic and technological parity is something I have trouble seeing as a bad thing for our species. We have some really frakking cool toys and knowledge of how to use them without causing quite so many problems as using them used to cause. I'm saying, yanno', share the ruddy toys with the kids down the street. To a larger extent than we are already, anyway.
Full information exchange and infrastructure/tool aid when it'd help. Suck up the short term cost and don't just hand out money; give materials and possibly short term specialists. Work to help people be more able to help themselves.
* Though that's completely ignoring that our actual actions as-is is both not neglect and only partially benign. But hell, I basically said that I can see that, can see saying benign neglect is the way to go. It just doesn't feel right to me. There's something off on the moral aspect of that.