Visiting China (Shanghai, Beijing, Nanking, Hangzhou) they all seemed like modern cities. Shops, restaurants, enormous shopping centers, coffeeshops, co-working spaces, theaters, bars, dance clubs, etc... Other than knowing I happened to be in China it certainly appear that in day to day life things are pretty good and the experience of living is similar to living in any modern western city.
Beijing[1], as China's richest city and capitol, has a GDP per capita is $38,000. That's comparable to the GDP per capita found in other middle income capitals, like Istanbul[2] ($45k) or Mexico City[3] ($43k)[3] or Bangkok[4] ($36k).
Certainly substantially behind the level of development found in the capitols of highly developed nations, like Washington DC[5] ($85k), London ($74k), or Tokyo[6] ($69k).
What is the GDP PPP of Beijing vs New York, San Franciso, or Chicago? GDP Nominal is not a good indicator here in a country which seems to be devaluing it's currency willingly or unwillingly.
The Chinese numbers are from 2019. The American numbers are from 2015. If anything the comparison strongly disadvantages the US, since there was robust growth in the latter half of the decade.
Can you use a single source that contains the numbers for both China and the US, please? For such data points that have a lot of very different possible methodologies it's quite important to use the same source or ensure that the methodology is exactly the same.
I think that is an unreasonable request for rigor for a casual internet forum comment. That amount of rigor you have to pay for, and at this point I think it's reasonable for you to do your own research and present such normalized numbers.
It really isn't much to ask for. If you're making arguments based on really really shaky data you should not be making them at all. Comparing OECD regions to Chinese administrative metro areas is really quite absurd. The variance in Montréal for example depending on what you call a city can be almost 2x.
For example, if you take the Tokyo Metro Area, you find a GDP per capita of 48k, with a PPP ratio of 0.98 we get 48k USD PPP.
Comparing it to the Beijing Metro Area you have a 39k USD PPP.
This took around 4 minutes to do for the two cities, so I really don't think it's a quantity of rigor you should pay for, nor an unreasonable amount of scrutiny for an internet comment at all. I was just trying to get the commenter to realize the issue with using two completely different data series in a comparison.
You can also compare for example Jiangsu and South Kanto to find similar numbers.
> It really isn't much to ask for. If you're making arguments based on really really shaky data you should not be making them at all.
Can you demonstrate your principles with your other comment [0], by using “a single source that contains the numbers” of many of the countries and claims you mentioned in that comment?
Funny how you asked others to “use a single source that contains the numbers”, and yet you make arguments without providing any sources, as you did in your other comment I linked above.
How do we know your arguments aren’t “based on really really shaky data”?
No one provided sources here. A partial source was provided by the other commenter. But if you ask, the source for inflation control is OECD inflation data, the source for Tokyo GTA GDP per capita is Wikipedia/SCMP, and the source for Beijing administrative region GDP is official national numbers.
China's newfound prosperity is HEAVILY concentrated in ~100 huge cities. Smaller cities are poorer but livable like eastern europe. The countryside is basically a third world country.
Traveling through US or Europe you won't find people living in cinderblock shacks with a dirt floor and no plumbing. In China it's still the norm outside of cities.
There's not anybody starving to death, but I wouldn't consider China a wealthy country, not even close. There's very wealthy areas but a large fraction of the population still survives on a few thousand dollars a year.
Nobody in the US is starving. It's just not possible. The government will give you $200 a month for food and there's free meals for the poor in every major city.
I've never met a homeless person that was starving and many of them turn down free food because they don't need it.
As far as outsourcing, look what China is doing in Africa. Plenty of outsourcing in appalling conditions
1st tier China cities only host 5% of China's population.
What outside people don't see, and especially ones who thump their chests thinking they've seen all of China by being to some small town is that china has probably thousand times more of such small towns, and villages than 1m+ cities. And these are where most of Chinese live.
There are still many places in China with such level of destitution where even moving to a township centre from a village is an achievement of a lifetime to an average person.
Looking only at the cities, and especially tier one/tier two cities, is not a great way to get a picture of the real-world living conditions of the average person in China.
While it is true that hundreds of millions of Chinese live moderately prosperous lives, and enjoy many of the same luxuries that people in developed countries do, there are also hundreds of millions of Chinese who are still living in relative poverty (both relative to people in developed countries, and relative to the country's own urban, educated class).
In November last year the government declared that they had met their target to lift all of China out of extreme poverty by 2020, but that just means that nobody lives on a dollar a day any more. There are still a lot of subsistence farmers in rural areas, and there is still a large underclass that powers the urban economy by working for very low wages in factories, on delivery routes and so on.
China has come a long way in a relatively short period of time, and that's worth applauding, but it still faces some big challenges in raising the quality of life for all its citizens. I'm not an economist, but I expect that there will be a point where the growth can't continue because there won't be enough of an underclass to provide all the services that the current "middle" class takes for granted. I think the government is hoping that by that point either automation or outsourcing will be able to fill the gap.
