Cost of living differences are real but almost always overstated. It isn't as though a family in China can live the same lifestyle as a middle class American on

Cost of living differences are real but almost always overstated. It isn't as though a family in China can live the same lifestyle as a middle class American on $5k/year because everything there is so much cheaper. The average Chinese worker is very poor by US standards, even after taking into account cost of living differences. In fact, if you swapped a family with a cash income of $5k/year from China to the US, in many way they'd be better off as they'd have access to more and better socially provisioned goods and services. When you make this sort of argument you are implicitly saying "Chinese people don't mind being poor as much as Americans do" even if that's not what you meant to say.