I visited China a bit earlier than you, in the late 90s and through the 2000s. You have to realize merely in the 90s pretty much all of the skyscrapera in Shang

I visited China a bit earlier than you, in the late 90s and through the 2000s. You have to realize merely in the 90s pretty much all of the skyscrapera in Shanghai’s bund sprang up. http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/2010/06/shanghai-20-years-of-evolution.html?m=1 http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/2010/06/shanghai-20-years-... I agree that certain parts of China have succeeded US standarss (mainly certain districts of large cities) but if you venture around their levels of development are completely uneven and there are still large swaths of China wih poor infrastructure. Tap water is still not drinkable. Re: washing hands in Japan. I’ve never observed that but maybe because they don’t have to stick their hands in their butt after using the toilet it has developed a cultural de-emphasis on hand washing? Regardless the food safety there is miles ahead of the US since you can actually eat meats raw there, including Chicken. In any case this is a perfect example of a cultural difference that masks their advancement. I don't think you can take a difference in hand washing practice and conclude that it's necessarily behind in some way. Same as how you can't conclude that their driving practices are backwards simply because they haven't advanced to the right side of the road.