7 ms·

Is China a developed country? A long and better answer

85 points by alanwong 8y ago

alanwong 8y ago
OP and writer of the article here. Happy to provide more info on this topic if anyone is interested.
- fspeech 8y ago
  When did China become classified as "upper middle income"? What other countries are in the same category? And why should Mahathir get to call his country "poor" relative to China when Malaysia still has GDP per capita higher than China?
  - alanwong 8y ago
    The World Bank stopped using a binary categorization of countries in 2016: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/opendata/2016-edition-world-development-indicators-out-three-features-you-won-t-want-miss https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/opendata/2016-edition-w... > Therefore, In WDI 2016, there is no longer a distinction between developing countries (defined in previous editions as low- and middle-income countries) and developed countries (previously high-income countries). Regional groupings (such as “East Asia”) are now based on geographical coverage rather than a sub-set of countries that were previously referred to as developing. In some occasional cases, where data availability or context have dictated it, we’ve excluded high income from some charts or tables, and we’ve indicated that in the footnotes. That's when it defined China as "upper middle income." That's based on Gross National Income per capita, as the World Bank calculated it. The thresholds are updated every year and adjusted for inflation. By the World Bank's definition, China was: low-income from 87-98 (except 97, when it was lower-middle) lower-middle from 99-09 upper-middle thereafter There are 56 upper-middle-income countries right now, out of 218 countries. Brazil, Kazakhstan, Libya, Malaysia, Cuba, Mexico are all upper-middle-income countries by the World Bank's latest definition.
  - jmh42 8y ago
    > Why should Mahathir get to call his country "poor" relative to China...? A simple answer may be aggregates matter when it comes to country-to-country comparisons. A country's companies and government get 'strength' from the aggregate first.
    - jimmydef 8y ago
      This doesn't make sense at all. So are you saying that India or China is more developed than Singapore because their aggregate "strength" whatever that means is greater than Singapore?
      - jmh42 8y ago
        I didn't even use the word 'developed'. Nice try. ;) I simply mean if you are comparing countries, you need to look at aggregate figures, such as total GDP or market size or population. If one country has lower GDP than another, you could say it is "poor" on that basis, even if per capita GDP (a dis-aggregated figure) were higher. Taking your example, simply by population size and aggregate GDP and therefore ability to spend on military, India and China ARE stronger than Singapore.
      - dang 8y ago
        This comment breaks the site guidelines in at least a couple ways. If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
    - fspeech 8y ago
      I understand the aggregate perspective. However this is not the standard usage of the word "poor".
- Leary 8y ago
  Is China in the middle income trap?
  - alanwong 8y ago
    That's probably the literally trillion dollar question. I talked a bit about it with China scholars. The only thing they kind of agreed on is that it's a big question mark. China is confident that it can avoid the trap, though. Lou Jiwei, the former finance minister, famously said 2 years ago that China had a 50/50 chance of getting stuck at "middle income." But now as a head of a different government agency he recently said that he's confident that China will become a high-income country in a few years. That's probably something we should address in another article later.
  - d2161 8y ago
    You don't know whether you are in the middle income trap without the benefit of hindsight. By that time it's too late. If China does move up the value added chain, it could lead to enormous wealth creation globally. For businesses and consumers. That's why I am dissatisfied at the whole America First mentality. It doesn't matter if it's China, India, South Africa or whatever country. Globalization benefits us all and we should support their development.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wyattpeak 8y ago
  Has the World Bank considered the question of whether or not GDP per capita is a relevant measure of the need for protectionism? The four-tier framework seems to address e.g. Bill Gates' comments about grouping China and the DRC, but it would still leave China in a tier below Western nations even though its ability to compete in global markets probably matches or surpasses many of them.
- mirimir 8y ago
  Where can I find the text? Edit: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PDbj62VnSQMJ:https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/is-china-a-developed-country-long-and-better-answer/article/2160430&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PDbj62...
- contingencies 8y ago
  Congratulations on the new gig and come visit us for a story next time you make it to Zhuhai :)
  - alanwong 8y ago
    Hi thanks! Your business looks interesting, and close to me. Maybe after the bridge opens?
Leary 8y ago
China's status as a developing country is why the Trump administration can't play by WTO rules when it imposes tariffs on China. That's the reason he is outspoken against it. It's pretty astonishing that the United States, which created the multilateral trading institutions have now lost control over them and must resort to unilateral actions.
- izacus 8y ago
  Isn't "multilateral organisation" that you "control" an oxymoron?
  - sgift 8y ago
    In theory? Yes. In practice? No. UN is for all practical purposes controlled by the big five with permanent seats in the UNSC. The US' influence over NATO amounts to control. And so on. Most multilateral organizations are controlled by one of the big countries.
- alanwong 8y ago
  It's worth noting that while members self-elect their WTO status as either developing/developed. > However, other members can challenge the decision of a member to make use of provisions available to developing countries. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/devel_e/d1who_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/devel_e/d1who_e.htm No country has ever done that, though, not even the US.
FundThrowaway 8y ago
I always find the use of per capita GDP as measure of development as a rather strange measure of development. You could have a country with massive oil reserves or similar natural resource wealth that would have a very high per capita GDP but that doesn't necessarily mean that the average person sees any of it. I always thought a better figure is the median wealth per adult, perhaps I'm confused between quality of life and development.
- alanwong 8y ago
  That's true, and a big reason why coal-producing Inner Mongolia is the only non-coastal regions in China that has GDP per capita greater than 10,000USD. (as illustrated in a map in the article)
  - baybal2 8y ago
    Yes, quite a number of officials say that it is certainly not a bad province to have a post in, for as long as one ready to endure the weather and boredom.
    - lozenge 8y ago
      Is that boredom due to the low population density or disinterest in socialising with the Mongolian minority population?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - baybal2 8y ago
        I think both. One go there to run their projects with plump provincial funds. Kangbashi ghost town is the perfect example of what local officials do while having nothing to do.
- jernfrost 8y ago
  Agree, GDP is a terrible metric. However it is useful if you combine it with other measures. Like when you look at GDP and visit a country, you see there is a strong correlation. One thing I’ve found difficult is comparing the US to e.g. European countries. Houses are much bigger in the US but that is in large part due to much cheaper land and often entirely different build quality. Yet a bigger house and yard naturally translates to a higher quality of life. Yet it is not an entirely fair indicator of economic strength. Sometimes it could be downright deceptive. There was some right wing economists who deemed Mississippi more wealthty/developed than Sweden by looking as such metrics as house size, car ownerships, microwaves and TVs. Yet it did not caputure well that a lot of these people lived in houses bigger than in Sweden but in terrible condition, poor interior and could not afford important basic stuff like health care.
walrus01 8y ago
"the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet" - william gibson
- erikb 8y ago
  The funny thing is one barely realizes it when one is part of the future (e.g. when using the internet to write this comment), but one also rarely realizes it when one isn't part of the future (e.g. comparing the Chinese mobile world and mobile internet infrastructure to western countries, where China is ahead for almost 2 years now).
baybal2 8y ago
China is a developing nation in need of international development assistance.
mirimir 8y ago
What is this site? It doesn't seem to display anything except the title page. Edit: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PDbj62VnSQMJ:https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/is-china-a-developed-country-long-and-better-answer/article/2160430&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PDbj62...
jimmydef 8y ago
This article doesn't quite make sense to me. It keeps confusing per capita with overall size. Like the old joke goes, America has more people per capita. Going by the same logic, can we say that India is more developed than Singapore? And all the small anecdotes showing developed status such as that GIF of Shanghai growing or skyscrapers in Chinese cities are misleading and pointless. You could take similarly modern photos in cities of developing countries all over the world. That doesn't make any of them any more developed. And statements like these are patently absurd: "But few of them other than China have produced companies with enough money and ambition to put one of their products in the hands of Iron Man and have ads splashed all over soccer stadiums at the World Cup". Most developing countries are home to large corporations as well. Burger King is Brazilian and I'm sure it has placed ads in many prominent events. Does this mean that Brazil is suddenly no longer a developing nation? And the last part about how a country cannot be classified into developing or developed status because of inequality makes absolutely no sense at all. Sure Shanghai is developed compared to Yunnan. But that's not the point. The point is that as a whole, China is still very poor. As long as a large part of the country is poor and in need of modern infrastructure, it is developing. As compared to countries like Japan where almost EVERY part of it is developed. That's the whole point. The US created the rules of WTO. Now it wants to change the rules when it thinks it is not winning by resorting to semantic games like these.
- azurezyq 8y ago
  I think the major claim in the post is that labels can't be attached to such a diverse monster as a whole. Actually I'm wondering if trade happening at the country level. You can easily build a developed country by definition size of Japan by combining several coastal provinces. And that's mostly where"made in China" comes from.
- alanwong 8y ago
  Did it confuse per capita with overall? I thought it made it clear that: in terms of per capita GNI, China isn't a developed country. But in the context of the WTO, Trump has framed the question of whether China is a developed country as a matter of fairness. Developing nations get perks – they're allowed leeway in phasing out their trade policies that protect certain sectors. A central question here is that China is more powerful than any single per capita metric is able to reflect, and therefore may not deserve the kind of flexibility that WTO affords to unquestionably weak and "developing" countries who struggle to transform into a market economy. China sees itself a developing country, but it's arguable whether it needs the kind of flexibility the WTO gives other developing countries. The logical next question in this context is, are the labels "developing" and "developed" good enough to determine which countries should get preferential treatment in international trade? That the labels are no longer adequate in many applications is further highlighted by the fact that China is so diverse and vast that there are parts of it that are basically developed countries in their own right, judging by their per capita income levels. On the other hands, there are many provinces that are indisputably low-income by all accepted standards. The point that China is by and large poor by Western standards is addressed in the first part of the article, and stressed again later. But again, does having a large population of people who live in abject poverty warrant a country differential treatment by an international trade body in areas that have little to do with the poverty?
bantersaurus 8y ago
Question should be is America a developed country
- dmos62 8y ago
  Haha, I felt disturbed by the title and conjured the same counter-question. When has the word "development" been more conflicted? I think we (or at least I) don't want to see it used anymore in the sense of "short-term economics that don't account for common well-being or ecology".
forkLding 8y ago
I would say China is a Newly Industrialized Country (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newly_industrialized_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newly_industrialized_country, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/newly-industrialized-country.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/newly-industrialized-co...) as they are still a developing country in transition to becoming a developed country simply because you can't group it as a developed country while it still has so many attributes of a developing country but is steadily growing toward developed country status. I'm more relating it to my situation where my most of my grandparents passed away early due to famine and disease before my parents became adults and might have never owned a car whereas my parents have much more modern luxuries.
sgift 8y ago
There are so many metrics out there and everyone can choose whichever suits them best to make an argument. So, here's another one: Is a country able to be a nuclear power (note: Able to, not is one) - yes: Developed country. This metric has many downsides that I'm sure others will be happy to point out, but here is an upside compared to e.g. the traditional definition: The countries wealth cannot be used for military while parts of your population starve (or have less than 12k per year, to quote the formal definition).
partycoder 8y ago
People in Norway enjoy a higher standard of living than most Americans. Can Norway become a military superpower? have an ambitious space program? probably not. The US is #1 in military spending. The US is also #1 in healthcare spending by a large margin, but the additional spending does not translate into better health benefits. Comparing countries through spending can be very misleading. India's space agency (ISRO) sent a mission to Mars for $73 million USDs (substantially cheaper than an equivalent NASA mission) while a large portion of their population live in precarious conditions. The "developed country" denomination is useful to get an idea of a country's living standard, but can be misleading in other contexts.
dlwdlw 8y ago
Reminds me of during the world expo in Shanghai where people would push their older relatives in wheelchairs to skip the long lines in the hot humid weather.

85 points by alanwong 8y ago

alanwong 8y ago

OP and writer of the article here. Happy to provide more info on this topic if anyone is interested.

fspeech 8y ago
When did China become classified as "upper middle income"? What other countries are in the same category? And why should Mahathir get to call his country "poor" relative to China when Malaysia still has GDP per capita higher than China?
- alanwong 8y ago
  The World Bank stopped using a binary categorization of countries in 2016: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/opendata/2016-edition-world-development-indicators-out-three-features-you-won-t-want-miss https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/opendata/2016-edition-w... > Therefore, In WDI 2016, there is no longer a distinction between developing countries (defined in previous editions as low- and middle-income countries) and developed countries (previously high-income countries). Regional groupings (such as “East Asia”) are now based on geographical coverage rather than a sub-set of countries that were previously referred to as developing. In some occasional cases, where data availability or context have dictated it, we’ve excluded high income from some charts or tables, and we’ve indicated that in the footnotes. That's when it defined China as "upper middle income." That's based on Gross National Income per capita, as the World Bank calculated it. The thresholds are updated every year and adjusted for inflation. By the World Bank's definition, China was: low-income from 87-98 (except 97, when it was lower-middle) lower-middle from 99-09 upper-middle thereafter There are 56 upper-middle-income countries right now, out of 218 countries. Brazil, Kazakhstan, Libya, Malaysia, Cuba, Mexico are all upper-middle-income countries by the World Bank's latest definition.
- jmh42 8y ago
  > Why should Mahathir get to call his country "poor" relative to China...? A simple answer may be aggregates matter when it comes to country-to-country comparisons. A country's companies and government get 'strength' from the aggregate first.
  - jimmydef 8y ago
    This doesn't make sense at all. So are you saying that India or China is more developed than Singapore because their aggregate "strength" whatever that means is greater than Singapore?
    - jmh42 8y ago
      I didn't even use the word 'developed'. Nice try. ;) I simply mean if you are comparing countries, you need to look at aggregate figures, such as total GDP or market size or population. If one country has lower GDP than another, you could say it is "poor" on that basis, even if per capita GDP (a dis-aggregated figure) were higher. Taking your example, simply by population size and aggregate GDP and therefore ability to spend on military, India and China ARE stronger than Singapore.
    - dang 8y ago
      This comment breaks the site guidelines in at least a couple ways. If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
  - fspeech 8y ago
    I understand the aggregate perspective. However this is not the standard usage of the word "poor".
Leary 8y ago
Is China in the middle income trap?
- alanwong 8y ago
  That's probably the literally trillion dollar question. I talked a bit about it with China scholars. The only thing they kind of agreed on is that it's a big question mark. China is confident that it can avoid the trap, though. Lou Jiwei, the former finance minister, famously said 2 years ago that China had a 50/50 chance of getting stuck at "middle income." But now as a head of a different government agency he recently said that he's confident that China will become a high-income country in a few years. That's probably something we should address in another article later.
- d2161 8y ago
  You don't know whether you are in the middle income trap without the benefit of hindsight. By that time it's too late. If China does move up the value added chain, it could lead to enormous wealth creation globally. For businesses and consumers. That's why I am dissatisfied at the whole America First mentality. It doesn't matter if it's China, India, South Africa or whatever country. Globalization benefits us all and we should support their development.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wyattpeak 8y ago
Has the World Bank considered the question of whether or not GDP per capita is a relevant measure of the need for protectionism? The four-tier framework seems to address e.g. Bill Gates' comments about grouping China and the DRC, but it would still leave China in a tier below Western nations even though its ability to compete in global markets probably matches or surpasses many of them.
mirimir 8y ago
Where can I find the text? Edit: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PDbj62VnSQMJ:https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/is-china-a-developed-country-long-and-better-answer/article/2160430&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PDbj62...
contingencies 8y ago
Congratulations on the new gig and come visit us for a story next time you make it to Zhuhai :)
- alanwong 8y ago
  Hi thanks! Your business looks interesting, and close to me. Maybe after the bridge opens?

Leary 8y ago

China's status as a developing country is why the Trump administration can't play by WTO rules when it imposes tariffs on China. That's the reason he is outspoken against it. It's pretty astonishing that the United States, which created the multilateral trading institutions have now lost control over them and must resort to unilateral actions.

izacus 8y ago
Isn't "multilateral organisation" that you "control" an oxymoron?
- sgift 8y ago
  In theory? Yes. In practice? No. UN is for all practical purposes controlled by the big five with permanent seats in the UNSC. The US' influence over NATO amounts to control. And so on. Most multilateral organizations are controlled by one of the big countries.
alanwong 8y ago
It's worth noting that while members self-elect their WTO status as either developing/developed. > However, other members can challenge the decision of a member to make use of provisions available to developing countries. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/devel_e/d1who_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/devel_e/d1who_e.htm No country has ever done that, though, not even the US.

FundThrowaway 8y ago

I always find the use of per capita GDP as measure of development as a rather strange measure of development. You could have a country with massive oil reserves or similar natural resource wealth that would have a very high per capita GDP but that doesn't necessarily mean that the average person sees any of it. I always thought a better figure is the median wealth per adult, perhaps I'm confused between quality of life and development.

alanwong 8y ago
That's true, and a big reason why coal-producing Inner Mongolia is the only non-coastal regions in China that has GDP per capita greater than 10,000USD. (as illustrated in a map in the article)
- baybal2 8y ago
  Yes, quite a number of officials say that it is certainly not a bad province to have a post in, for as long as one ready to endure the weather and boredom.
  - lozenge 8y ago
    Is that boredom due to the low population density or disinterest in socialising with the Mongolian minority population?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - baybal2 8y ago
      I think both. One go there to run their projects with plump provincial funds. Kangbashi ghost town is the perfect example of what local officials do while having nothing to do.
jernfrost 8y ago
Agree, GDP is a terrible metric. However it is useful if you combine it with other measures. Like when you look at GDP and visit a country, you see there is a strong correlation. One thing I’ve found difficult is comparing the US to e.g. European countries. Houses are much bigger in the US but that is in large part due to much cheaper land and often entirely different build quality. Yet a bigger house and yard naturally translates to a higher quality of life. Yet it is not an entirely fair indicator of economic strength. Sometimes it could be downright deceptive. There was some right wing economists who deemed Mississippi more wealthty/developed than Sweden by looking as such metrics as house size, car ownerships, microwaves and TVs. Yet it did not caputure well that a lot of these people lived in houses bigger than in Sweden but in terrible condition, poor interior and could not afford important basic stuff like health care.

walrus01 8y ago

"the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet" - william gibson

erikb 8y ago
The funny thing is one barely realizes it when one is part of the future (e.g. when using the internet to write this comment), but one also rarely realizes it when one isn't part of the future (e.g. comparing the Chinese mobile world and mobile internet infrastructure to western countries, where China is ahead for almost 2 years now).

baybal2 8y ago

China is a developing nation in need of international development assistance.

mirimir 8y ago

What is this site? It doesn't seem to display anything except the title page. Edit: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PDbj62VnSQMJ:https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/is-china-a-developed-country-long-and-better-answer/article/2160430&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PDbj62...

jimmydef 8y ago

This article doesn't quite make sense to me. It keeps confusing per capita with overall size. Like the old joke goes, America has more people per capita. Going by the same logic, can we say that India is more developed than Singapore? And all the small anecdotes showing developed status such as that GIF of Shanghai growing or skyscrapers in Chinese cities are misleading and pointless. You could take similarly modern photos in cities of developing countries all over the world. That doesn't make any of them any more developed. And statements like these are patently absurd: "But few of them other than China have produced companies with enough money and ambition to put one of their products in the hands of Iron Man and have ads splashed all over soccer stadiums at the World Cup". Most developing countries are home to large corporations as well. Burger King is Brazilian and I'm sure it has placed ads in many prominent events. Does this mean that Brazil is suddenly no longer a developing nation? And the last part about how a country cannot be classified into developing or developed status because of inequality makes absolutely no sense at all. Sure Shanghai is developed compared to Yunnan. But that's not the point. The point is that as a whole, China is still very poor. As long as a large part of the country is poor and in need of modern infrastructure, it is developing. As compared to countries like Japan where almost EVERY part of it is developed. That's the whole point. The US created the rules of WTO. Now it wants to change the rules when it thinks it is not winning by resorting to semantic games like these.

azurezyq 8y ago
I think the major claim in the post is that labels can't be attached to such a diverse monster as a whole. Actually I'm wondering if trade happening at the country level. You can easily build a developed country by definition size of Japan by combining several coastal provinces. And that's mostly where"made in China" comes from.
alanwong 8y ago
Did it confuse per capita with overall? I thought it made it clear that: in terms of per capita GNI, China isn't a developed country. But in the context of the WTO, Trump has framed the question of whether China is a developed country as a matter of fairness. Developing nations get perks – they're allowed leeway in phasing out their trade policies that protect certain sectors. A central question here is that China is more powerful than any single per capita metric is able to reflect, and therefore may not deserve the kind of flexibility that WTO affords to unquestionably weak and "developing" countries who struggle to transform into a market economy. China sees itself a developing country, but it's arguable whether it needs the kind of flexibility the WTO gives other developing countries. The logical next question in this context is, are the labels "developing" and "developed" good enough to determine which countries should get preferential treatment in international trade? That the labels are no longer adequate in many applications is further highlighted by the fact that China is so diverse and vast that there are parts of it that are basically developed countries in their own right, judging by their per capita income levels. On the other hands, there are many provinces that are indisputably low-income by all accepted standards. The point that China is by and large poor by Western standards is addressed in the first part of the article, and stressed again later. But again, does having a large population of people who live in abject poverty warrant a country differential treatment by an international trade body in areas that have little to do with the poverty?

bantersaurus 8y ago

Question should be is America a developed country

dmos62 8y ago
Haha, I felt disturbed by the title and conjured the same counter-question. When has the word "development" been more conflicted? I think we (or at least I) don't want to see it used anymore in the sense of "short-term economics that don't account for common well-being or ecology".

forkLding 8y ago

I would say China is a Newly Industrialized Country (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newly_industrialized_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newly_industrialized_country, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/newly-industrialized-country.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/newly-industrialized-co...) as they are still a developing country in transition to becoming a developed country simply because you can't group it as a developed country while it still has so many attributes of a developing country but is steadily growing toward developed country status. I'm more relating it to my situation where my most of my grandparents passed away early due to famine and disease before my parents became adults and might have never owned a car whereas my parents have much more modern luxuries.

sgift 8y ago

There are so many metrics out there and everyone can choose whichever suits them best to make an argument. So, here's another one: Is a country able to be a nuclear power (note: Able to, not is one) - yes: Developed country. This metric has many downsides that I'm sure others will be happy to point out, but here is an upside compared to e.g. the traditional definition: The countries wealth cannot be used for military while parts of your population starve (or have less than 12k per year, to quote the formal definition).

partycoder 8y ago

People in Norway enjoy a higher standard of living than most Americans. Can Norway become a military superpower? have an ambitious space program? probably not. The US is #1 in military spending. The US is also #1 in healthcare spending by a large margin, but the additional spending does not translate into better health benefits. Comparing countries through spending can be very misleading. India's space agency (ISRO) sent a mission to Mars for $73 million USDs (substantially cheaper than an equivalent NASA mission) while a large portion of their population live in precarious conditions. The "developed country" denomination is useful to get an idea of a country's living standard, but can be misleading in other contexts.

dlwdlw 8y ago

Reminds me of during the world expo in Shanghai where people would push their older relatives in wheelchairs to skip the long lines in the hot humid weather.