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There are enormous economic differences within China and given the scale of the country it is much harder to make these kinds of broad-stroke arguments. Looking

There are enormous economic differences within China and given the scale of the country it is much harder to make these kinds of broad-stroke arguments. Looking at gdp per region [0], the main tier one cities are already clearly a cut above middle income countries, even a province like Jiansu with 23k$ in GDP per capita has a higher GDP/capita than Poland and a larger population than Germany or the UK. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative_divisions_by_GDP_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative...

refurb 3y ago
The problem with GDP per capita is that it doesn't necessarily correlate with wages (which is what we're talking about with middle income trap). You can look at Singapore or Ireland for another example. They have higher GDP per capita than the US, but a lot of it's due to multi-nationals storing IP in those countries, and funneling cash through for tax purposes. It's not GDP that gets converted to local wages. And in the case of certain Chinese regions, if you have companies headquartered there (with multiple sites at satellite cities), GDP measures are going to assign national GDP to that one region, so again, it doesn't necessarily reflect local wages.