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I live in Asia, spent time in China. Sure the wealth concentrated in tier 1 cities makes them look shiney but China isn’t just its tier 1 cities it includes it

• aurareturn 1y ago
  Where in Asia? When was the last time in China? Are you comparing Shenzhen to Bangkok? Or lower tier cities to lower tier cities in Thailand? What do you think is the trend for Thailand and China in the next 10 years? Do you think Americans can afford cutting edge health care? Or even any healthcare at all? You keep mentioning "cutting edge" healthcare like China doesn't have it. In the US, basic health care is expensive and tied to your employer. If you're out of a job, you're out of health insurance mostly. In China, they have universal health care where basic health care is cheap. If you want private health care in China, it's expensive. So you tell me which is better. I think a ton of people make the mistake of comparing average China to average US and then say "see! I told you China is bad". In reality, many parts of China 30 years ago barely had electricity and running water. It's more important to talk projections rather than August 2025.
  • refurb 1y ago
    > Where in Asia? When was the last time in China? Are you comparing Shenzhen to Bangkok? Or lower tier cities to lower tier cities in Thailand? Maybe you misunderstood? Clearly Shanghai is nicer than Bangkok, but China is not 1.4B people living in Shanghai, you need to include the people living on a few dollars per days in rural Chinese areas. > What do you think is the trend for Thailand and China in the next 10 years? I have no idea, but even if China continues to grow at 5% per year (if they're lucky), in a decade they might have a per capita GDP of what? $20,000? That puts them on par with Panama or Uraguay? > Do you think Americans can afford cutting edge health care Absolutely. Just look at things like CAR-T adoption, it's the highest in the world. Far exceeding Europe and Europe exceeds China. > In China, they have universal health care where basic health care is cheap. If you want private health care in China, it's expensive. So you tell me which is better. Cheap healthcare in China is just that - cheap. I've been to Chinese hospitals. I've seen doctors prescribe antibiotics for viral infections. I've seen them recommend "hot water" as a cure. It may be convenient and cheap, but quality is terrible unless you get to the high end private hospitals and guess what? CAR-T therapy cost hundreds of thousands everywhere in the world. > I think a ton of people make the mistake of comparing average China to average US and then say "see! I told you China is bad". Why would you not compare averages? Or would you prefer to compare Shanghai to say the top 10% of income earners in the US? We could do that too if you'd like. The truth is that China, while making great strides, is still about as rich as Thailand on average. They need decades are very strong economic growth to even match the US, let alone exceed it. All while facing a massive debt overhang and demographic changes that will only slow economic growth.
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    • maxglute 1y ago
      There are roughly 2 Chinese cohorts. The bottom 40% generating 5% of GDP, and the other 60% generating 95%. This composition and cohort effects converge per-capita metrics, distort per capita base of productive (young, educated, skilled) PRC cohorts that's going to stick around longer than unproductive (old, not). The 40% group is statistic drag on national per capita average, but will be disproportionately the first ones the die. Bluntly is they'll simply die poor, but likely taken care of, because keeping them poor (hukou) has the side effect of making them cheaper caretake/support. What this means is the 60%, i.e. largely the newer generations are already at 20000 usd per capita, 40000 by PPP (obviously naive per capita doesn't map to actual spectrum household #s). This also means they generate disproportionate amount of economic activity, i.e. they're responsible for 90%+ of annual growth, growth calc from bigger per capita base. AKA one tertiary educated skill worker making per capital replace 6+ rural farmers/informal economy workers - high skill demographic dividend more than offsets net low population loss concentrated in under productive cohorts. Structurally all PRC has to do for aggregate population to do well in the future... is for natural mortality to cull those that aren't doing well from statistics in the coming decades. Because most are already doing "well", Reality is T1/T2 cities already have basically developed country life expectancy (80+ years), we can wank about "advanced" healthcare all you want but whatever they're doing is working. And LBH the only reason it's not higher is Chinese men love their smokes. And LB even more honest, they're just spinning up their pharma sector, they will have access to leading treatments on the cheap once sector matures, like they get everything else cheap after indigenization, i.e. out of pocket MRIs are cheap now. To broadly speculate on PRC per capital GDP trends, this is not economic prognosis but more exploring statistical composition effect for those insisting on using per capital GDP as metric. The TLDR is many scenarios where PRC growing at 3-5% gets them upper high income per capita stats in a few decades: What we will likely see is PRC is going to continue grow at 4-5% and eventually slap the FX lever, i.e. appreciate rmb 20-30% after they've build out enough industrial sectors to make western incumbents uncompetitive. Statistically, Over time, greater mortality of low-productive cohort = PRC per capital will converge with T1/T2, i.e. skilled worker income. Again effectively already 20k+ /w 3-5% growth over next 25 years gets 42-68k before PPP adjustments by 2050... AKA Xi's "modest prosperous society". Of course we don't know what US/OECD per capita will be by then to compare. Throw in FX switch they can that that with either less growth or end up with higher income, 50-90k 2011 international dollars... BTW modest 5% growth + FX movement combo was how any serious projection on PRC > US GDP, literally no one thought PRC would continue growing at 10%+ because that's retarded expectation. Hence it would be very easy, for PRC to hit reasonable high income levels in the future. It's already statistically forgone/inevitable that future per capital GDP is going to be 2x what it is now, that's demographically baked due to income disparity between generations, the real confounding factor is how much/long of the low productive 600m sticks around to drag down stats, i.e. at current mortality rate there's going to be 300m disproportionate poor dragging down stats by 2050, and maybe none by 2075.