This is disingenuous - it's like saying "Look at Dubai! UAE is the most advanced nation in the world!" You don't get to ignore rural China, those people count.

This is disingenuous - it's like saying "Look at Dubai! UAE is the most advanced nation in the world!" You don't get to ignore rural China, those people count. The average life in Taiwan is very different from the average life in China, even if the top 10%ers live more or less the same. Going back to my original point - this viewpoint you are espousing right now is setting yourself (and the CCP) up for a fall. China has had a good run for the last few decades and it's tempting to imagine that trajectory will continue perpetually. Lots of suddenly rich people get the same idea, and it ends poorly when reality fails to match their grandiose expectations. You can see it a lot in this thread - "China is the future! Look how modern and world class!" I'm old enough to remember this said about Japan, and Korea. It didn't turn out that way and it's not looking like it's going to turn out that way for China either. Growth is leveling off, the economy is struggling with massive malinvestment in real estate, and serious people are throwing around the term "demographic collapse". All on top of a potential collapse of world trade. Do I think China will "fail"? No, not at all. But I don't think it's going to live up to the expectations you're setting. And then it will be interesting to see what happens to the CCP.