Moreover, the kind of Jobs that Hong Kongers or Westerners do are what is considered as superior white collar jobs. They work as lawyers, managers, scientists, designers while most Chinese are factory workers. So, it is no wonder they consider themselves to be richer and superior in every way.
Westerns could afford to work those kinds of service-based jobs because they can print money out of thin air, give it to their citizens to spend, and live off of that, they don't need to have real industrial and export-oriented economies like China. They don't need to sweat and work hard for now.
I mean just turn on your common sense, how could the US survive and thrive with all of those trillions of fiscal and trade deficits on yearly basis? Because they are a giant bubble and print money out of thin air to cover all those deficits. China isn't like that, China is a real deal kind of economy.
But there is the question of how that could last, judging from the current situation over there, I would say for a few more years at most. As soon as the rest of the world starts dumping the dollar and euro, their economies would collapse and they would get hyperinflations.
Regarding science, since you mentioned it too: