Chinese Economics Thread

[solarz]

I am not being bias. I am just not a wide-eye fan-boy like many here who sticks their heads in the sand. These are facts. China is no where near being a developed country. I just gave examples and facts.

China is a vast country with a staggering number of people. You cannot compare it to small nations like Thailand or nations with large territory but few people, like Australia.

If you compared living standards in the US with those Scandinavian countries, the US would seem like a third world country, but of course we all know that this would be an absurd comparison.

True, China still has a long way to go before being a developed country, but the only comparison that makes sense would be to compare it to the US. The US has a similar land size and about 1/4 of the population. Obviously the US is still way ahead, but you can clearly see parallels in development between the two countries. Shanghai and Beijing are comparable to New York and LA, and both countries have dirt poor provinces/states.

 

[Jeff Head]

If you compared living standards in the US with those Scandinavian countries, the US would seem like a third world country.

Sorry, Sol, but this is simply not the case.

I have been to both...and there is no imaginable way to call the US a 3rd world country compared to any Scandinavian country.

Now...if you take the absolute worst case in America...and compared that to the averages living in Scandinavia, someone could make a fraudulent case.

But that is what would be absurd.

True, China still has a long way to go before being a developed country, but the only comparison that makes sense would be to compare it to the US. The US has a similar land size and about 1/4 of the population. Obviously the US is still way ahead, but you can clearly see parallels in development between the two countries. Shanghai and Beijing are comparable to New York and LA, and both countries have dirt poor provinces/states.

The real issue is simply the size of China's population.

When you have well over a billion who, for a long time have been living in what many nations consider poverty...it takes time to raise the average as a whole.

but the Chinese have been making HUGE strides in that direction,. Raising several hundred million out of povery...more people than live in almost any other nation on earth.

They have many hundreds of millions yet to raise...and that will take time.

 

[SamuraiBlue]

What I read so far in the 10 or so post completely ignores the geni coefficients of each nation making it a totally biased comparison.
PRC's is so high that you could say there are two different nations within each other.
What makes the situation worse is that PRC had not provided efficient safety nets to the challenged making the situation worse.
On top the restriction of people not being able to move freely treating rural area registered citizens as second class is not helping the situation.

ALL in all there is still a lot of way to go for PRC to be considered to be in the rich nations club.

 

[kwaigonegin]

I've been to a lot of countries in the world.. from slums to billionaire's playgrounds. For me 1st world, 3rd world etc are just terms coined by economist way back whenever to be used to quantify whatever variables they're using for their own research or for segregation of countries based on some business modelling.
In actual life it's just semantics and meaningless. As many of you have mentioned income in and itself is meaningless. You have to take into affect a thousand other factors to gauge true equality not to mention happiness and joy which for some strange reason is never taken into account even though I understand it's not quantifiable.
Qatar is THE richest country in the world per capita and I would rather spend my time in some 'slum' in Thailand and I can speak from personal experience because I've been to both. I've seen truly evil people driving Lamborghinis and nicest joyous people in the world living in what many would consider $%^&holes.
If by measure of PPP or income per capita etc you would find that almost all countries in the top 10 are small countries like singapore, brunei, lexomborg, qatar, Bahrain, Norway etc
It is simply impossible for a country with 1 billion over population to achieve those types of standards unless you're talking $100 trillion economy which is not possible because that's not even the world's entire GDP! Same with India as well.
India and China will NEVER be in the top 10 or even top 20 simply because of it's immense population.

 

[tphuang]

What I read so far in the 10 or so post completely ignores the geni coefficients of each nation making it a totally biased comparison.
PRC's is so high that you could say there are two different nations within each other.
What makes the situation worse is that PRC had not provided efficient safety nets to the challenged making the situation worse.
On top the restriction of people not being able to move freely treating rural area registered citizens as second class is not helping the situation.

ALL in all there is still a lot of way to go for PRC to be considered to be in the rich nations club.

China is just a different stage in its development. Every country that goes through modernization has to go through a period of huge period of wealth inequality.

Even in Singapore, one of the richest nations in the world, you have a system where all the migrant workers from Thailand, Indonesia, India and Philippines get treated in conditions that you would never see in any modern Western country. You get the same problem in China except that the migrant workers are from the interior and rural part of the country serving urbanites in big cities.

Overall, the Chinese migrant workers still have some possibility (however remote) of upward mobility which you don't see in a country with cast system.

 

[Zool]

What I read so far in the 10 or so post completely ignores the geni coefficients of each nation making it a totally biased comparison.
PRC's is so high that you could say there are two different nations within each other.
What makes the situation worse is that PRC had not provided efficient safety nets to the challenged making the situation worse.
On top the restriction of people not being able to move freely treating rural area registered citizens as second class is not helping the situation.

ALL in all there is still a lot of way to go for PRC to be considered to be in the rich nations club.

Is this true? I didn't know China had a citizen registry that classified rural individuals in such a way as to identify them as a sub-class and restrict their free movement within the country. That would be a significant social policy block to economic growth, if true.

 

[tphuang]

Is this true? I didn't know China had a citizen registry that classified rural individuals in such a way as to identify them as a sub-class and restrict their free movement within the country. That would be a significant social policy block to economic growth, if true.

it doesn't restrict one's movement, but being registered to a city gives many advantages that migrant workers don't have. That's why it's a lot harder to make it in big city for someone from inland China.

 

[Zool]

it doesn't restrict one's movement, but being registered to a city gives many advantages that migrant workers don't have. That's why it's a lot harder to make it in big city for someone from inland China.

I see, so social benefits are greater for local residents along with differences in taxation and the like? Not too dissimilar then compared to the US or Canada when working in a different state or province from where you live. I would think the OBOR initiative and plan to develop additional SEZ's in China would help provide more opportunities for upward mobility and take pressure off of the current handful of major economic zones.

No restrictions on movement or class system then? I did not think so and expected I would have heard of this before now. Not sure why SamuraiBlue characterized it in such a way if that is the case.

 

[kwaigonegin]

it doesn't restrict one's movement, but being registered to a city gives many advantages that migrant workers don't have. That's why it's a lot harder to make it in big city for someone from inland China.

Can an individual be registered in multiple cities? What about a transplant? or is a person 'fixed' to city of birth forever on paper?

 

[Equation]

It's a large Disney World after all.

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