Miscellaneous News

I wonder why some people here want to try to portray China as developed country and equally prosperous as US and Europe.

If China is already so prosperous and rich, then does that mean it has already caught up to the rich countries and no longer has potential to grow> Is China's total GDP to be stuck in 19 trillion dollars when it could be 100 trillion dollars?

Why would you want that when China's headline GDP per capita is just $13K. When China's Urbanization rate is 65% and 25% of Chinese labor force is still involved in Agriculture. When just 10% China's population has university degree.

Why would China be equally prosperous to the west when China's global brands are not dominating the world yet?


China's poverty should be seen as potential room for growth. Not a weakness. China has a huge room for future growth and that should not be seen as a weakness. If China's living standards is already as good as the west, that is a problem. Cause that means its not going to grow much in the future.

China has the potential to be 3-4 times bigger than total US gdp. We should not be happy with where China is now. We hsould hope China keeps growing and eventually reaches US/Germany level of GDP per capita

Staedler said:

I don't have any numbers for California or Shanghai, but have them for Hong Kong and NYC.

Regular food is ~2.5x more expensive. Cheap food is ~4x more expensive. Utilities is 2.7x more expensive in aggregate. Individually, it is 5x for water, 3.2x for electricity, 3x for internet (better in HK for this price too), and roughly the same for gas. Transportation is 1.5x-7.5x more expensive depending on whether or not you need to cross the sea / take the tram or bus in HK. Rent (per sq ft) is roughly the same.

So basic costs are about 2.5x-3x more expensive in NYC compared to HK for 1 person. Shanghai is going to be much cheaper than HK. Perhaps some folks live in Shanghai and have been to HK can further extend the comparison.

From online sources, it seems like Shanghai's CoL would be less than half of HK, so maybe a 6x multiplier vis-a-vis NYC?

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That's pretty nebulous. I would like a proper sample along with some concrete numbers. Again, the reality is that most people in China and the US do not live in HK and NYC respectively.

GZDRefugee said:

That's pretty nebulous. I would like a proper sample along with some concrete numbers. Again, the reality is that most people in China and the US do not live in HK and NYC respectively.

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We're talking about how far your money goes, i.e. the discretionary income between the two countries. Whatever the disparity is between the largest wealthiest cities, it's going to be even smaller in the less wealthy, less urbane areas of the countries. If the effective value of your money is 3x in HK vs NYC, it's going to be even more in say Henan vs Kansas. That's how these numbers work. The question is whether the effective value of money is rising faster than your actual total cash is dropping as you switch to different places. Other folks have already given plenty on what those total cash numbers look like.

Kowloon to Hong Kong Island by MTR is ~$14 HKD ($1.8). Tram is $3 HKD ($0.5). Bus is ~$8 HKD ($1).
The MTA in NYC is $2.9 USD. If you don't take transit except for work, you're looking at $20-$72 in HK vs $116 per month.

Electricity is $280 HKD ($36) for 300 kWh vs $116
Water is $43 HKD ($5.5) for 7 m3 vs $27 (actually closer to $32 since HK uses free seawater for flushing)
Natural gas is $152 HKD ($19.5) for 4 therms (~430 MJ) vs $18.5
Internet is $119 HKD ($15) vs $45

At the end of the day, your utilities will cost you around $600 HKD ($77 USD) vs $213. Scale up or down depending on how consumption heavy you are but these are fairly typical numbers for 1 person.

Typical food on the island around $70 HKD ($9) vs $22. The real cheap places are $24 HKD ($3) vs $12. These are pre-tax, no-tips places too. With taxes & tips, it's more like $27.5 and $15. If you're eating out twice a day without searching for cheap places, you're going to be burning around 4.2k HKD ($540) per month vs $1320 ($1650 post tax/tips). If you're super cheap, you'll make it $180 vs $720.

Rents going to be around $2300 USD for both places given similar ammenities and size. In reality, it could be a bit less expensive in HK just because HK has a lot more new buildings and NYC has very few so accounting for building age, you could probably rent a similar flat in HK for 20-30% less than NYC.

So your basic discretionary spendings' going to be $2937-$2989 vs $3949. Except HK's rent is out of pace with everywhere else in China and home ownership and % in multigenerational homes is still much higher than the US, so if we ignore rent on both sides, it's $637-$689 vs $1649. Being cheap with food, will get you to $277-$329 vs $1049. So 2.5 to 3x in basic discretionary spending.

The only stuff that isn't significantly cheaper is high-end brand name electronics like Nvidia 4080/4090s because its basically the same price everywhere that's not tariffed to hell.

tamsen_ikard said:

I wonder why some people here want to try to portray China as developed country and equally prosperous as US and Europe.

If China is already so prosperous and rich, then does that mean it has already caught up to the rich countries and no longer has potential to grow> Is China's total GDP to be stuck in 19 trillion dollars when it could be 100 trillion dollars?

Why would you want that when China's headline GDP per capita is just $13K. When China's Urbanization rate is 65% and 25% of Chinese labor force is still involved in Agriculture. When just 10% China's population has university degree.

Why would China be equally prosperous to the west when China's global brands are not dominating the world yet?


China's poverty should be seen as potential room for growth. Not a weakness. China has a huge room for future growth and that should not be seen as a weakness. If China's living standards is already as good as the west, that is a problem. Cause that means its not going to grow much in the future.

China has the potential to be 3-4 times bigger than total US gdp. We should not be happy with where China is now. We hsould hope China keeps growing and eventually reaches US/Germany level of GDP per capita

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The vast majority of the China supporters in this forum do not consider China a developed nation. We are not the same as the Jai Hinds. We praised China's achievements and resilience, but we are not delusional to proclaim that China have becomed a developed nation. Still, why should we not be proud when China had achieved so much, even when it is still a developing nation?

The Chinese leadership, do not practice self-glorification like their counterparts in India. They are happy with what their nation had achieved, but they never consider China a developed nation. When Trump dropped China from the US's own list of developing nations, the Chinese government was livid. I'm confident that even if China achieves developed nation status by every conceivable metric, the Chinese leadership would still consider China a developing nation. It's because they want to avoid the pitfalls of the Qing Dynasty and the Western leaders. Because once you consider your nation's development to be complete, bad things start to happen. It starts with complacency, then arrogance, and then finally delusional insanity. Under the leadership of the CPC, China will continuously develop, no matter it's development level.

What most of the China supporters in this forum are very upset about is the efforts by the West and it's lackeys to stop China's development today. We know what the West ultimately wants to do with China. That is why we despise anyone saying that China must kowtow to the West. This is exactly what the West wants. They want China to submit to them. Just like the late Qing Dynasty, the ROC, Japan, South Korea, and Russia in the past. The moment China submits to the West, they will do their utmost to colonize, bully, humiliate, impoverish, and finally break it up. It is an existential matter for China. We and China will never accept submission to the West, no matter their threats and coercion. That is why we support the modernization of the PLA and the expansion of China's nuclear deterrence. So that the West can never resort to war to put China down.

You argued that the West has the upper hand in this cold war with China. No they don't. Not anymore since 2018. They once had the upper hand when Trump initiated the Trade War. What they have never considered was the resilience and ingenuity of the Chinese people. They used every tool in their kit short of open warfare to push China down. China went through some truly horrible times from 2018 - 2022. Trade war, HK riots, Covid, hostile neighbours, etc. Yet after all that, it's the West that came out weaker.

So it's not wrong to praise China and call the arrogant West out. Wumaos are not Jai Hinds, period. It's insulting to be compared with that pathetic group of morons and degenerates.

Oh, someone is getting sold out soon I think.

tamsen_ikard said:

Trade wars can be bad for Europe but its also bad for China as well. Especially now, When China is no longer contract manufacturer but active brand builder.

Chinese brands will be the primary driver of China's future growth. So, Chinese branded Cars, Tvs, Computers, Phones, Apps such as Tiktok and Temu. These Chinese branded products will have much bigger profit if they have access to US, EU and other western allied markets.

This is China's biggest long term crisis, How to keep US and EU market for Chinese products over the long term.

So far I think its hopeless. The trend is extremely negative.

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Chinese companies are skipping brand development when possible, just buy existing brands
Volvo
GE Appliances
ThinkPad
Toshiba TVs (In a strange reversal, it is a low end brand of Hisense)
Hoover/Milwaukee Tools/Ryobi (Techtronic company HK)

tamsen_ikard said:

I wonder why some people here want to try to portray China as developed country and equally prosperous as US and Europe.

If China is already so prosperous and rich, then does that mean it has already caught up to the rich countries and no longer has potential to grow> Is China's total GDP to be stuck in 19 trillion dollars when it could be 100 trillion dollars?

Why would you want that when China's headline GDP per capita is just $13K. When China's Urbanization rate is 65% and 25% of Chinese labor force is still involved in Agriculture. When just 10% China's population has university degree.

Why would China be equally prosperous to the west when China's global brands are not dominating the world yet?


China's poverty should be seen as potential room for growth. Not a weakness. China has a huge room for future growth and that should not be seen as a weakness. If China's living standards is already as good as the west, that is a problem. Cause that means its not going to grow much in the future.

China has the potential to be 3-4 times bigger than total US gdp. We should not be happy with where China is now. We hsould hope China keeps growing and eventually reaches US/Germany level of GDP per capita

Click to expand...

The larger the country is, the harder it is to bring the standards of living up for every individual (GDP per capita). Basic life-sense.

For example, hypothetically, let's say Singapore has to attract thousands of large factories (FDI) to be prosperous, whereas China, due to its enormous population would need to bring hundreds of thousands of such factories.

And we know that FDI is not infinite, domestic business ideas are not infinite, capital required for investing is not infinite, and factors of production are not infinite.

Therefore, every next foreign investor and domestic business running is harder to get than the last one, it is not infinite supply.

That's why it is funny to compare for example Mickey Mouse vassals such as Estonia, and Lithuania against China in standards of living.

Better compare the current China, to the current India and Africa which all roughly have the same population sizes, to be honest.

Let's say we take India for example, it has a 4-5 times smaller GDP than China, 7 times smaller global exports share, 6 times smaller global manufacturing share, 6 times less electricity production, 9 times less steel production, 25 times fewer patents yearly, 16 times less R&D spending, etc...

China currently spends more electricity yearly than all G7 countries combined and, from a pure industrial standpoint is miles ahead of them.

Western service-based economies and their per capita GDPs are useless metrics for comparing different nations' economic powers.

Only some kind of kids look at those metrics. Meanwhile, even with such a smaller GDP per capita, Chinese people are still miles ahead in terms of happiness, support of their government, and less division in society, in basically all kinds of polls from Western agencies.

So if even the one thing that useless consumerism and service-based economies are good for (inner social peace), the West failed too.

I don't see how it will help the US in a war with China their GDP per capita. Meanwhile, I see how Chinese industrial might help China.

China doesn't need to kowtow to the West because it is the one who has all the real goods whereas the West (except Japan and Germany, a few more...) has some illusionary paper money printed. This is an objective fact. They need China more than China needs them, that's for sure.

Let's see triple-digit hyperinflation, empty Walmarts, Home Depots, Costcos, Targets, and civil wars, in Western societies without Chinese goods on their shelves.

Trump tried that bullshit trade war and what happened? Their deficit with China only skyrocketed since then to even more comical proportions.

Ok, the US doesn't want Chinese goods anymore, but how are they going to run their 80% service-based ponzi economy then? (Service = reselling mostly Chinese goods to its own citizens for a profit with printed money previously given to them from social programs and other government channels).

They would get into hyperinflation really quickly (what follows is less corporate profits, firings, unemployment, falling fake 'GDP', and civil riots), plus China would dump all of their currencies and bonds, creating even bigger inflationary pressure from all across the world - total apocalypse.

Where is the infrastructure in the US required from them to go back to the real economy from the decades of consumerism? Where are the skilled workers in manufacturing, who are also willing to work those kinds of 'hard' jobs, where are their industrial ecosystems ready for it, etc...?

Indian colonization of Taiwan, JH redditors will soon add it to the map of Akhand Bharat


It will be interesting. Future culture shock like Singapore.

#doubt