[Racehorse]

Far more than half of China has a standard of living worse than many third world nations. Its ridiculous to compare apples and oranges.

What this seems to say is you're not interested in comparing the growth of world economies but prefer to measure the "standard of living" of various groups within some inconvenient national border.  What is the advantage in doing that?

[Nonstatist]

you're not interested in comparing the growth of world economies ?

I'd be interested in comparing the growth rate of "like-sized" economies, but theres no economy in the world that is even half the size of ours or at our level of maturity (re infrastructure, delivery of services, etc), so its apples and oranges. Go figure !