I see the Chinese flag on your profile page.May I ask if you've ever lived there or are you of Chinese ancestry? I'm just trying to get a bit of perspective.I think it should be said that I also visited Guangzhou,as well as Foshan,in 1980.There certainly is a huge difference between what I saw in 1980 vs what I saw in 2010.Thirty years ago,no glass skyscrapers and thousands of bikes...two years ago,many skyscrapers and lots of Buicks (among other makes).But what I saw two years ago,apart from the skyscrapers,strongly suggested a very dismal and difficult life...a life that doesn't come within light years of equaling what I've see in Hong Kong.And yes,I understand that not all the people of Hong Kong live like those who stay at The Peninsula.
Although your perspective may well be far more valuable then mine the question occurs to me...even if there are 10,000 billionaires and 500,000 millionaires in China right now how do the middle third of Chinese live? Something tells me that the answer is "not very well at all".Correct me if I'm wrong.
I have several friends who first visited China in the 80s and the difference they see since then are astounding.
You have seen the Shanghai 1990-2010 picture I presume?
Here is one paired with Detroit from 1949 to 2011.
The contrast is stark.
http://www.occidentaldissent.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/shanghai-detroit.jpg
I first went to China in 2008 and was in Beijing for a while then with the Olympic construction in high gear, and visited 4-5 other cities.
I have been working on a contract with a Chinese company for 2-1/2 years now. I work in Zhengzhou which is a middle of the road Chinese city of 7 million or so. During this time I have visited 7-8 other Chinese cities. I never been to Shanghai though, and only was in Hong Kong back in 2008.
-— The US has nine cities <1 million. China has over 160.
Just the other day about 6pm I drove past one of the two new iPhone factories FoxConn opened in ZZ to make iP5, and it was like being outside a bus terminal, 100’s to maybe 1000+ young Chinese in the street, some buying food from vendors carts, others walking to and fro. Maybe it was mid-shift or maybe a shift change, I don’t know for sure.
The two FoxConn plants opened in ZZ in the last couple of years, now employ about 120,000 in building iPhones.
There is definitely a wide range of incomes and lives in China, and the lower rung is much lower than in the US on the bottom end. They are cold in winter and it is hot in summer, but they have food to eat now as opposed to the Mao era.
The country is simply not the same now as before Deng Xiaopeng.
I think you also still need to exclude village and agrarian life and livelihood from the city and developed/developing China. This part of China is like this par of every third-world country except it is in China, so for example they are better off than African villages/villagers. Maybe even India - haven’t been to India so I cannot say.
The wealthy in China are like the wealthy everywhere, and their numbers are growing faster than here I think.
The big push in China now is to grow a middle class, and that is part of how they are trying to steer their economic planning.
City laborers and shopkeepers have a hard life for sure, but this is where we get to being on par or overlapping the US in the 30s-40s in the lower economic city life, and maybe Europe post-WW-II.
Overall, there is a rising tide. The folks with big boats are floating high and wide, but even those with dingys and canoes are being lifted (if I can stretch the analogy a bit).
Oh, BTW...
I was born in Texas. My father was born in Texas. My grandfather was born in Texas. My great-grandfather came from “the old country” into Galveston as a boy, sometime in the 1860’s. My great-grandmother was my great-grandfather’s second wife, and was Cherokee.
No China ancestry...
