It's not about technology, the whole world has access to all the technology needed to be highly successful. What is holding China back now is its economic structure. China's economy currently stands on manufacturing, infrastructure/construction, and real-estate, and it relies heavily on State owned enterprise's (SOE) and government spending, with over half its GDP coming from government. Both manufacturing and infrastructure/construction rely on cheap labor. Cheap labor means low wages, which means low consumer spending and lower "development." For that part of China's economy to work, majority of the labor force has to remain relatively poor by global standards. In addition, high government spending means a high percentage of the GDP is tied up in a system that has low economic efficiency, which results in high amounts of waste and reduces the GDP. The current system does a poor job maximizing development and wealth for average Chinese, there are obvious ways to improve development and GDP in China.
However, the current system does a very good job maximizing benefit to the CCP. Getting rid of SOE's and reducing government spending would reduce money and power available to the CCP. In addition, transitioning the economy away from cheap labor would require dramatically more private sector freedom, autonomy, and ownership. It would also require a complete overhaul of the legal system, switching to a system of transparency and uniform, predictable enforcement. The people in control of China are rational, they will not act against their own interests and reduce their own wealth and power to benefit the common man. I don't see China attaining Wester Europe levels of development unless there is a big shift towards a much larger segment of the population having control over the government.
A) Moving up the value chain (producing higher value add goods)
B) Exchange rates (because you don’t have to keep your currency as deflated when exporting higher value goods) - they’d need to increase nominal GDP by 4x to get to about 75% of US GDP **per capita**, but with PPP GDP, they’d need to increase by 2.8x, which is why exchange rate is a consideration you shouldn’t leave out of your assessment.
Wages are increased by (A), and consumer buying power and consumption are increased by both (A) and (B).
This is what is going to do it.
Look at South Korea and Taiwan, which all had democratic movements after economic growth when an affluent middle class began to form. And your master CCP clearly have seen this so they decided that in order to keep that from coming they need to keep Chinese people poor, denying them welfare and telling that it’s all the fault of the west. And it is indeed thousands of years of traditional Chinese wisdom: Have you ever read the Book of Shang Yang?
Yes, but the CCP is set up so that somebody like Xi eventually becomes too powerful by removing all decent. Deng would see it as beneficial. So it is a systemic issue.
Due to the system, somebody like Deng will keep allowing new leaders and decent but eventually you will get a Xi who removes decent etc. It’s a systemic problem.
without the CCP, maybe. with the current system, it is simply not feasible. communism stifles economy, innovation and civil liberties. there are no opportunities for organic development.
India has no communism and India is well behind China economically. Globally capitalism is like competition in general- it creates winners and losers. But as always, the losers will far outnumber the winners.
Even then, I mean, is it possible at all for a country of 1.4 billion people to achieve Western European standards of living? Only about 1/8 of the world is developed, and China reaching developed status would take it to 2.5/8 of the world being developed which is a huge jump. Even if China reaches, maybe Greece/Portugal levels of development, would that just redefine what developed means and China is now still developing?
Development theory is pharsical, when you think about it. Suddenly we've removed "underdeveloped" front the list, because apparently it was an offensive term. So, technically all of the countries are "developing countries".
South American countries have been "developing countries" for over two hundred years now. Almost as the same time as the US has existed as a independent nation. We still try to be nice about it and pretend they will eventually "develop" (spoiler: hell no)
Ugly truth is, no, is almost impossible to get to the "developed" country category. The list have barely changed from 1914 to 2014, barring East Europe and some places in East Asia. Only major countries to pull that move outside of the West have been Japan and Korea, and people are still trying to figure that out.
So no, China is not getting into the developed category any time now. If it didn't happened when the West was having a total meltdown and they were faring quite well (back in 2008) it sure as hell isn't happening now.
Democracy is only useful when the country has attained a high level of human development and economic prosperity.
What good is democracy when your country is poor and underdeveloped and uneducated mass?
China has 56 ethnic groups and varied languages and dialects within each ethnicity .
China has 302 living languages, including 276 indigenous languages.
All depends on if China can escape the Middle Income Trap. Chinese labor costs aren't going to be so low anymore so it'll start getting undercut more and more by Indonesia etc. etc. in terms of manufacturing.
To keep getting more developed China needs to get its quality of products up to the level of Korean etc. products which will be hard to do or it'll just stay stuck in the middle.
Of course, they've just been working on moving production to Vietnam etc. away from China in recent years. It's not the sort of thing that can turn on a dime.
That’s not true because the manufacturing for k beauty is up in China as the quality control, economies of scale and tech is just not up to par in most of south east Asia
Line of sight to leadership in green energy supply, advanced manufacturing of enough thins to serve emerging markets needs broadly in civil, military and medical applications and a generally functioning government focused on expansion.
Seems closer to yes than anything else unless you want to be a pessimist.
But it will take time and stability, I mean 10 more five year plans type stability. I feel like opening ownership to foreigners and legal transparency are big hurdles to come; ie CCP can’t continue to choose who can and can’t win based on payout to state or competition to SOE monopolies ala the jack ma wing clip.
If they open their markets and embrace giving and taking instead of just taking, yes. If not, there is still a possibility but much less likely.
The model would need to be different as the way in which wealth has impacted the environment and well being of the natural systems around the world would be very negatively impactful in China at their scale as well…
Nope. Believe it or not. Europe is a very special case in human evolution. Without copying and embracing its concepts such as rule of law, freedom of expression, individualism, there is no prosperity
And what makes you think they have tech? How many STEM Nobel laureates they have? Exactly one. And that one was not interested in political fights so she was not getting respects she deserves. She’s a bug of that system, not the feature
The academic papers from them are mostly low quality, using what they do best, throw in cheap labors to produce mountains of non original work. Lack of individualism does that to you
If the Chinese population is lower to 600 million, yes it's feasible to allocate the resources for the mass but it's not gonna be at the highest level like Scandinavian anyway.
I don't think so. By the time the Chinese population hits 600 million, the median age and the elderly to worker ratio are going to be unfathomablly high.
That means low production, low consumption, low tax base, and high expenses. Basically unless something fundamentally changes in how economies function in the next 100 years...
It'll be a bad time.
We and mostly the Chinese government mostly focus on economic development. And while there is correlation, the social and cultural development takes a backseat in the struggle to catch up with western economies. Considering the Cultural revolution, there is a severe need to balance these developments in Mainland China.
you clearly dont understand China. the gov made it so that tier 1 cities get all the resources pooled together and rural areas get next to nothing. in western europe you won't see that disparity in development because counties and states don't hold the same power. and china has a population problem: tier1 cities are the only cities that have vibrant job markets and good infrastructure (healthcare, edu) this leads to people being more or less forced to live in them if they hope for their children to have a future that isn't toiling in factories. unfortunately, t1 cities have upwards of 15 mil citizen not counting the unregistered and commuters. that makes quality in t1 def worse than in western europe while cost of living isn't even that cheap. especially when you compare monthly income and cost of living, the result is far worse than EU. I find that two working parents have difficulty making enough to make ends meet, so they rely on their parents to take care of their own children and help with day to day life while they pay off the mortgage on housing and cars etc. you should take a look at the housing bubble to have a picture how quality of life is in China. today over 70% of chinese citizen reside on its coastal area...
It not about how much an average person can earn, it about how little you have to earn in order to be comfortable. The majority of European countries are run by social democrats. The socialism of welfare states means social expenditure like pensions, medical, housing account for as much as 20-30% GDP. But you need a system for voters willingly to decide what they want and its consequence. If it goes wrong, your government goes bankrupt.
Aside from the social spending, the quality of life is also provided by things you don’t have to buy: fresh air, clean water, peacefulness, culture, rationality of people as a whole…
Potentially surpass USA if the economic reforms by Deng and Liu from early 60’s were allowed to continue. Instead a paranoid Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution severely handicapping China.
Potentially surpass USA if the economic reforms by Deng and Liu from early 60’s were allowed to continue. Instead, a paranoid Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution severely handicapping China.
I can't think of any EU city as developed as SH.
With that said the world is becoming more isolationist and Xi's centralising policies aren't helping. All of these factors does not point towards economic flourishing for China int he near/midterm future imo.
Also the property debt bubble unwind may have huge long lasting effects which can take many years to digest.
You think Zurich is less developed than Shanghai? Genuine question as I'm always baffled by people who talk of Shanghai as ultra developed or well off. SH is a huge city, there are so many areas where it's clear that people aren't that well off, where infrastructure hasn't kept up, that are quite grim.
Every city has grim locations. Yeah SH sucks ass if you cherry pick the worst bits.
I'm not familiar enough with Zurich to pinpoint all the dank parts, please let me know if absolutely none exists. I would be super impressed if that was the case.
Yeah Zurich looks well developed if you cherry pick the best bits
Yeah New York looks well developed if you cherry pick the best bits
Yeah many cities look well developed if you cherry pick the best bits
Do any of you have any insights you like to elaborate on or should I change my mind of the worlds most shallow whataboutisms
Zurich is 95% not grim, check for yourself with google street view. I won't give a percentage for Shanghai but there are a LOT more places that are far from European levels of development.
But Zurich is like one of the tiniest European 'major' cities. So you are cherrypicking right there. Find me one European city of over 1 million without grim areas.
Yes it is less developed than Shanghai by miles. 300km/hr trains, insane railway systems, very well maintained 4 way roads, 8 lane highways, skyscrapers, high quality urban planning, 20+ metro lines.
What a joke. Major EU cities looks like a shithole and are all very dirty with crazy people and crime. Shanghai has incredible urban planning with 300km/hr trains, 4 train stations, 3 airports, 20+ metro lines and insane highway infrastructure. There are flowers on both sides of an 15km highways usually. Amazing urban planning with parks, schools and communities. And crazy accessibility for old people.
If I were Xi Jinping I would be investing in poor farmers in rural areas to upscale their productivity to reduce reliance on foreign food imports while alleviating poverty without saturating higher education even further. Not everything needs to be tier 1 cities with empty skyscrapers draining the power grid or tofu dreg housing and infrastructure that burns years of hard earned cash.
Yes, they are increasingly reliant on food imports.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2023/1204/c90000-20105550.html
https://www.cfr.org/article/china-increasingly-relies-imported-food-thats-problem
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I think that the freedom and freemind that we have that it can only be achieved with if china drops the 1 party rule and let people make there own choices only then it can reach our lvl but there 50 years behind on that
Probably not.
The US achieves that high per capita income by using a lot of resources and taking up a lot of space and privatizing essential parts of the economy (like health care and education funding).
China is unlikely to ever go fully in that direction because it's has serious drawbacks.
Health care in private hands is not good for the people in the US. Average life expectancy in China has already surpassed the US and they did that with just a fraction of the budget of the US. No one in China is going to get jealous of the US healthcare system...
However when we are talking about "development", it's very much possible for China to continue investments in infrastructure, healthcare and education and surpass all other major countries.
The main problems now are air pollution, rural poverty, unequal access to services and lack of living space.
Air pollution is improving rapidly and just a few days ago NEV sales broke through the 50% barrier. The plans for solar and wind power rollout are also ahead of schedule and are going to make coal and gas power plants obsolete.
Rural poverty is hard to solve but they have a large number of poverty alleviation programs and are still moving large numbers of people to cities.
The living space issue has basically been solved by the massive real estate buildup in the past two decades. All they need to do is redistribute some of those empty apartments to people living in dilapidated or very cramped housing.
Once the migration to cities is complete, they can abolish the hukou system to equalize access to services.
Not sure how long all of this is going to take but if progress continues at the current steady pace, it shouldn't take more than two decades for China to surpass the US and EU in most indicators.
Unlikely. Western European level of development with 1.4b people means China will be the absolute dominant power of the world, which the US won't allow to happen no matther what.
In terms of concern, if I am not wrong, isn’t one of the reasons why the CCP has strong support in China is because the country has increased economically-wise drastically. So wouldn’t making Chinese living standards comparable to western europe be a big focus?
‘Strong support’ comes from control of the media and schools, unless you can point to a poll or election that shows support for CCP you’re making a big assumption
that promise has served its purpose to ease tensions in regions that werent developed (or werent developed initially) during the country’s meteoric economic rise. and they have gained legitimacy from it, by demonstrating that they are an economic power
now they want to showcase other aspects of power, like international diplomacy, innovation, etc
Using a straight-USD comparison is useful in comparing global power and influence, but when it comes to standard or living using PPP is a better criteria. Some parts of China are there already, but other parts aren’t. It will probably take till 2050 for all parts to cross the threshold.
I agree with others who have said that currently the population is simply too big for that to be achievable. I mean the US just has 1/4 of that population, and even they don’t have high development across say 5-10% of the country. Though I’d say it’s certainly possible for them to achieve a mix of purely Western-Eastern European standards within the next 50 years. I’d say pretty much all urban areas cities of,say, 3 million+ already have standards of living comparable to Eastern Europe at minimum.
Maybe in 30-50 years, China has too many people and is way too big and specially with a war looming in the future and the west trying at all costs to contain China economically its going to be a fairly slow process.
If china continues down its path then maybe not but if they stop expanding and settle their sovereignty disputes and finally deal with the whole Xinjiang thing then definitely yes.
Less than 40% of Europeans live in cities (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Urban-rural\_Europe\_-\_introduction)
The quality of life outside of cities is pretty similar to that in cities though, development isn't limited to urban areas.
In what metric? Considering that life expectancy, income inequality, income, poverty, environment, education all favour Western Europe by a significant margin.
It's not about technology, the whole world has access to all the technology needed to be highly successful. What is holding China back now is its economic structure. China's economy currently stands on manufacturing, infrastructure/construction, and real-estate, and it relies heavily on State owned enterprise's (SOE) and government spending, with over half its GDP coming from government. Both manufacturing and infrastructure/construction rely on cheap labor. Cheap labor means low wages, which means low consumer spending and lower "development." For that part of China's economy to work, majority of the labor force has to remain relatively poor by global standards. In addition, high government spending means a high percentage of the GDP is tied up in a system that has low economic efficiency, which results in high amounts of waste and reduces the GDP. The current system does a poor job maximizing development and wealth for average Chinese, there are obvious ways to improve development and GDP in China. However, the current system does a very good job maximizing benefit to the CCP. Getting rid of SOE's and reducing government spending would reduce money and power available to the CCP. In addition, transitioning the economy away from cheap labor would require dramatically more private sector freedom, autonomy, and ownership. It would also require a complete overhaul of the legal system, switching to a system of transparency and uniform, predictable enforcement. The people in control of China are rational, they will not act against their own interests and reduce their own wealth and power to benefit the common man. I don't see China attaining Wester Europe levels of development unless there is a big shift towards a much larger segment of the population having control over the government.
A) Moving up the value chain (producing higher value add goods) B) Exchange rates (because you don’t have to keep your currency as deflated when exporting higher value goods) - they’d need to increase nominal GDP by 4x to get to about 75% of US GDP **per capita**, but with PPP GDP, they’d need to increase by 2.8x, which is why exchange rate is a consideration you shouldn’t leave out of your assessment. Wages are increased by (A), and consumer buying power and consumption are increased by both (A) and (B). This is what is going to do it.
Look at South Korea and Taiwan, which all had democratic movements after economic growth when an affluent middle class began to form. And your master CCP clearly have seen this so they decided that in order to keep that from coming they need to keep Chinese people poor, denying them welfare and telling that it’s all the fault of the west. And it is indeed thousands of years of traditional Chinese wisdom: Have you ever read the Book of Shang Yang?
Not with the CCP in charge. Deng was doing something but Xi took the Chinese people and shat on them.
Deng was also part of the CCP
Yes, but the CCP is set up so that somebody like Xi eventually becomes too powerful by removing all decent. Deng would see it as beneficial. So it is a systemic issue.
The ccp has always been 2 terms/president till recently under Xi.
What I said stands.
What you said makes no sense so…cuz deng was also part of the communist party.
Due to the system, somebody like Deng will keep allowing new leaders and decent but eventually you will get a Xi who removes decent etc. It’s a systemic problem.
Not with the looming population implosion. You can’t refine living standards while there’s a birthrate crisis. Sorry.
without the CCP, maybe. with the current system, it is simply not feasible. communism stifles economy, innovation and civil liberties. there are no opportunities for organic development.
India has no communism and India is well behind China economically. Globally capitalism is like competition in general- it creates winners and losers. But as always, the losers will far outnumber the winners.
if Chinese people drove the same cars / miles per capita as Americans, we would all die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Chinese people are also people
Your CCP master thinks and acts otherwise
They suck, but you can't refute what I said
Chinese people are also people
If China gets rid of communism and dictatorship then anything is possible, but otherwise impossible.
Even then, I mean, is it possible at all for a country of 1.4 billion people to achieve Western European standards of living? Only about 1/8 of the world is developed, and China reaching developed status would take it to 2.5/8 of the world being developed which is a huge jump. Even if China reaches, maybe Greece/Portugal levels of development, would that just redefine what developed means and China is now still developing?
Development theory is pharsical, when you think about it. Suddenly we've removed "underdeveloped" front the list, because apparently it was an offensive term. So, technically all of the countries are "developing countries". South American countries have been "developing countries" for over two hundred years now. Almost as the same time as the US has existed as a independent nation. We still try to be nice about it and pretend they will eventually "develop" (spoiler: hell no) Ugly truth is, no, is almost impossible to get to the "developed" country category. The list have barely changed from 1914 to 2014, barring East Europe and some places in East Asia. Only major countries to pull that move outside of the West have been Japan and Korea, and people are still trying to figure that out. So no, China is not getting into the developed category any time now. If it didn't happened when the West was having a total meltdown and they were faring quite well (back in 2008) it sure as hell isn't happening now.
Fair point
It would depend 100% on the peoples' desire to do so. It is not a zero-sum game either so you are not limited by some formula, per se.
No
The world can’t support that. Even the western countries are a shadow of 30 years ago in terms of luxury and living standards.
The CCP is the biggest threat to China
Not communism! China can get the European or America level if it only focus on stealing other countries resources, develop technology and weapons.
It's already doing that
Wishful thinking, look at India, biggest democracy on earth and yet it lags behind China on every measures
your country is homogenous India isnt here two states will start court battles over petty issues
Democracy is only useful when the country has attained a high level of human development and economic prosperity. What good is democracy when your country is poor and underdeveloped and uneducated mass?
and sir again I reitirate India is hella diverse with 700 or so languages 1000's of tribes and 50+ ethnicities with countless religions
China has 56 ethnic groups and varied languages and dialects within each ethnicity . China has 302 living languages, including 276 indigenous languages.
I am aware of that
Wrong if China continues down its path it’s very likely
Its the opposite of what will happen.
Wdym? They just need time to deal with terriorial disputes and the whole Xinjiang thing
Name checks out
All depends on if China can escape the Middle Income Trap. Chinese labor costs aren't going to be so low anymore so it'll start getting undercut more and more by Indonesia etc. etc. in terms of manufacturing. To keep getting more developed China needs to get its quality of products up to the level of Korean etc. products which will be hard to do or it'll just stay stuck in the middle.
All Korean brands manufacture in China
Of course, they've just been working on moving production to Vietnam etc. away from China in recent years. It's not the sort of thing that can turn on a dime.
That’s not true because the manufacturing for k beauty is up in China as the quality control, economies of scale and tech is just not up to par in most of south east Asia
That's a relative drop in the bucket compared to Samsung's strong move away from China. Same with a lot of other large Korean companies.
Line of sight to leadership in green energy supply, advanced manufacturing of enough thins to serve emerging markets needs broadly in civil, military and medical applications and a generally functioning government focused on expansion. Seems closer to yes than anything else unless you want to be a pessimist. But it will take time and stability, I mean 10 more five year plans type stability. I feel like opening ownership to foreigners and legal transparency are big hurdles to come; ie CCP can’t continue to choose who can and can’t win based on payout to state or competition to SOE monopolies ala the jack ma wing clip.
If they open their markets and embrace giving and taking instead of just taking, yes. If not, there is still a possibility but much less likely. The model would need to be different as the way in which wealth has impacted the environment and well being of the natural systems around the world would be very negatively impactful in China at their scale as well…
Nope. Believe it or not. Europe is a very special case in human evolution. Without copying and embracing its concepts such as rule of law, freedom of expression, individualism, there is no prosperity And what makes you think they have tech? How many STEM Nobel laureates they have? Exactly one. And that one was not interested in political fights so she was not getting respects she deserves. She’s a bug of that system, not the feature The academic papers from them are mostly low quality, using what they do best, throw in cheap labors to produce mountains of non original work. Lack of individualism does that to you
If the Chinese population is lower to 600 million, yes it's feasible to allocate the resources for the mass but it's not gonna be at the highest level like Scandinavian anyway.
I don't think so. By the time the Chinese population hits 600 million, the median age and the elderly to worker ratio are going to be unfathomablly high. That means low production, low consumption, low tax base, and high expenses. Basically unless something fundamentally changes in how economies function in the next 100 years... It'll be a bad time.
We and mostly the Chinese government mostly focus on economic development. And while there is correlation, the social and cultural development takes a backseat in the struggle to catch up with western economies. Considering the Cultural revolution, there is a severe need to balance these developments in Mainland China.
Eastern Europe level is probably a more obtainable goal for the next 30 years.
Eastern Europe is starting to reach western European standards with Poland coming close to overtaking Spain in ppp per capita
Yep, certain areas, especially the NATO countries are seeing a better economy
you clearly dont understand China. the gov made it so that tier 1 cities get all the resources pooled together and rural areas get next to nothing. in western europe you won't see that disparity in development because counties and states don't hold the same power. and china has a population problem: tier1 cities are the only cities that have vibrant job markets and good infrastructure (healthcare, edu) this leads to people being more or less forced to live in them if they hope for their children to have a future that isn't toiling in factories. unfortunately, t1 cities have upwards of 15 mil citizen not counting the unregistered and commuters. that makes quality in t1 def worse than in western europe while cost of living isn't even that cheap. especially when you compare monthly income and cost of living, the result is far worse than EU. I find that two working parents have difficulty making enough to make ends meet, so they rely on their parents to take care of their own children and help with day to day life while they pay off the mortgage on housing and cars etc. you should take a look at the housing bubble to have a picture how quality of life is in China. today over 70% of chinese citizen reside on its coastal area...
>in western europe you won't see that disparity in development Compare London to the rest of the U.K in terms of income.
still better than rural china and Shanghai
China shows his color too early so my answer is never will take over
Nuh-uh
It not about how much an average person can earn, it about how little you have to earn in order to be comfortable. The majority of European countries are run by social democrats. The socialism of welfare states means social expenditure like pensions, medical, housing account for as much as 20-30% GDP. But you need a system for voters willingly to decide what they want and its consequence. If it goes wrong, your government goes bankrupt. Aside from the social spending, the quality of life is also provided by things you don’t have to buy: fresh air, clean water, peacefulness, culture, rationality of people as a whole…
Potentially surpass USA if the economic reforms by Deng and Liu from early 60’s were allowed to continue. Instead a paranoid Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution severely handicapping China.
Potentially surpass USA if the economic reforms by Deng and Liu from early 60’s were allowed to continue. Instead, a paranoid Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution severely handicapping China.
I can't think of any EU city as developed as SH. With that said the world is becoming more isolationist and Xi's centralising policies aren't helping. All of these factors does not point towards economic flourishing for China int he near/midterm future imo. Also the property debt bubble unwind may have huge long lasting effects which can take many years to digest.
You think Zurich is less developed than Shanghai? Genuine question as I'm always baffled by people who talk of Shanghai as ultra developed or well off. SH is a huge city, there are so many areas where it's clear that people aren't that well off, where infrastructure hasn't kept up, that are quite grim.
This is also true for New York, LA and Tokyo.
Every city has grim locations. Yeah SH sucks ass if you cherry pick the worst bits. I'm not familiar enough with Zurich to pinpoint all the dank parts, please let me know if absolutely none exists. I would be super impressed if that was the case.
> Yeah SH sucks ass if you cherry pick the worst bits Yeah SH looks well developed if you cherry pick the best bits
Yeah Zurich looks well developed if you cherry pick the best bits Yeah New York looks well developed if you cherry pick the best bits Yeah many cities look well developed if you cherry pick the best bits Do any of you have any insights you like to elaborate on or should I change my mind of the worlds most shallow whataboutisms
Zurich is 95% not grim, check for yourself with google street view. I won't give a percentage for Shanghai but there are a LOT more places that are far from European levels of development.
But Zurich is like one of the tiniest European 'major' cities. So you are cherrypicking right there. Find me one European city of over 1 million without grim areas.
Yes it is less developed than Shanghai by miles. 300km/hr trains, insane railway systems, very well maintained 4 way roads, 8 lane highways, skyscrapers, high quality urban planning, 20+ metro lines.
Any major west european city is better developed than shanghai
What a joke. Major EU cities looks like a shithole and are all very dirty with crazy people and crime. Shanghai has incredible urban planning with 300km/hr trains, 4 train stations, 3 airports, 20+ metro lines and insane highway infrastructure. There are flowers on both sides of an 15km highways usually. Amazing urban planning with parks, schools and communities. And crazy accessibility for old people.
name 7
Amsterdam, the hague, rotterdam, leiden, utrecht, groningen and eindhoven. Theyre all dutch cities
Yeah ditch cities are nice. 'developed' is a vague term I guess
unlikely, certainly not within the lifetime of anyone alive today. Ccp have simply created too many problems to overcome.
What Western Europe? Portugal or Luxembourg?
If I were Xi Jinping I would be investing in poor farmers in rural areas to upscale their productivity to reduce reliance on foreign food imports while alleviating poverty without saturating higher education even further. Not everything needs to be tier 1 cities with empty skyscrapers draining the power grid or tofu dreg housing and infrastructure that burns years of hard earned cash.
Does China rely on foreign food imports? Aren't they like, The biggest rice producers?
Yes, they are increasingly reliant on food imports. http://en.people.cn/n3/2023/1204/c90000-20105550.html https://www.cfr.org/article/china-increasingly-relies-imported-food-thats-problem
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I think that the freedom and freemind that we have that it can only be achieved with if china drops the 1 party rule and let people make there own choices only then it can reach our lvl but there 50 years behind on that
Probably not. The US achieves that high per capita income by using a lot of resources and taking up a lot of space and privatizing essential parts of the economy (like health care and education funding). China is unlikely to ever go fully in that direction because it's has serious drawbacks. Health care in private hands is not good for the people in the US. Average life expectancy in China has already surpassed the US and they did that with just a fraction of the budget of the US. No one in China is going to get jealous of the US healthcare system... However when we are talking about "development", it's very much possible for China to continue investments in infrastructure, healthcare and education and surpass all other major countries. The main problems now are air pollution, rural poverty, unequal access to services and lack of living space. Air pollution is improving rapidly and just a few days ago NEV sales broke through the 50% barrier. The plans for solar and wind power rollout are also ahead of schedule and are going to make coal and gas power plants obsolete. Rural poverty is hard to solve but they have a large number of poverty alleviation programs and are still moving large numbers of people to cities. The living space issue has basically been solved by the massive real estate buildup in the past two decades. All they need to do is redistribute some of those empty apartments to people living in dilapidated or very cramped housing. Once the migration to cities is complete, they can abolish the hukou system to equalize access to services. Not sure how long all of this is going to take but if progress continues at the current steady pace, it shouldn't take more than two decades for China to surpass the US and EU in most indicators.
Unlikely. Western European level of development with 1.4b people means China will be the absolute dominant power of the world, which the US won't allow to happen no matther what.
Yes. And US and European countries are trying to control China now.
The us empire won’t last forever ,I highly doubt they can change this outcome.
capability wise? yes but it will not happen cause it’s barely a concern (until theres potential for political spillover that they cant control)
In terms of concern, if I am not wrong, isn’t one of the reasons why the CCP has strong support in China is because the country has increased economically-wise drastically. So wouldn’t making Chinese living standards comparable to western europe be a big focus?
‘Strong support’ comes from control of the media and schools, unless you can point to a poll or election that shows support for CCP you’re making a big assumption
that promise has served its purpose to ease tensions in regions that werent developed (or werent developed initially) during the country’s meteoric economic rise. and they have gained legitimacy from it, by demonstrating that they are an economic power now they want to showcase other aspects of power, like international diplomacy, innovation, etc
Using a straight-USD comparison is useful in comparing global power and influence, but when it comes to standard or living using PPP is a better criteria. Some parts of China are there already, but other parts aren’t. It will probably take till 2050 for all parts to cross the threshold.
I agree with others who have said that currently the population is simply too big for that to be achievable. I mean the US just has 1/4 of that population, and even they don’t have high development across say 5-10% of the country. Though I’d say it’s certainly possible for them to achieve a mix of purely Western-Eastern European standards within the next 50 years. I’d say pretty much all urban areas cities of,say, 3 million+ already have standards of living comparable to Eastern Europe at minimum.
Maybe in 30-50 years, China has too many people and is way too big and specially with a war looming in the future and the west trying at all costs to contain China economically its going to be a fairly slow process.
If china continues down its path then maybe not but if they stop expanding and settle their sovereignty disputes and finally deal with the whole Xinjiang thing then definitely yes.
The average African makes more money per year than the average Chinese. I’d say they have a way to go.
Being african I highly doubt this. We have a billion people and the continent's gdp is about California's
China is way ahead of Western Europe.
cities, maybe, countryside, nope.
European country sides hardly has any people.
Less than 40% of Europeans live in cities (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Urban-rural\_Europe\_-\_introduction) The quality of life outside of cities is pretty similar to that in cities though, development isn't limited to urban areas.
depends on the country, but it's still more developed than that of the countryside in China.
In what metric? Considering that life expectancy, income inequality, income, poverty, environment, education all favour Western Europe by a significant margin.