One cultural factor is the fact that developers have a low social standing in China (sometimes referred to as 马工). This leads to low pay, reduced dating pool, lack of respect from people you meet etc.
But that's almost everywhere.
As an example....I'm an ex-Silicon valley developer, but I am currently living in the Southeast USA and developers are scarcely understood or appreciated here, either.
I must always be measured when I introduce myself, only mentioning my managerial responsibilities when I can tell the person does not understand what I actually do.
The other reply seemed to mention the same thing - "management of other people" is a key determinant of social status in some places.....I wouldn't say everywhere.
Many people in the South (USA) still havent divorced themselves from the notion that the generic, ambiguous, and overused term "IT" or "IT guy" of the 90s - which ranged from "following a recipe" computer maintenance to very high-level sysadmin work - applies to everyone in that industry and your career can be reduced to the following:
1) Fixing a computer 2) Connecting a computer to an internet or printer.
A stark difference compared to my days in SV when the average person would know the distinction between a web/software developer, or a UX engineer or a frontend developer.
That's because control of other people is the primary status marker in much of the US.
[1] Grice's maxims, which I find helpful for gauging my contributions to conversations: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html
"developers have a low social standing in China"
You couldn't be further away from the truth. I used to live in Shanghai studying CS and also working there as a developer and I'd say it's one of the best professions to have in terms of social status.
When you tell you are a Developer/Software Engineer etc. in the minds of Chinese people that often means: educated, intelligent and rich which is pretty much the complete toolset to succeed in (Asian/)Chinese society.
In terms of dating pool I had to say I was quite surprised that when I told some local girls what did I do for living and they got more attracted. What in the west (ignorant) people see as "geek" or "nerd" in China and many other Asian countries is seen as intelligence and success.
I'd say that the social status of developers world wide has been getting better because of the recent tech boom but in China it never was underappreciated.
Edit: Speaking money-wise: Also the relative salary in China for SEs is really good.
I'm hardly pro china, but the society has been pretty aggressive in courting SEs and paying them well (if they are good, of course, there is a huge low end that is quite different).
Now, there is a lot of pressure to move into management, from family and peers; this reduces the number of senior practicing SEs dramatically, and is a huge problem, but a different problem.
Boston is the second biggest location in the U.S. for startups, but as a tech worker, it was a much worse place to be status-wise. Boston is teeming with doctors, corporate lawyers, management consultants, investment bankers, etc., who generally have much higher status (and typically earn much, much more money) than a developer there.
Programmers are literally 程序員, where 程序 means program, and 員 means worker. People also call them 程序猿, where 猿 has the exact same pronunciation as 員 but means monkey. So basically programmers are also called code monkeys in China.
By that measure, the senior developer on a 'special projects' team reporting directly to a CxO could be quite high status. Similarly, the US National Security Advisor only has a small staff reporting to them, but their influence on US policy is as great or greater than the Secretary of Defense and/or Secretary of State.
I think another part of it is a lack of understanding of what developers actually do - people perceive developers as manual laborers that just type stuff into a computer based on what a higher-up has designed/created. They attribute the actual creative/engineering output to the manager.
It's also a low-paying job in a materialistic society. There's a feedback loop of Low pay -> no respect -> low pay that's hard to break out of.