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Comment by dcolkitt | Hacker News Reader

> They seem to be doing pretty well, economically-speaking.

This is all relative. In an absolute sense, China's level of economic development on Bulgaria, Mexico or Kazakstan. They've had a long period of high growth, but that's only because of the abject poverty the Maoists left the country in. Before Deng's reforms, the country was essentially North Korea.

China's prosperity is much more of a "most-improved award" rather than a gold medal. Their current system has certainly proved better than Stalinism, but that's a pretty low bar. There's no reason to believe that Xi Jinping thought can produce an economy that in any way is competitive with liberal capitalist democracy.

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Visiting China (Shanghai, Beijing, Nanking, Hangzhou) they all seemed like modern cities. Shops, restaurants, enormous shopping centers, coffeeshops, co-working spaces, theaters, bars, dance clubs, etc... Other than knowing I happened to be in China it certainly appear that in day to day life things are pretty good and the experience of living is similar to living in any modern western city.

Beijing[1], as China's richest city and capitol, has a GDP per capita is $38,000. That's comparable to the GDP per capita found in other middle income capitals, like Istanbul[2] ($45k) or Mexico City[3] ($43k)[3] or Bangkok[4] ($36k).

Certainly substantially behind the level of development found in the capitols of highly developed nations, like Washington DC[5] ($85k), London ($74k), or Tokyo[6] ($69k).

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Turkish_provinces_by_G... [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thai_provinces_by_GPP [5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(P... [6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_prefectures_b...

What is the GDP PPP of Beijing vs New York, San Franciso, or Chicago? GDP Nominal is not a good indicator here in a country which seems to be devaluing it's currency willingly or unwillingly.

All the numbers I've cited (including Beijing's $38k) have been PPP. New York is $74k, San Francisco is $95k, and Chicago is $61k.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP_(PPP)_pe...

You are using numbers that are 6 years out of date for a country that has had 6% YoY growth.

The Chinese numbers are from 2019. The American numbers are from 2015. If anything the comparison strongly disadvantages the US, since there was robust growth in the latter half of the decade.

Can you use a single source that contains the numbers for both China and the US, please? For such data points that have a lot of very different possible methodologies it's quite important to use the same source or ensure that the methodology is exactly the same.

I think that is an unreasonable request for rigor for a casual internet forum comment. That amount of rigor you have to pay for, and at this point I think it's reasonable for you to do your own research and present such normalized numbers.

It really isn't much to ask for. If you're making arguments based on really really shaky data you should not be making them at all. Comparing OECD regions to Chinese administrative metro areas is really quite absurd. The variance in Montréal for example depending on what you call a city can be almost 2x.

For example, if you take the Tokyo Metro Area, you find a GDP per capita of 48k, with a PPP ratio of 0.98 we get 48k USD PPP.

Comparing it to the Beijing Metro Area you have a 39k USD PPP.

This took around 4 minutes to do for the two cities, so I really don't think it's a quantity of rigor you should pay for, nor an unreasonable amount of scrutiny for an internet comment at all. I was just trying to get the commenter to realize the issue with using two completely different data series in a comparison.

You can also compare for example Jiangsu and South Kanto to find similar numbers.

> It really isn't much to ask for. If you're making arguments based on really really shaky data you should not be making them at all.

Can you demonstrate your principles with your other comment [0], by using “a single source that contains the numbers” of many of the countries and claims you mentioned in that comment?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25840962

I asked for either a single source or many sources with an identical methodology.

Funny how you asked others to “use a single source that contains the numbers”, and yet you make arguments without providing any sources, as you did in your other comment I linked above.

How do we know your arguments aren’t “based on really really shaky data”?

No one provided sources here. A partial source was provided by the other commenter. But if you ask, the source for inflation control is OECD inflation data, the source for Tokyo GTA GDP per capita is Wikipedia/SCMP, and the source for Beijing administrative region GDP is official national numbers.

If it really isn't much to ask for, then it should be no problem for you to provide it no?

China's newfound prosperity is HEAVILY concentrated in ~100 huge cities. Smaller cities are poorer but livable like eastern europe. The countryside is basically a third world country.

Traveling through US or Europe you won't find people living in cinderblock shacks with a dirt floor and no plumbing. In China it's still the norm outside of cities.

There's not anybody starving to death, but I wouldn't consider China a wealthy country, not even close. There's very wealthy areas but a large fraction of the population still survives on a few thousand dollars a year.

I have distant relatives in a EU country who live in a mud shack with dirt floors. I think you underestimate how poor the poor parts of Europe are.

So it's just like the US but they don't outsource the third world and don't let them starve

Nobody in the US is starving. It's just not possible. The government will give you $200 a month for food and there's free meals for the poor in every major city.

I've never met a homeless person that was starving and many of them turn down free food because they don't need it.

As far as outsourcing, look what China is doing in Africa. Plenty of outsourcing in appalling conditions

1st tier China cities only host 5% of China's population.

What outside people don't see, and especially ones who thump their chests thinking they've seen all of China by being to some small town is that china has probably thousand times more of such small towns, and villages than 1m+ cities. And these are where most of Chinese live.

There are still many places in China with such level of destitution where even moving to a township centre from a village is an achievement of a lifetime to an average person.

Looking only at the cities, and especially tier one/tier two cities, is not a great way to get a picture of the real-world living conditions of the average person in China.

While it is true that hundreds of millions of Chinese live moderately prosperous lives, and enjoy many of the same luxuries that people in developed countries do, there are also hundreds of millions of Chinese who are still living in relative poverty (both relative to people in developed countries, and relative to the country's own urban, educated class).

In November last year the government declared that they had met their target to lift all of China out of extreme poverty by 2020, but that just means that nobody lives on a dollar a day any more. There are still a lot of subsistence farmers in rural areas, and there is still a large underclass that powers the urban economy by working for very low wages in factories, on delivery routes and so on.

China has come a long way in a relatively short period of time, and that's worth applauding, but it still faces some big challenges in raising the quality of life for all its citizens. I'm not an economist, but I expect that there will be a point where the growth can't continue because there won't be enough of an underclass to provide all the services that the current "middle" class takes for granted. I think the government is hoping that by that point either automation or outsourcing will be able to fill the gap.

> economy that in any way is competitive with liberal capitalist democracy.

Fixation on only economy and relative development indexes distract from the measure that matter: comprehensive national power or other similar composite measures. Apart from 1st rate turbojets engines and semiconductors, China has indigenous capability for nearly every sector. Compared to US, no other country is remotely competitive in a comprehensive sense. Relative measures only disguises how far China has come in terms of national capabilities, very few countries have: indigenous nuke, space, military, light/heavy industries, tech, media etc. When US policy makers reference peer competition, it's not referring to other OECD countries, it's referring to China because no one else has similar levels of comprehensive hard/soft power to remotely matter.

"Most improved" hides the fact that China holds the silver medal after brief development period, or that the gap between gold and silver are closer than gap between bronze and no-name junior varsity bench player. In that sense, the Chinese system (tuned to specific Chinese conditions) has already out competed nearly everyone else when considering aggregate factors to general power which enables prosperity. The question is whether Xi thought can make China competitive enough with US to create multipolar world. Seeing as to how everyone is hedging against Sino/US coldwar, right now it's seems to be between strong maybe and probably. Ultimately, Chinese scales means never reaching per capita parity can still outcompete in general. Doing so as middle income country with massive income disparity and relative easier gains only works in Xi's favour.

> There's no reason to believe that Xi Jinping thought can produce an economy that in any way is competitive with liberal capitalist democracy.

Isn't it already? Speaking broadly of economic trends for the past 30 years, China has dominated manufacturing, at levels of increasing sophistication. To the extent it's running into issues, it's been a victim of its own success: laborers in China are increasingly too expensive for China to be a cost effective exporter at the low end. And in exchange it's developed Shenzhen, which has pretty much no competition in its niche. And as far as tech goes, on the whole China is still behind the USA, but at the same time solidly ahead of every other country. The entirety of the EU area doesn't have a Baidu or Bytedance, let alone a Tencent or Alibaba.

You're confusing having a very large population at middle income for being a developed country. China is four times larger than the largest developed nation. Even at Bulgaria-level income development, that guarantees that they'll "dominate" most aggregate measurements. Doesn't really say anything about the success of their economy.

Even within their area of strength, manufacturing, China severely lags the liberal democracies. On a per capita basis, its manufacturing output is more than three times lower than Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Korea, Sweden or the Netherlands. It even produces less than half per capita as the US or UK, who don't even specialize in manufacturing. China is barely above Brazil or Turkey on a per capita metric.

And outside manufacturing, China's level of development is abysmal. It produces virtually nothing competitive in the service sector. China exports essentially zero financial services, media, software, professional services, or travel services. China has internally developed barely any internationally successful pharmaceuticals, Internet properties, film or television franchises, marketable brand names, banking franchises, auto models, jet aircraft, or microprocessors.

The success of China's tech companies is almost certainly because the Chinese government doesn't allow much stronger American competitors to enter the market. The reason Europe doesn't have a Baidu is because Google was allowed to compete in Europe. The entire Chinese tech industry's sole global success has been TikTok. The inability to compete on the global market proves that the Chinese tech industry does not measure up to their American counterparts. This is corroborated by the fact that not a single major software project has ever come out of China.

Yes, China punches under its weight in software, and yes, China's services are not particularly visible in the US, but I assure you they're already making a huge impact, particularly in the developing world, and that impact is only going to growing in the next 5-10 years.

Alibaba/Aliexpress are massive for consumer online shopping, particularly in Russia & Eastern Europe. Alipay payments are increasingly accepted across SE Asia. JD.com (which nobody ever hears about, but is considerably larger than Ali) operates directly and indirectly in many SE Asian countries.

Tencent Games owns and operates a huge slew of globally popular games, including Fortnite, League of Legends, the Supercell suite (Brawl Stars, Clash of Clans etc). Yes, most of these games are still produced primarily in the West, but for long?

Trip.com has been run out of China since 2017 since it was acquired by Ctrip. Meituan/Dianping dominate food delivery in China and are started to branch out to other markets like Australia and Singapore.

DJI I think is another good example of chinese tech exports. Phone & TV manufacturers also do a lot of exporting, huawei makes some of the best cell phone cameras out there and if we don't count that then we can't count samsung's TV & handset tech exporting too, which is responsible for a good chunk of south korea's exports in general.

> Speaking broadly of economic trends for the past 30 years, China has dominated manufacturing, at levels of increasing sophistication. To the extent it's running into issues, it's been a victim of its own success: laborers in China are increasingly too expensive for China to be a cost effective exporter at the low end.

That’s just it. It’s grown because it had massive amounts of cheap labour but now it doesn’t. Can they transition into a competitive economy up the food chain?

There were massive amounts of cheap (and cheaper) labor elsewhere. What happened to those places?

They liberalised as they got richer

It's not just most-improved, it's actually the best economic system in large countries (thus more easily corrupt) that were not benefactors of classical imperialism if all you care about is development. This is simply an incontrovertible fact - India, Nigeria, Congo, etc... were in similar initial conditions and fared much worse economically.

Far from being worse than liberal capitalist economies - which are the majority of the world - it's 73 in GDP PPP per capita out of 193 - solidly above average.

It's also not had a period of high growth, it is still having a period of high growth, with 2.4% growth in 2020 which is by far the highest out of all major economies, and a predicted 7.3% next year. This is better than a lot of low income countries, coming from a medium-high income country.

It's also set on escaping the middle income trap in 2-5 years as GDP per capita goes above 12500$, which is something that most liberal capitalist economies cannot achieve.

So no, it's really not just in relative sense. In performance with its current position, it really is doing better than alternate models of liberal capitalism, and by quite a margin.

I don't support the political reality that makes it work at all, but it is clear that liberal capitalism is not the undisputed king anymore.

>It's not just most-improved, it's actually the best economic system in large countries (thus more easily corrupt) that were not benefactors of classical imperialism if all you care about is development. This is simply an incontrovertible fact - India, Nigeria, Congo, etc... were in similar initial conditions and fared much worse economically.

Compared to countries with a similar culture/demographics: Hong Kong, Korea, Singaporem Japan and Taiwan, mainland China's growth has been way slower.

>It's also set on escaping the middle income trap in 2-5 years as GDP per capita goes above 12500$, which is something that most liberal capitalist economies cannot achieve.

This is still only around a fourth of the GDP per capita in the other East Asian countries.

Mainland China's growth has been much slower because the madness of Mao's misrule set the country back by several decades. If you compare the country's growth since Deng Xiaoping took over and started reforming in the early 1980s, it compares much more favorably.

Japan was a benefactor of Imperialism - its like comparing Algeria and France. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are city states and completely incomparable, and South Korea also heavily used state capitalism and incredibly non-liberal policies until it got richer than where China is at right now. It's also a much smaller country.

As for the rest, you're completely missing the point. Liberal capitalism's single greatest issue for the developing world is the middle income trap.

Surely you mean beneficiary

"Issue" as in emergence, progeny, offspring.

Japan was a beneficiary of imperialism...

CCP China is thriving because of liberal capitalism -- the flood of hard currency that otherwise was unobtainable made all the difference.

CCP China should build monuments to President Bush (#41) and President Clinton. Otherwise they would have went the way of the USSR.

edit: and President Bush (#43) for making most-favored-nation trading status with CCP China permanent.

Maybe the people who live there, set the policy and literally built everything deserve a little credit?

Credit is due for taking advantage of the west's naivete and greed.

Most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status renewal came with conditions. Few if any were met by CCP China and yet American administrations continually renewed MFN for CCP China. Ultimately President Bush (#43) made it permanent.

They opened the door that enabled CCP China to drink the West's milkshake.

This does not bear out in the data - of 60+% employment in the public sector as well as higher performance than (much more) liberal capitalist countries.

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