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Comment by diego_moita | Hacker News Reader

Easy:

10 years ago Western companies though they could and should make businesses in China.

Today, even many Chinese companies believe that China is not a good place for making business (e.g: AliBaba, Ever Grande, Country Garden, Tencent, etc).

Slightly off-topic: about 15 years ago Golman Sachs would say that the BRICS were the next countries to become rich.

Guess what...

Brazil and South Africa reverted back to its historical kleptocracy, Russia to autocracy, China to communism and India stuck in its economic protectionism.

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> 10 years ago Western companies though they could and should make businesses in China

When I was in college in the late 80’s, I studied Japanese and even did a foreign exchange program there because OF COURSE I would be working with Japanese people after I graduated.

China did become rich though.

China is not rich but a middle income country. China's GDP per capita is lower than Bulgaria and Romania.

Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

All that means is that Chinese people, individually and on average, did not be come rich. China, as a country, did become rich.

No, it didn't. Look at the concept of "Middle Income Trap"[0]. It describes China very well.

[0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap

I'm very interested to see how this picture will look 20-30 years out. Wealth is concentrated in pockets and the average person gets by. China wealth Gini index is moderating somewhat around Japan tier. US Gini is very high and closer to the world average.

Parts of China did, parts did not. The income inequality is really quite striking for what's notionally a communist worker's paradise.

A few years back I was in Xining, an obscure third-tier provincial capital. The main shopping street could have been Tokyo.or Seoul, full of neon, fancy brands and expensive restaurants. But you walk one single block out and you're in a street market with flies buzzing around sheep heads and slabs of meat hanging off hooks.

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