Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Citations needed

HDI comparison of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [0]. Notice how Cambodia and Bangladesh used to be developmental peers until 2010.

Life expectancy comparison of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [1].

Mean years of schooling in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [2]

Gross GNI per Capita PPP (log normalized) in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [3] - the only metric Cambodia is roughly comparable to either country.

There is no way around it - the average Bangladeshi let alone the average Vietnamese is healthier, better educated, and richer than the average Cambodian. And this divergence only began in the 2010s when Hun Sen and Cambodia's political leadership began backsliding into kleptocratic authoritarianism.

[0] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/BGD+KHM+VNM/?level...

[1] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/lifexp/BGD+KHM+VNM/?lev...

[2] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/msch/BGD+KHM+VNM/?level...

[3] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/lgnic/BGD+KHM+VNM/?leve...

How and where in the Merriam-Webster are these supposed to be measures of “desperation”? Where is the citation for Cambodians going to work in Vietnam and not the other way around?

Also, cherry picking PPP GDP instead of commonly used nominal GDP to avoid conceding a point is quite desperate. Cambodia has a higher GDP per capita than Bangladesh but you won’t admit that. Can you buy a barrel of crude oil with PPP dollar? Also, you haven’t admitted that you are clueless about the current Bangladesh political and economic mess. https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/stock/foreign-investors-f...

If you want to play the comparison game, the average Vietnamese can also be said to be much poorer and much more desperate than the average Malaysian based on your flawed reasoning.

Here are some really desperate Vietnamese trying to run away from Vietnam into the UK: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8y3l7e2vjo.amp

> cherry picking

Then why are you ignoring Cambodia's abysmal education rate and life expectancy against Bangladesh?

Cambodia has Sub-Saharan levels of developmental indicators, and in fact plenty of similarly sized or larger Sub-Saharan countries like Kenya, Ghana, Congo-Brazzaville, and Angola have outpaced Cambodia despite Cambodia being within ASEAN and with all the opportunities to take advantage of FDI-driven growth from neighbors like Malaysia and Thailand, let alone South Korea and Japan.

Cambodia has had a geographic advantage that most LDCs did not have, and has absolutely blundered it because of horrid leadership.

Heck, the median age in Cambodia is now significantly higher than much more developed Phillipines, so a demogrpanic crisis is clearly looming.

> the average Vietnamese can also be said to be much poorer and much more desperate than the average Malaysian

They absolutely are.

You don't find Malaysians working under the table in California or the UK, or cleaning toilets in South Korea or Japan. You do with Vietnamese.

Poverty in VN is much more severe than that in Malaysia (and Thailand), and the social safety net is almost nonexistent.

And that's the thing - even with such desperation, you still see Cambodians doing the same work Viet would do in South Korea in Vietnam or Thailand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com