Keyword here is average. Thailand is pretty developed though they do have serious problems.

The HDI of Thailand in 2023 is 0.802 while that of the PRC is 0.768.

The HDI of the poorest region of Thailand (Northeast Thailand/Isan) is 0.780. The only provinces in Mainland China that have a comparable HDI are Zhejiang, Liaoang, Guangdong, and Jiangsu. Every other province of China has a lower HDI than the poorest province of Thailand. The only provinces in China that can match Thailand's HDI are Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Guangdong yet still lag behind Bangkok region.

The average life expectancy in China still lags by 1-2 years compared to Thailand.

The median income in Thailand is around $7,000 [0] versus around $4,000 [1] in China

> How is that? China has overly concentrated wealth, basically?

Kinda. The Chinese development story is amazing. China basically went from undeveloped in 1990 to middle income by 2020. In 1 generation that is an amazing transformation. Yet, the low hanging fruits of reform and development have largely been harvested.

Now comes the hard part - building a welfare system, reforming business and taxation law, tamping down on corruption, investing in human capital.

Thailand, South Korea, and Malaysia were all in a similar position in the 1990s during the Asian Financial Boom (caused by Japan's stagflation) and the subsequent Crash. South Korea was able to develop by working on the hard part above for a generation, but internal poltical strife in Thailand and Malaysia caused them both to fall behind their peer.

It takes around 2-3 generations to actually go from undeveloped to developed. Some countries can do it in 1.5-2 generations, but then they are still stuck with jurisdictional bad practices (SK, Israel, and Poland are notable examples).

[0] - http://statbbi.nso.go.th/staticreport/page/sector/th/08.aspx

[1] - http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202201/t2022011...

Just a minor nit on the provinces, you excluded Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai which have province level status and almost 60 million in population combined, close to Thailand's 70 million, and a weighted average HDI of 0.87.

Heterogeneity is and perhaps will always be a thing for China, and part of the question is if the poor parts have any low hanging fruit left to mimic the success of the earlier-developed and now high HDI areas, or have those fruit withered by now.

Good catch!

I left Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin out due to the fact that they are governed differently than provinces, as they are under direct administration of the State Council and they are almost 100% urban. This makes them a bad comparison with Thailand as a whole. At a micro level, it might be interesting to compare BKK versus Beijing/Shanghai/Tianjin but Thailand allows free movement and domiciling, so it's not a great comparison.

> the question is if the poor parts have any low hanging fruit left to mimic the success of the earlier-developed and now high HDI areas, or have those fruit withered by now

It's a tough question and depends province to province. The provinces around Manchuria are probably all tapped out, but there might be some opportunity left in Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guangxi, but local and mid-level governance in China (like other middle income countries) sucks.

I have written a lot about this in a previous life, but I'd rather not write a whole Econometrics white paper on HN

True! This is well outside of the original point, but Beijing and Tianjin are interesting cases and perhaps useful for regional aggregates because they are essentially black holes that have taken GDP and capital out of their surrounding areas, explaining some portion of the neighboring provinces' underperformance. Kind of like how New York state would look very different without New York City maybe?

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/16/523632920/...

Exactly!

This can be seen first hand with Beijing+Tianjin versus Hebei.

Those 2 cities were under direct State Council control so it was easier to push economic reforms versus a largely rural province like Hebei, plus they were close enough that it made sense for anyone half ambitious in Hebei to leave for the big city than to stay back.

This is what happened in NY State as well with NYC and IL with Chicago. It's called primacy effect in economics.

It would be interesting to compare Beijing+Hebei to Shanghai+Zhejiang+Jiangsu. I believe the primate effect works the same way, but Hebei is significantly poorer most likely due to Beijing getting too many preference in policy making. (e.g. to mitigate the air pollution in Beijing let's shutdown factories in surrounding area)

There's been some research into this in China (comparative development was in fact the late Lee Kequiang's speciality).

The issue is, research into stuff like this and converting it into actionable policy is becoming difficult, as mid and lower level civil servants don't want to deviate from a literal definition of policies or their mandate as administrations have become much more vindictive due to the economic slowdown. Research like this ends up stepping on people's toes.

http://www.kjjb.org/EN/abstract/abstract18771.shtml

http://www.progressingeography.com/EN/10.18306/dlkxjz.2019.0...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187705092...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02648...

Where can I read more of your writings about China? You seem to have quite nuanced knowledge on the topic.

In the archives of a respectable Econ and PoliSci department and Outlook Archives on the Hill from at most a decade ago. I left that space to return to Tech PM and Entrepreneurship because I also studied CS, nerded out about technology strategy, and didn't have a trust fund to afford DC on a staffer's salary.

Thailand's GDP per capita was 7,066.19 in 2019. China's is 12,556.33. However, the Chinese GDP number is widely known to be inflated[1]. Even Federal Reserve has weighed in on the question[2].

Thailand is not exactly a free place, but the political leadership isn't using economic growth reason for their continued existence and then setting annual targets for every province and city.

But what probably really makes up the difference is the purchasing power parity[3]. If I'm reading that right, Thailand has a PPP of 3x China. That will more than make up for any noise in GDP, population numbers, or GINI coefficients.

[1]: https://www.marketplace.org/2023/07/17/is-gdp-still-a-useful... [2]: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/s... [3]:

> Thailand has a PPP of 3x China.

Where are you getting this? I'm no economist, but based on a simple search and data from wikipedia [1], your number seems wildly incorrect.

> However, the Chinese GDP number is widely known to be inflated

And BIS (Bank of International settlements) notes [2] "There are studies that contradict these results and find that the official data is roughly correct and may even understate the "true" economic growth (e.g. Holz, 2006a, 2006b; Clark et al., 2017a, 2017b; Perkins and Rawski, 2008)."

GDP is just one number that is inaccurate everywhere, it's more of a 'pulse'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... [2] https://www.bis.org/publ/work925.htm

>> Thailand has a PPP of 3x China.

> Where are you getting this? I'm no economist, but based on a simple search and data from wikipedia [1], your number seems wildly incorrect.

Ah jeez https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP?locations=TH... is what I was using but I'm by no means competent in this. Was supposed to be citatation 3 but fell off it seems.

That's not PPP GDP per capita. This is the statistic you're looking for: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat.... China just passed Thailand in PPP GDP/capita in 2021.

I will repeat this a million times on HN until I die - GDP PER CAPITA AND GDP PPP PER CAPITA IN ISOLATION ARE NOT RELEVANT METRICS TO USE FOR HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT.

They are productivity metrics (as in how much shit can country X produce versus country Y). Per Capita literally means total population, so GDP Per Capita is (Total Production in USD) / (Total Population).

Yet we all know there is no society in the world where every man, woman, and child earns the same exact amount of money.

Use a mix of Gini coefficient, median income, health indicators, education indicators, etc to track development.

Is median income even relevant in places with massive informal economies?