But besides GDP per capita, I think your criticism of GDP PPP per capita is wrong. You can live a very decent life in China. In some ways, it’s superior to Americans for many Chinese people. You just have to go to China to see it for yourself.
Sure, China has a fine quality of life - similar to Thailand. But they aren't going to be able to afford cutting edge healthcare, deep social program or a bottomless defense budget on 1/6th the GDP per capita.
Sure the wealth concentrated in tier 1 cities makes them look shiney but China isn’t just its tier 1 cities it includes its rural poverty too.
But I’ve experience things like healthcare and if you think it’s on par with the US or Europe, oh man, that’s painfully not true.
Do you think Americans can afford cutting edge health care? Or even any healthcare at all? You keep mentioning "cutting edge" healthcare like China doesn't have it. In the US, basic health care is expensive and tied to your employer. If you're out of a job, you're out of health insurance mostly. In China, they have universal health care where basic health care is cheap. If you want private health care in China, it's expensive. So you tell me which is better.
I think a ton of people make the mistake of comparing average China to average US and then say "see! I told you China is bad". In reality, many parts of China 30 years ago barely had electricity and running water. It's more important to talk projections rather than August 2025.
Maybe you misunderstood? Clearly Shanghai is nicer than Bangkok, but China is not 1.4B people living in Shanghai, you need to include the people living on a few dollars per days in rural Chinese areas.
> What do you think is the trend for Thailand and China in the next 10 years?
I have no idea, but even if China continues to grow at 5% per year (if they're lucky), in a decade they might have a per capita GDP of what? $20,000? That puts them on par with Panama or Uraguay?
> Do you think Americans can afford cutting edge health care
Absolutely. Just look at things like CAR-T adoption, it's the highest in the world. Far exceeding Europe and Europe exceeds China.
> In China, they have universal health care where basic health care is cheap. If you want private health care in China, it's expensive. So you tell me which is better.
Cheap healthcare in China is just that - cheap. I've been to Chinese hospitals. I've seen doctors prescribe antibiotics for viral infections. I've seen them recommend "hot water" as a cure.
It may be convenient and cheap, but quality is terrible unless you get to the high end private hospitals and guess what? CAR-T therapy cost hundreds of thousands everywhere in the world.
> I think a ton of people make the mistake of comparing average China to average US and then say "see! I told you China is bad".
Why would you not compare averages? Or would you prefer to compare Shanghai to say the top 10% of income earners in the US? We could do that too if you'd like.
The truth is that China, while making great strides, is still about as rich as Thailand on average. They need decades are very strong economic growth to even match the US, let alone exceed it.
All while facing a massive debt overhang and demographic changes that will only slow economic growth.
What this means is the 60%, i.e. largely the newer generations are already at 20000 usd per capita, 40000 by PPP (obviously naive per capita doesn't map to actual spectrum household #s). This also means they generate disproportionate amount of economic activity, i.e. they're responsible for 90%+ of annual growth, growth calc from bigger per capita base. AKA one tertiary educated skill worker making per capital replace 6+ rural farmers/informal economy workers - high skill demographic dividend more than offsets net low population loss concentrated in under productive cohorts.
Structurally all PRC has to do for aggregate population to do well in the future... is for natural mortality to cull those that aren't doing well from statistics in the coming decades. Because most are already doing "well", Reality is T1/T2 cities already have basically developed country life expectancy (80+ years), we can wank about "advanced" healthcare all you want but whatever they're doing is working. And LBH the only reason it's not higher is Chinese men love their smokes. And LB even more honest, they're just spinning up their pharma sector, they will have access to leading treatments on the cheap once sector matures, like they get everything else cheap after indigenization, i.e. out of pocket MRIs are cheap now.
To broadly speculate on PRC per capital GDP trends, this is not economic prognosis but more exploring statistical composition effect for those insisting on using per capital GDP as metric. The TLDR is many scenarios where PRC growing at 3-5% gets them upper high income per capita stats in a few decades:
What we will likely see is PRC is going to continue grow at 4-5% and eventually slap the FX lever, i.e. appreciate rmb 20-30% after they've build out enough industrial sectors to make western incumbents uncompetitive. Statistically, Over time, greater mortality of low-productive cohort = PRC per capital will converge with T1/T2, i.e. skilled worker income. Again effectively already 20k+ /w 3-5% growth over next 25 years gets 42-68k before PPP adjustments by 2050... AKA Xi's "modest prosperous society". Of course we don't know what US/OECD per capita will be by then to compare. Throw in FX switch they can that that with either less growth or end up with higher income, 50-90k 2011 international dollars... BTW modest 5% growth + FX movement combo was how any serious projection on PRC > US GDP, literally no one thought PRC would continue growing at 10%+ because that's retarded expectation. Hence it would be very easy, for PRC to hit reasonable high income levels in the future. It's already statistically forgone/inevitable that future per capital GDP is going to be 2x what it is now, that's demographically baked due to income disparity between generations, the real confounding factor is how much/long of the low productive 600m sticks around to drag down stats, i.e. at current mortality rate there's going to be 300m disproportionate poor dragging down stats by 2050, and maybe none by 2075.
It’s hard to take your comment seriously when you’re clearly just making up numbers.
The truth is that China, while making great strides, is still about as rich as Thailand on average. They need decades are very strong economic growth to even match the US, let alone exceed it.
Cheap healthcare in China is just that - cheap. I've been to Chinese hospitals. I've seen doctors prescribe antibiotics for viral infections. I've seen them recommend "hot water" as a cure.
Maybe you misunderstood? Clearly Shanghai is nicer than Bangkok, but China is not 1.4B people living in Shanghai, you need to include the people living on a few dollars per days in rural Chinese areas.
The average impoverished American on Mediacid is getting far superior healthcare to poor Chinese (I've seen it with my own eyes).
Who cares if it's the largest economy? What matters is productivity per person, which is around what Thailand produces - $13,000 USD per capita.
One question I love asking is the pro-China faction is - assuming China grows at 5% per year (it's no longer growing at 7-8%), how long would it take to catch up to the US on a GDP per capita basis with the US growing an anemic 2%?
What people forget is the US growing at 2% is equivalent to to China growing at 12% (since per capita GDP is 6x).
China needs to stop their slowing economy all in an environment of reduced global trade and a terrible demographic shift.