Winning is a strong word, but they have significantly higher home ownership, purchasing power, less drug addiction, and generally safer big cities.

I believe the average worker in a tier 1-3 Chinese city is better off than a living in a North American City. Or at least, my content feed leads me to think this way.

The section 8 people in the US lives better than an average worker in a tier 1 city. Their apartment rentals are inhuman and they make 1/10 of American minimum wage. They can't get a gf and have to resort to prostitutes because of the gender inbalance. Even homeless people have gfs in the US.

Have you looked at China from 15 years ago? It was also said to be in a depression and youth unemployment was also high. Just look at articles from back then.

What people don't seem to understand is that China is developing in stages. Every 10 years there is a new stage, a new revolution, with different winners and losers. Maxxing out on the previous growth engine was already forseen 10 years ago. That's why they bit the bullet and decided to pay the price to transition to the next growth engine. All transitions are painful.

Besides, these are Chinese we're talking about. They'd even complain about the economy being bad even when it's growing 10% and they drive away in 2 luxury cars. When they say they're "barely surviving" they mean their savings account isn't growing.

When you look at the bad economy in China, are you looking at the costs, or are you looking at the development goals? Development goals have costs, not paying those costs to reach goals has even bigger costs pater on. The Made in China 2025 goals have already been largely achieved.

Sources?

What does the stock market have to do with anything?

It doesn't, at all. Unlike the US (and to a lesser extend, Europe), Chinese do not have a majority of their wealth invested in stocks.

Besides, the Chinese st9ck market has been atrocious since.... pretty much forever. You'd think they still live in mud pools if you think the stock market is representative of overall development.

It's representative of their commerce which is the real economic activity in their country.

Most wealth in China are calculated from real estate which doesn't generate any economic activity on it's own and they build more houses than they will live in. Most US wealth are actually from real corporation flow.