I think you can it's just shifted by several decades because China took a long dark detour through the Cultural Revolution. QoL exploded in the US in the Post War period, partially imo because we were the only industrialized economy that didn't have significant homeland attacks during WW2 so the US got a straight shot to the top of the heap. China got a similar QoL lift through a similar path, mass manufacturing (this time business taken from the US by being far cheaper) and growth of in country expertise. Now even China is feeling a similar cost squeeze drawing some business to smaller neighbors. They're also just so much larger they can sustain a larger gradient between coasts that look closer to '1st' world costs and poorer interiors where cheaper manufacturing can be done.
Sure, but what's relevant is what sort of political and cultural pressures we're all experiencing now. Maybe China is just a few years behind on the same crunch trajectory we're on, maybe not, but that doesn't matter much to what's going on today.
Well if the complaint is China is experiencing/experienced much more recently a big uplift in QoL vs the US it's because China was behind the US in it's economic development so it had easier gains to make.
We're no where near experiencing the same political and cultural forces because the US and China are vastly different on many axes both in their structure and culture and importantly we're very very different economically.
> Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US.
The Chinese rural population still isn't eligible for local equivalent of social security in their old age (that's only for city folks), and IIRC there was a huge unwillingness to provide financial assistance to individuals during COVID.
> A few hundred million of that rural population have become city folk.
Not legally, IIRC China has an internal passport system, and workers who migrate to the city from the countryside typically remain must registered in the countryside (and are therefore denied access to city benefits).
hukou has changed a lot, particularly since 2014 and you'll find that it exist in its strictest form only for cities > 5 million inhabitants. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou
I think you can it's just shifted by several decades because China took a long dark detour through the Cultural Revolution. QoL exploded in the US in the Post War period, partially imo because we were the only industrialized economy that didn't have significant homeland attacks during WW2 so the US got a straight shot to the top of the heap. China got a similar QoL lift through a similar path, mass manufacturing (this time business taken from the US by being far cheaper) and growth of in country expertise. Now even China is feeling a similar cost squeeze drawing some business to smaller neighbors. They're also just so much larger they can sustain a larger gradient between coasts that look closer to '1st' world costs and poorer interiors where cheaper manufacturing can be done.
Sure, but what's relevant is what sort of political and cultural pressures we're all experiencing now. Maybe China is just a few years behind on the same crunch trajectory we're on, maybe not, but that doesn't matter much to what's going on today.
Well if the complaint is China is experiencing/experienced much more recently a big uplift in QoL vs the US it's because China was behind the US in it's economic development so it had easier gains to make.
We're no where near experiencing the same political and cultural forces because the US and China are vastly different on many axes both in their structure and culture and importantly we're very very different economically.
> Eh, quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory. Not nearly as much a positive delta here in the US.
The Chinese rural population still isn't eligible for local equivalent of social security in their old age (that's only for city folks), and IIRC there was a huge unwillingness to provide financial assistance to individuals during COVID.
Sure, and also quality of life has gone to the moon in China in living memory.
A few hundred million of that rural population have become city folk.
> A few hundred million of that rural population have become city folk.
Not legally, IIRC China has an internal passport system, and workers who migrate to the city from the countryside typically remain must registered in the countryside (and are therefore denied access to city benefits).
hukou has changed a lot, particularly since 2014 and you'll find that it exist in its strictest form only for cities > 5 million inhabitants. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou