China Quality of Life

As much as this seems like a foreign concept to westerners, most Chinese citizens (outside of the European provinces) simply do not care about it the way westerners do.To GP's point, their lives have and continue to improve, with the fastest growing middle class this decade. And before you project western ideals on China and start doomsaying about their impending economic collapse, understand that people have been saying that for a decade too.

Quality of life in China is not all it's cracked up to be.

Having lived in an actual third world country for a couple decades, I personally can't take statements such as "xx is becoming more like a third world country" seriously. I get the sentiment behind it though.If I compare, for example, my experience living in cities in China vs cities in Europe, I would argue that the relative freedom of movement forces residents in Europe to confront the inequality in their everyday lives.In China, on the other hand, such inequality can be e

You should see how most of the rest of China lives

When you look at things per Capita in China things look very different from what you describe. Sure, you have pockets of very affluent societies (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and more) but the majority of the country is not there.

Haha have you been to China? It's really not as bad as you are imagining. The controls on internet access is not as extreme as portrayed in western media. I'm not sure where this mobility issue is coming from. If you're talking about poor factory workers being constrained, well poor people everywhere have a hard time being mobile. Although at least in China's case, they have some of the world's most developed high speed rails to get between places. Chinese New Year

China is incredibly larger for same culture/language population numbers, yet it doesn't have half the issues.While this is all propaganda and the article clearly avoids some details, the truth is the situation is really bad and Chinese people have no reason to look up to the US, as much as US people have no reason to look down on China.Right now, as an European, I'd rather live in China than in the US.

China has a lot of people and they want to live like we do in the west.

For the vast majority of Chinese, the government is doing good to them. They keep getting wealthier and their quality of life keeps going up. You might think it's better to be a starving peasant in a country with western values than a middle class programmer who can't vote, but not everyone agrees. Western values are invented by and for western people and are only really a few decades old (remember when gay sex was illegal by western values? Remember the Vietnam war draft?). Chinese pe

You do not have to go back in time to find elements of answers. In China peasants live in very poor conditions far from the cities （and I can tell from experience that it is much harsher that what we can imagine before going there） and it is no surprise that they expect to get a better life working at Foxconn or other industries we like to call as sweatshops in the western media. That is the best real life example out there, and it is taking place much faster than in Europe at the time.