
Is China a developed country? A long and better answer - alanwong
https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/is-china-a-developed-country-long-and-better-answer/article/2160430
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Leary
China's status as a developing country is why the Trump administration can't
play by WTO rules when it imposes tariffs on China. That's the reason he is
outspoken against it. It's pretty astonishing that the United States, which
created the multilateral trading institutions have now lost control over them
and must resort to unilateral actions.

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izacus
Isn't "multilateral organisation" that you "control" an oxymoron?

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sgift
In theory? Yes. In practice? No. UN is for all practical purposes controlled
by the big five with permanent seats in the UNSC. The US' influence over NATO
amounts to control. And so on. Most multilateral organizations are controlled
by one of the big countries.

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alanwong
OP and writer of the article here. Happy to provide more info on this topic if
anyone is interested.

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fspeech
When did China become classified as "upper middle income"? What other
countries are in the same category? And why should Mahathir get to call his
country "poor" relative to China when Malaysia still has GDP per capita higher
than China?

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jmh42
> Why should Mahathir get to call his country "poor" relative to China...?

A simple answer may be aggregates matter when it comes to country-to-country
comparisons. A country's companies and government get 'strength' from the
aggregate first.

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jimmydef
This doesn't make sense at all. So are you saying that India or China is more
developed than Singapore because their aggregate "strength" whatever that
means is greater than Singapore?

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dang
This comment breaks the site guidelines in at least a couple ways. If you
would please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and follow the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

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FundThrowaway
I always find the use of per capita GDP as measure of development as a rather
strange measure of development. You could have a country with massive oil
reserves or similar natural resource wealth that would have a very high per
capita GDP but that doesn't necessarily mean that the average person sees any
of it. I always thought a better figure is the median wealth per adult,
perhaps I'm confused between quality of life and development.

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jernfrost
Agree, GDP is a terrible metric. However it is useful if you combine it with
other measures. Like when you look at GDP and visit a country, you see there
is a strong correlation.

One thing I’ve found difficult is comparing the US to e.g. European countries.
Houses are much bigger in the US but that is in large part due to much cheaper
land and often entirely different build quality. Yet a bigger house and yard
naturally translates to a higher quality of life. Yet it is not an entirely
fair indicator of economic strength.

Sometimes it could be downright deceptive. There was some right wing
economists who deemed Mississippi more wealthty/developed than Sweden by
looking as such metrics as house size, car ownerships, microwaves and TVs. Yet
it did not caputure well that a lot of these people lived in houses bigger
than in Sweden but in terrible condition, poor interior and could not afford
important basic stuff like health care.

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arethuza
"bigger house and yard naturally translates to a higher quality of life"

I used to live in the centre of a city in a flat and I could walk to work, my
wife could walk to work and our son could walk to school.

We now live in a house with a nice garden in a rural area where we pretty much
have to drive or use the train most days.

I'm not sure you can simply map properties from size to "quality of life" \-
I'd say my quality of life is about the same - just different.

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partycoder
People in Norway enjoy a higher standard of living than most Americans. Can
Norway become a military superpower? have an ambitious space program? probably
not.

The US is #1 in military spending. The US is also #1 in healthcare spending by
a large margin, but the additional spending does not translate into better
health benefits. Comparing countries through spending can be very misleading.

India's space agency (ISRO) sent a mission to Mars for $73 million USDs
(substantially cheaper than an equivalent NASA mission) while a large portion
of their population live in precarious conditions.

The "developed country" denomination is useful to get an idea of a country's
living standard, but can be misleading in other contexts.

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forkLding
I would say China is a Newly Industrialized Country
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newly_industrialized_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newly_industrialized_country),
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/newly-industrialized-
co...](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/newly-industrialized-country.asp))
as they are still a developing country in transition to becoming a developed
country simply because you can't group it as a developed country while it
still has so many attributes of a developing country but is steadily growing
toward developed country status.

I'm more relating it to my situation where my most of my grandparents passed
away early due to famine and disease before my parents became adults and might
have never owned a car whereas my parents have much more modern luxuries.

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dlwdlw
Reminds me of during the world expo in Shanghai where people would push their
older relatives in wheelchairs to skip the long lines in the hot humid
weather.

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jimmydef
This article doesn't quite make sense to me. It keeps confusing per capita
with overall size. Like the old joke goes, America has more people per capita.

Going by the same logic, can we say that India is more developed than
Singapore? And all the small anecdotes showing developed status such as that
GIF of Shanghai growing or skyscrapers in Chinese cities are misleading and
pointless. You could take similarly modern photos in cities of developing
countries all over the world. That doesn't make any of them any more
developed.

And statements like these are patently absurd: "But few of them other than
China have produced companies with enough money and ambition to put one of
their products in the hands of Iron Man and have ads splashed all over soccer
stadiums at the World Cup". Most developing countries are home to large
corporations as well. Burger King is Brazilian and I'm sure it has placed ads
in many prominent events. Does this mean that Brazil is suddenly no longer a
developing nation?

And the last part about how a country cannot be classified into developing or
developed status because of inequality makes absolutely no sense at all. Sure
Shanghai is developed compared to Yunnan. But that's not the point. The point
is that as a whole, China is still very poor. As long as a large part of the
country is poor and in need of modern infrastructure, it is developing. As
compared to countries like Japan where almost EVERY part of it is developed.
That's the whole point.

The US created the rules of WTO. Now it wants to change the rules when it
thinks it is not winning by resorting to semantic games like these.

~~~
alanwong
Did it confuse per capita with overall? I thought it made it clear that: in
terms of per capita GNI, China isn't a developed country.

But in the context of the WTO, Trump has framed the question of whether China
is a developed country as a matter of fairness. Developing nations get perks –
they're allowed leeway in phasing out their trade policies that protect
certain sectors.

A central question here is that China is more powerful than any single per
capita metric is able to reflect, and therefore may not deserve the kind of
flexibility that WTO affords to unquestionably weak and "developing" countries
who struggle to transform into a market economy. China sees itself a
developing country, but it's arguable whether it needs the kind of flexibility
the WTO gives other developing countries.

The logical next question in this context is, are the labels "developing" and
"developed" good enough to determine which countries should get preferential
treatment in international trade?

That the labels are no longer adequate in many applications is further
highlighted by the fact that China is so diverse and vast that there are parts
of it that are basically developed countries in their own right, judging by
their per capita income levels. On the other hands, there are many provinces
that are indisputably low-income by all accepted standards.

The point that China is by and large poor by Western standards is addressed in
the first part of the article, and stressed again later. But again, does
having a large population of people who live in abject poverty warrant a
country differential treatment by an international trade body in areas that
have little to do with the poverty?

~~~
jimmydef
> The logical next question in this context is, are the labels "developing"
> and "developed" good enough to determine which countries should get
> preferential treatment in international trade?

Many economists would think so and the WTO was set up with that rule precisely
because people knew that it is an uneven playing field between the companies
from rich and poor countries. Without protectionism, the nascent industries in
developing nations would get crushed. Almost all major industrialised nations
developed by starting out with protectionism.

> That the labels are no longer adequate in many applications is further
> highlighted by the fact that China is so diverse and vast that there are
> parts of it that are basically developed countries in their own right,
> judging by their per capita income levels. On the other hands, there are
> many provinces that are indisputably low-income by all accepted standards.

Here, you are confusing per capita and overall again. Why do labels no longer
matter just because China is larger than most nations? Does per capita income
no longer work the same way if the population size is larger? There are rich
areas in many South American countries but no one would claim that these
labels no longer matter for those nations just because there are some rich
people or places. Why is it so different for China?

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dnomad
> Here, you are confusing per capita and overall again. Why do labels no
> longer matter just because China is larger than most nations? Does per
> capita income no longer work the same way if the population size is larger?

What really scares people about China is that it is a developing country that
does not behave like a developing country. It is actually getting better,
making more right moves than not, and it is setting itself up to become a
major contributor to the planet's wealth. This absolutely terrifies many in
the West who had always thought China would "follow the playbook" and not
become much more than a corrupt, heavily indebted "workhorse economy" where
manufacturing could be easily outsourced.

> There are rich areas in many South American countries but no one would claim
> that these labels no longer matter for those nations just because there are
> some rich people or places. Why is it so different for China?

The anti-China bigotry at work here by definition must take China to be
exceptional. Any rational comparison of China to other nations would conclude
pretty obviously that China is still, on the whole, desperately poor. But this
is not about rational analysis and it probably never was.

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sgift
There are so many metrics out there and everyone can choose whichever suits
them best to make an argument. So, here's another one: Is a country able to be
a nuclear power (note: Able to, not is one) - yes: Developed country.

This metric has many downsides that I'm sure others will be happy to point
out, but here is an upside compared to e.g. the traditional definition: The
countries wealth cannot be used for military while parts of your population
starve (or have less than 12k per year, to quote the formal definition).

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walrus01
"the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet" \- william
gibson

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erikb
The funny thing is one barely realizes it when one is part of the future (e.g.
when using the internet to write this comment), but one also rarely realizes
it when one isn't part of the future (e.g. comparing the Chinese mobile world
and mobile internet infrastructure to western countries, where China is ahead
for almost 2 years now).

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bantersaurus
Question should be is America a developed country

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dmos62
Haha, I felt disturbed by the title and conjured the same counter-question.
When has the word "development" been more conflicted? I think we (or at least
I) don't want to see it used anymore in the sense of "short-term economics
that don't account for common well-being or ecology".

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mirimir
What is this site? It doesn't seem to display anything except the title page.

Edit:
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china-a-developed-country-long-and-better-
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baybal2
China is a developing nation in need of international development assistance.

