~snip~
But I'm not talking about the living conditions of the people. It's one thing for a country to have nice GDP figures; it's another to have a high standard of living. China also has a dragon economy. But how's the millions of Chinese at the bottom? They're living in dire poverty.
That's what I was talking about, because numbers are one thing, and what really happens at the level of an ordinary person is something completely different. I have watched several documentaries about these mega factory-cities in China and I cannot say that it is anything other than a modern version of slavery where people live and work in very difficult conditions for very little money, and suicides and serious injuries at work are an everyday occurrence.
I have no doubt that those at the top and the upper middle class have great benefits from all this, but I do not see it as a success for the country as a whole, but only for a part of the privileged.