[simonh]

Only because their population is so huge. Their Dollar GDP is about 2/3 that of the USA and is 4.5x that of Japan. In a sense it’s set of highly developed urban industrial zones that also has a massive underdeveloped rural area.

[freefrog334433]

GDP PPP is being used to compare countries productivity more often now. Australia has high GDP but low productivity as most is sunk into expensive, unproductive real estate. Every country has their rust belts and undeveloped rural areas.

[smsm42]

And that's why it is called "developing" - because some parts are developed but some are massively underdeveloped.

[simonh]

Sure, and I'm not arguing that designation is wrong, just that people have a tendency to package up a lot of assumptions with the developing country status that don't necessarily apply. It's a technical designation that needs to be taken into context.

My wife is Chinese and last year we went to my father in law's home village in Hebei and stayed with his brother and his family. They have a really nice bungalow they moved into about 10 years ago in a compound right next to the decaying remains of their former house. Almost the whole village has been rebuilt in the last few decades. Hardly anywhere in China is anything like the way it was 30 years ago.

Growing up in Shropshire in the 70s and 80s there were plenty of people in the little villages and isolated farm houses that lived like it was still the 1800s. France too in the early 2000s. Development is never evenly distributed.

[smsm42]

True, that's why they use aggregate measures like gdp per capita, to get the big picture. And China's one is still quite low. Compared even to Britain (which is not a rich country, below average in Europe), though of course there are a lot of people in China doing better thatn somd in Europe.