[AmirS2]

>Sure, maybe a Chinese middle-class person can buy more Beijing Frappucinos than a middle-class person in Minneapolis,

No, this isn't what's being said as the number we're talking about isn't per capita.

I guess you could read it as approx 4.3 (1.3bn / 300m) middle class Chinese people, between them, can buy more Beijing Frappucinos than a single middle-class person in Minneapolis ...

(of course this still isn't true as GDP is still only a crude proxy for individual income, it really measures the total of a particular subset of all _transactions_ in the economy).