A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。
A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。 - Hallo World !!! News Today in World, In this article you read by title A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。, We've prepared this article well so you can read and retrieve information on it. Hopefully the contents of the post
Article LIFT, What we write can you understand. Okay, happy reading.
Title : A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。
link : A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。
You are now reading the article A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。 With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-reality-check.html
Title : A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。
link : A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。
news-today.world | At the risk of being a total geek doing a geography essay in my free time, I am going to do a piece that deals with some of the idiotic crap that my father says. Now one of the things that he says quite often without checking the facts is this statement: 现在中国人很有钱。And that means 'Chinese people (in China) are very rich' - or he's not just talking about being comfortably middle class, he is claiming that they are very rich, 很有钱. Well, that's a thoroughly misleading statement because whilst some people in China are indeed crazy rich, the majority of them are still very poor by most standards. Is my father that naive? No, not really - he just has a blind spot: you see, he is of the generation where he was convinced that white people would always look down on Chinese people. He was brought up in British Malaya, back when it was a British colony, when the white man ruled over his Asian subjects and naturally assumed a position of superiority. So my dad would like to believe that China is full of millionaires and billionaires today and as the new global economic superpower, white people would offer Chinese people (or rather, offer him personally) more respect. That's all bullshit of course - if you want respect, you earn it as an individual, you don't refer people to China's latest economic statistics and then demand respect that way. My dad's reasoning is rather warped, so let's not go there - let's instead deal with the claim that "现在中国人很有钱".
Are there rich people in China today? Of course there are - but let's look at the statistics: there are currently 476 billionaires in China and whilst that figure is impressive, they do not represent your average Chinese person. Not by a long way. But what about millionaires then? I think the figure of US$1 million in assets a more realistic yardstick - after all, even I am a multi-millionaire and I don't even think I'm that special. I came from a humble, working class family in Ang Mo Kio and made my first million before 30 and now that I'm 42, let's just say I have a few million dollars in assets and investments: I don't even consider myself that rich compared to some of the people I work with. As Nick Young said in the movie Crazy Rich Asians, I'll say I'm comfortable although more money would be nice, of course! I remember when I was a child, the word "millionaire" would conjure the image of a tycoon sipping champagne on his private jet or yacht, being ridiculously wealthy and leading the kind of lifestyle that was portrayed in the film Crazy Rich Asians. Nowadays, one million US dollars would probably buy you a decent apartment in a nice part of town in a major city like London, Singapore or Los Angeles and if you want something bigger, a million just isn't enough anymore. Oh yeah, you'll need a few tens of millions to fund that kind of fantasy luxury lifestyle in 2018.
So even by that modest yardstick of US$1 million, China has about 1.6 million millionaires in 2016 though that figure is expected to increase to 2.3 million by 2020. Compare that to the UK, a much smaller country than China with just 66 million, there were already 2.4 million millionaires back in 2016 . The population of China is 1.379 billion back in 2016 and so that means just 0.116% of China's population are actually millionaires by that US$1 million yardstick. So out of every 1000 Chinese citizens, only one fits my dad's description of "现在中国人很有钱"? Hold on a minute, you may say at this point, what is this I hear about a Chinese middle class of approximately 300 to 400 million people, bigger than the current population of the United States, enjoying a lifestyle akin to their counterparts in rich countries like Australia, Canada and France? Yeah, that figure has been used a lot but you can quite easily be middle class in China without amassing US$1 million in wealth. Things can be very cheap in China compared to the West. When I was in Shenzhen earlier this year, I made a short journey on the metro: I paid just 2 RMB (US$0.29, £0.23, S$0.40) for that journey - if you were to do the same thing in central London, that ticket would cost you £4.90 if you bought a paper ticket or £2.40 if you paid with a card. I could go on and compare everything from eating out to shopping for clothes to how much it would cost you to visit the dentist - you certainly don't need US$1 million to live quite a comfortable lifestyle in China whereas you would need a lot more than that in a city like London, Sydney or New York.
I have an Indonesian client I get along extremely well with and when I was out for drinks with him at Marina Bay Sands earlier this year, he actually revealed how much he earns - he didn't exactly tell me, but he told me how much his head of sales earns and he said something like, "she makes an insane amount of money through commissions, like that's about four times what I make". So naturally the thing I did was to divide the figure he had given me by 4, to arrive at a figure that told me how much he made a year in US dollars - let's just say that it was pretty similar to what I make a year in here in London. However, with that same income, he lives like a king in Indonesia: he has a a few cars and never ever drives, instead he has two chauffeurs. His wife doesn't have to work but she isn't exactly a housewife either: that word 'housewife' would imply that she is staying at home, taking care of the kids, cooking the meals and cleaning the toilets. Oh no, she merely supervises the maids (note I said maids, plural, not maid, singular) as they do their chores, she instructs the cook to prepare her husbands favourite dishes and she ensures that the nannies are doing a good job taking care of her children whilst she has plenty of free time to see her friends, go to the spa, chill by the pool and go shopping. Most Singaporean families have one maid, his household employs a total of ten staff in his house, including a security guard. Yeah, he would probably look at my house in London and think, oh dear Alex, why are you so poor? Where are your servants? You cook your own meals? You walk home from the local supermarket? I thought you worked in corporate finance?
So let's take a closer look at China's new urban so-called "middle class", according to Investopedia, China's urban middle class accounts for 146 million workers who earn an average annual income of US$11,733. That's hardly middle class by British standards, as it is about £9,216 or just £768 a month - in fact, only people who work part time, say a mother with a baby who does some part-time work in her free time would earn that kind of money as even a waitress or a cleaner would earn more than that. Certainly compared to the middle class in somewhere like Singapore, they are a lot poorer if you were to merely look at the numbers, but nonetheless, as mentioned above: the cost of living in a country like China is considerably lower so they are enjoying a fairly high standard of living there - they will feel the pinch is if they travel to somewhere like Europe or America and realize just how much more expensive things are there. Likewise, if they are buying something like a a pair of shoes, an imported Italian product would be a lot more expensive than a local Chinese brand. But as long as they live in China and spend their money in China on mostly local products and services, then the standard of living for them is by no means any inferior than their counterparts in the West. So whilst I may have more money in the bank if you want to count how many dollars (or pounds, euros or whatever currency you want to use) in the bank, but since I live in London, things are much more expensive here so it works out that I still have about the same standard of living as the middle class in China - quite unlike my rich Indonesian friend!
But then again, there's a fairly large gap between having US$1 million in assets and leading a fancy, middle class lifestyle. Allow me to introduce you to my friend Rita (obviously not her real name) whom I know from work - now Rita is 26 years old and had been working for a few years now. Her parents weren't rich enough to pay for her university degree which was a 4-year programme, so she is saddled with quite a lot student debt. In fact, she told me that she still has about £60,000 in student loans to pay off and there's interest on that to pay as well. That's a pretty typical situation for a lot of young graduates these days! Rita fortunately is well educated, highly skilled and has a good job, but that also means that she earns enough to have to start repaying those loans (the rules in the UK state that those who are unemployed or earning very little can put off repaying their student loans). So for now, she is just paying the minimum every month for her student loan repayments, the rest of her income is spent mostly on rent as it is expensive to live in a place like London along with the essentials like her phone bills, food and travel. Nonetheless, if you follow Rita on Instagram, you can see that she is a beautiful, fashionable young professional in London having a good time - you will see her clothed in the latest designer fashion, going clubbing, chilling out at the spa, dining in the finest restaurants and at least a few times a year, she would go on nice holidays to exotic destinations. If you had no idea about her debts and you only looked at the pictures she posts on Instagram, you would get the impression that she is rich or at least that she is enjoying life here in London.
So is Rita rich or poor? That's not an easy question to answer because if you were to look at the amount Rita is paid by her employers, then it would appear that she is rather rich because she is earning quite a lot of money (hey, that's why you want to work in banking). But if you were to look at her bank account, that's a different story: she is poor because she is in debt. Most of her monthly salary goes on her rent, the essentials and student loan repayments, she then spends what is left over on shopping sprees, trips to the spa and holidays - she has virtually no savings and is often running into overdraft territory towards the end of the month. Given her financial situation, there's no way she can get a mortgage from the bank (not without a sizable deposit to begin with), so she is stuck on the rental market for a long time to come and won't be able to get on the property ladder any time soon. But then again, she makes choices like taking an Uber home from work rather than use public transport - so you can see why she burns through her salary rather quickly. So from that point of view, she is poor - or at least she isn't simply earning enough to sustain the kind of luxury lifestyle she would like to lead. The Chinese phrase 打肿脸充胖子does describe her financial situation very accurately. However, Rita's situation is hardly unique - so when you see a Chinese tourist in a luxury 5-star hotel spending a lot of money, can you assume that 那个中国人很有钱 (that Chinese person is very rich)? No, of course not.
Now the issue is really down to a question of measures you use to define "很有钱" (very rich). So staying with the example of Rita - if you're purely looking at how much she earns, then yes she is rich or at least middle class. If you look at her lifestyle, then oh yes definitely she is rich. But given that I work in banking, the conventional benchmark we use is one's personal net worth (hence the phrase 'high net worth individual' or HNWI to describe a truly rich person). Wealth is always measured by how much we have in assets - now that typically includes money in the bank along with other investments like stocks and shares, bonds, property, even art and fine wine can form part of your portfolio of assets as long as it clearly has value. So if you have a famous painting in your house, would you be able to find a buyer for it easily, a buyer who will be willing to pay you a lot of money for it? Now even though Rita spends a lot on designer handbags, shoes and clothes, there really isn't a market for it - so if she were to sell a pair of her designer Jimmy Choos on eBay, she could at best hope to get 25% of the original price she paid for it - there's just no way she can anything near the original price once it has entered the second hand market especially in the world of fashion, as fashionistas would look at those shoes and think, "oh that's so spring-summer 2017, that's no longer trendy". Some goods like that do depreciate quite quickly, whilst if you were to make wise investments in the property market, you could see a healthy year on year appreciation of your investments. I bought a flat in central London in 2004 for £250,000 and recently, a flat in the same building exchanged hands for £840,000. That's how fast property prices in London rise - can't say the same about Rita's designer handbags, dresses and shoes. But hey, she wants to look fabulous on Instagram for her followers.
Am I being perhaps a bit too harsh on Rita? Yes, after all, she is somehow funding her luxury lifestyle despite being in debt and having no savings. She is still a lot better off than poor people who are genuinely struggling to make ends meet and are suffering in poverty. Whilst Rita clearly isn't poor, she isn't rich either - it is ironic that for a woman who works in banking, her financial situation is in a mess given how she is clearly spending beyond her means with this aspirational lifestyle. I'm just using her as an example to illustrate the point that you can give the impression that you are leading a rich or at least middle class lifestyle without actually being rich at all. I recall a conversation I had with my mother on this issue - she pointed out that people get the impression that the Chinese are very rich today because of the way Chinese tourists are spending a lot of money when they visit somewhere like Singapore. I had to point out to her that a lot of Chinese people spending money like are not necessarily rich - they may be quite similar to Rita: trapped in debt but desperate to enjoy a taste of the high life. So if you want to say something like "现在的中国人肯花很有钱" (the Chinese are now big spenders), yeah that would be a far more accurate reflection of the situation rather than 现在中国人很有钱 (the Chinese are now very rich). You simply cannot look at the way someone spends money and assume that they are rich and the case of Rita clearly illustrates that rather complex relationship between spending and actual wealth.
Furthermore, you have to consider that the cost of living does vary from country to country and I'm merely pointing out that whilst this new Chinese "middle class" is growing but their comfortable lifestyle is hugely dependent on the relatively low cost of living in China. Nonetheless, is this any basis for my father to make a statement like, "现在中国人很有钱"? Well, to answer this question, we have to look a little closer at the elephant in the room: the poor people in China. You see, Singaporeans who go to China tend to do what my sister does: she joins a guided tour and is taken from the airport to her hotel in a nice bus by her guide. When it is time for a meal, she is taken to a nice restaurant by the guide who even orders for the group. She never has to contend with public transport as she is taken everywhere by the guide - that does take a lot of the stress and hassle out of traveling in a country like China. Trying to contend with public transport during rush hour in a city like Shanghai or Tianjin is no joke and so the only time my sister has to ask for directions is when she is looking for the toilets in somewhere like the shopping mall or the museum. Her experience with China is pretty typical of most Singaporeans who do visit China on holiday - my father is so old and frail now that he's stopped taking long haul trips as he walks very slowly, but on his past trips to China, he has done exactly what my sister does. So from the comfort of the tour bus, they gaze out of the window and sees the impressive skyline of cities like Shanghai and Beijing, the shiny skyscrapers and of course, they could be forgiven for thinking "现在中国人很有钱".
When I was on a business trip to Shenzhen earlier this year, I suffered from jet lag. Oh it was awful! I would go to bed at 10 pm as I was exhausted and would wake up around 2 or 3 am, unable to sleep anymore. One morning, as it got light at 5 am, I gave up trying to sleep as I was wide awake and decided to go for a walk whilst it was still rather cool. There weren't too many people awake at that time of the morning, there were the security guards and then there were the construction workers - this is Shenzhen, they're always building yet another skyscraper there and these are labour intensive projects. There were a lot of street vendors as well selling all kinds of delicious looking Chinese breakfast items. The construction workers would buy the breakfast and take it with them to work. The food was incredibly cheap and of course, these construction workers were paid so little, they didn't have much money for breakfast. Of course, these construction workers came from the poorer provinces in the interior of China where there was little work and so many were forced by their poverty to go work on construction sites in cities like Shenzhen. Many were already at work by 5:30 am and I noticed that even as night fell, I could still hear noises from the construction sites - they work incredibly long hours for around. They could be working 12 hours a day for as little as 1000 RMB a month (US$145, S$200, £115) if they are unskilled though that could increase of course if they had some kind of technical skill, for example if they were a welder, plumber or electrician. But to acquire those skills, you need education and training and for many of these migrant workers from the poorer provinces, they just don't have those opportunities.
I wandered aimlessly and ended up in a beautifully sculptured Chinese garden - I decided to take a selfie or two for Instagram when a security guard came up to me and told me that I was on private property. It was a garden that was only for employees of a company and I wasn't supposed to be there - I quickly apologized and put my phone away. He then told me to go ahead and take my photo first, there was no one else around. I smiled and relaxed a little, he then asked me where I was from and I told him 新加坡 (Singapore). We then had a short conversation, he asked me what I was doing in Shenzhen, if it was my first time in China and he was a bit surprised that I could speak Mandarin fluently despite being a 外国人 (foreigner). At that point, I realized that he must be a migrant worker from some far flung, remote corner of China and he probably has no idea where the hell Singapore is, or realize that 74% of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese. I could have started telling him about how so my ancestors had migrated from China to Singapore three generations ago but I thought, why bother? I just thanked him for the compliment - it is rare to receive a compliment for a language I usually struggle with. After all, he was just a security guard - at least he wasn't doing long hours of hard labour on a construction site in Shenzhen, he had a better job that those construction workers but then again, it wasn't a skilled job either and he probably wasn't paid much more than those construction workers. I didn't want to outstay my welcome, so I thanked him again and left. He looked a bit disappointed that I left, he was probably feeling quite lonely being the nightwatchman and liked having someone to chat to.
So the construction workers and the security guards in these rich Chinese cities aren't making a lot of money, in fact they have a pretty hard life - they usually try to spend as little as possible on themselves so they can send most of their earnings back to their families in their hometowns. That income of 1000 RMB a month could be supporting two elderly parents and possible a child as well - such is the nature of urban poverty. These migrant workers often live in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions and suffer from ill-health: they don't get enough rest, they don't have a healthy diet and when they are living in such stressful conditions, many turn to alcohol, drugs and tobacco as a means of escapism which in turn, adversely affect their health. Many don't even have job security and are treated badly at work - there are just so many unskilled migrant workers pouring into the big cities from the impoverished countryside, if you start complaining that you're not treated fairly, you'll simply be sacked and replaced by another migrant worker desperate for the work. So when you look at all these impressive, shiny skyscrapers in China, do spend a moment and think about the labourers who built these buildings and what kind of life they have. In fact, the Hong Kong-Macau bridge has been dubbed 'the bridge of death' because of the high number of deaths and casualties amongst the Chinese labourers who built that bridge. Many of these deaths were preventable but the construction company was more concerned about saving money than providing safety gear for the workers on the bridge: your life is still very cheap in China today if you're poor.
And if you think that life in Chinese cities for the migrant workers is hard, spare a though for those stuck in the remote villages in the countryside - there are very limited education and employment opportunities there and this was epitomized earlier this year by the story of "ice boy" Wang Fuman. The child had to walk over an hour to get to school in sub-zero temperatures in the winter, one particularly cold morning this January, he showed up in school with his hair and eyebrows encased in ice and snow because he was too poor to get a hat to protect his head against the freezing cold. His teacher took a picture of him in that state and his picture went viral, attracting a lot of donations - but the cynics asked, okay so you've managed to help this one boy, but what about the other millions of rural poor in China then? 43 million in China currently still live on less than 2,300 RMB (US$335, S$460 or £263) a year and about 40% of the population (that's a staggering 500 million people) get by on less than 38 RMB a day (about US$5.50, S$7.60 or £4.35). Now that's a lot of very poor people in China living in poverty, compared to the relatively small figure of just 1.6 million millionaires (if we use the US$1 million benchmark) - that's 500 million very poor Chinese people vs 1.6 million very rich Chinese people. Now even by my own admission, I'm not exactly good at mathematics but you don't need to be a statistic expert to figure out that there's far more poor people than rich people in China. In fact there are 3125 times more poor people than rich people in China: so you might want to reconsider that 现在中国人很有钱 claim.
There's another elephant in the room that I simply have to talk about: income inequality. Is China growing? Yes it is but the problem is that the wealth is not spread equally- firstly, there is a huge urban-rural divide. The people living in the big cities tend to have access to much better paid jobs than those left behind in the countryside. Then there is the coastal-inland divide, the provinces like Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangsu are far richer than the inland provinces like Qinghai, Gansu, Guizhou and Xinjiang. So even if China is indeed generating a lot of wealth as the economy is growing strongly, this wealth is in the hands of a very small number of people who have become insane rich - but are they sharing this wealth with their poorer Chinese countrymen? Hell no. China is not a caring society because China has witnessed immense suffering and poverty within the last few decades. Many older Chinese people remember the great famine of 1959 to 1961 when up to 55 million people starved to death as a result of Mao's disastrous 'Great Leap Forward' campaign. Those who survived endured great hardship. It bred the mentality that if you could steal your neighbour's last sweet potato so you could feed your family tonight, you would do that even if you are directly inflicting hunger and suffering on your neighbour - if there's only enough food for some and not all, you'll do everything you can to ensure that you're not the one who ends up starving to death.
So the problem is that old habits die hard - the nouveau riche in China have this "working class with money" mentality. They were not born into wealth, they probably have memories of tasting extreme hardship and poverty when they were growing up. A common trait with this group of "working class with money" people is insecurity - even if they have a lot of money, they worry that they may one day face hardship or poverty again, so they re reluctant to spend their wealth even on themselves or their children, preferring to keep the money in the bank. Now you also have to consider how a lot of Chinese companies make their wealth - China is the factory of the world and they are competing with other Asian countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh and Indonesia for Western companies to manufacture their goods there cheaply. China has been doing very well in this aspect as they do have an abundance of cheap labour in the form of migrant workers who are willing to work long hours for very little money - so in the case of Foxconn for example who manufacture's Apple's iPhones in their Chinese factory, certainly the management at Foxconn are making a lot of money as a result of these operations but the factory workers are paid very little. The wealth is certainly not shared as fairly as in the West; Chinese factory workers who demand more wages are simply dismissed and replaced with those who will not make such requests. So whilst some people are getting very rich in China, that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very small number of the new elite in China and they have no intention to share it.
But wait, I'm not done yet - it gets worse. China's famous one child policy was only officially ended in 2015: that means a 30 year old man may be supporting his parents in their 60s and four grandparents in their 80s. That's a huge burden placed on a young person who may be just starting in his career and perhaps contemplating starting a family. But with so many people dependent on just his meager income, boy he had better be one of those crazy rich Asians in order to have enough money for everyone in his family. One of the key factors to become rich is to be able to accumulate wealth - I'm very lucky in that my parents are financially comfortable and on top of that, I have two siblings who are equally rich. I have no children and never want any, so every penny I earn is for me, me and oh yes, me. That's why I'm able to make my first million before 30 and have since invested my wealth into a London property portfolio worth several million dollars. But imagine if I had several family members to support - there would be no way I would have any spare cash to invest in something like property, I probably would have any savings as I would be spending every dollar I earn on the people who are financially dependent on me. Given the immense burden that will be placed on China's current working population to support their parents and grandparents, they have the odds stacked against them when it comes to becoming millionaires I'm afraid. So even if China's economy is booming, it is harder than you think for ordinary individuals in China to become very rich if you're not already born into a rich family. So why do people go on having this impression of 现在中国人很有钱?
Nonetheless, the Chinese media constantly focuses on the success stories of China and cue the panning shots of Shanghai's impressive skyline with her gleaming skyscrapers - they want you to focus on the top 1% of China's crazy rich elite and conveniently ignore the other 99% who aren't as successful or rich. Let me give you another example to illustrate this point about making such assumptions based on a tiny sample size: my regular readers will know that I studied at Raffles Institution back in the day, that was (and still is) one of the best secondary schools for students in Singapore. A few weeks into my first year at Raffles, I met the mother of one of my friends (let's call her Auntie Hijau, since I remember she drove a green car) and she asked me which primary school I was from and I told her - she then remarked, "hey, isn't your classmate Ramesh also from that same primary school?" I told her that was correct, I knew Ramesh from our primary school days and he was my good friend. She then said something like, "wow, that must be such a good primary school - the students there must be so smart!" And I was like, yeah right - you looked at the sample size of two boys who got into the top school in Singapore and assumed that all the other student from my primary school are just as smart? Ramesh and I certainly are quite smart indeed, I can't say the same about the other kids from my primary school who had awful PSLE scores and ended up in the neighbourhood secondary schools. Sorry if that sounded elitist, I am just pointing out the major flaw in Auntie Hijau's logic.
So let's look at what is going on here: Ramesh and I were the top two students from our primary school, the two of us achieved the best PSLE results in the school so naturally, we both went to the best school in Singapore. Now there were approximately 200 students in my batch that year from our primary school taking the PSLE so the top two students represent just the top 1%. Now did Auntie Hijau realize that she was looking at the top 1% of the students from my primary school when she made that sweeping statement? Probably not. What would have been more useful statistically would be to look at the average PSLE result for all the students from my school that year - that average would be painfully low as there were plenty of students who did very badly, some failed so atrociously that they decided to spend another year repeating primary 6 and resitting their PSLE since not a single secondary school would take them. Had Auntie Hijau actually looked at the average PSLE score of my primary school, then I can assure you that she would probably say, "aiyoh, what a terrible school, why are the students there so goondu one? Is there something wrong with the teachers or what? And how the hell did you manage to get into such a good secondary school despite coming from that terrible primary school?" The fact is Ramesh and I earned our place in Raffles Institution through our efforts - but instead of giving us credit for having achieved something like that, she chose to give the credit to our primary school teachers which is completely wrong, since loads of other students from that primary school failed their exams.
But why do we like to focus on the top 1%? I remember in my old primary school, there was this notice board with faded photographs carefully preserved in clear plastic of former students who achieved outstanding results at the PSLE, doing the school proud. Yes the school celebrated their top 1% of students and if you're not the top 1%, don't expect to get your photograph up there on the notice board. The school wanted to show the parents, "look at all these brilliant students we have produced, some of them have gone on to get scholarships to some of the world's top universities! Send your kids to our school and they can be just like our most brilliant students!" This creates an image of success which looking at the average would never ever create - if the primary school actually published the annual average PSLE scores instead, then it would paint a picture of mediocrity: a few kids did very well, some kids failed but most of the kids ended up with pretty average scores. It wasn't a particularly good school nor was it a bad one - it was just plain average but even the top few students from any average school would still be impressive Now that's exactly what you would expect from a primary school in Singapore who would admit any student rather than enforce any kind of 'streaming' before the age of 12. Thus in the case of Auntie Hijau, perhaps it was a badly miscalculated off the cuff remark she made without thinking, but isn't that exactly what my father is doing when it comes to the myth that 现在中国人很有钱?
I know exactly why my dad thinks this way. He has this fantasy vision of China becoming the world's new economic superpower, so the Angmohs in the West would bow respectfully the next time a Chinese person walks into their hotel or restaurant because they're so freaking rich. But no, it simply doesn't work like that - nobody in their right mind would make such a ridiculous and stupid assumption and for my dad to actually think that anyone would, well let's just say he's in cloud cuckoo land. The fact is there are poor people in rich countries like Switzerland and Norway, then there are rich people in poor countries like Mozambique and Tajikistan. The wealth is never equally shared in any country in the world, that's why we will always be judged as individuals rather than on the basis of our skin colour or nationality. It is not easy to accumulate wealth, that's why even people like Rita aren't considered rich at all even if she is spending a lot of money to maintain the impression that she is leading a luxury lifestyle. So China certainly has a strong, robust and growing economy, but will the phrase 现在中国人很有钱 ever be true? No, never because that is a sweeping statement that implies that all Chinese people are rich and that's not even true in a rich country like Norway today where there are still poor people. I'm sure China would be a much richer country in 2050, but income inequality will always be an issue for China so that statement 现在中国人很有钱 will never ever become true as there will always be a lot of poor people in China.
So that's it from me on this issue - what do you think? Have you encountered people like Rita who may seem rich but are actually deep in debt? Have you met Chinese chauvinists like my dad who have a very distorted view of reality when it comes to China? Have you encountered the people in China who are truly rich? Have you spent time in China observing the gap between the rich and the poor? Leave you comments below please and many thanks for reading.
Are there rich people in China today? Of course there are - but let's look at the statistics: there are currently 476 billionaires in China and whilst that figure is impressive, they do not represent your average Chinese person. Not by a long way. But what about millionaires then? I think the figure of US$1 million in assets a more realistic yardstick - after all, even I am a multi-millionaire and I don't even think I'm that special. I came from a humble, working class family in Ang Mo Kio and made my first million before 30 and now that I'm 42, let's just say I have a few million dollars in assets and investments: I don't even consider myself that rich compared to some of the people I work with. As Nick Young said in the movie Crazy Rich Asians, I'll say I'm comfortable although more money would be nice, of course! I remember when I was a child, the word "millionaire" would conjure the image of a tycoon sipping champagne on his private jet or yacht, being ridiculously wealthy and leading the kind of lifestyle that was portrayed in the film Crazy Rich Asians. Nowadays, one million US dollars would probably buy you a decent apartment in a nice part of town in a major city like London, Singapore or Los Angeles and if you want something bigger, a million just isn't enough anymore. Oh yeah, you'll need a few tens of millions to fund that kind of fantasy luxury lifestyle in 2018.
So even by that modest yardstick of US$1 million, China has about 1.6 million millionaires in 2016 though that figure is expected to increase to 2.3 million by 2020. Compare that to the UK, a much smaller country than China with just 66 million, there were already 2.4 million millionaires back in 2016 . The population of China is 1.379 billion back in 2016 and so that means just 0.116% of China's population are actually millionaires by that US$1 million yardstick. So out of every 1000 Chinese citizens, only one fits my dad's description of "现在中国人很有钱"? Hold on a minute, you may say at this point, what is this I hear about a Chinese middle class of approximately 300 to 400 million people, bigger than the current population of the United States, enjoying a lifestyle akin to their counterparts in rich countries like Australia, Canada and France? Yeah, that figure has been used a lot but you can quite easily be middle class in China without amassing US$1 million in wealth. Things can be very cheap in China compared to the West. When I was in Shenzhen earlier this year, I made a short journey on the metro: I paid just 2 RMB (US$0.29, £0.23, S$0.40) for that journey - if you were to do the same thing in central London, that ticket would cost you £4.90 if you bought a paper ticket or £2.40 if you paid with a card. I could go on and compare everything from eating out to shopping for clothes to how much it would cost you to visit the dentist - you certainly don't need US$1 million to live quite a comfortable lifestyle in China whereas you would need a lot more than that in a city like London, Sydney or New York.
I have an Indonesian client I get along extremely well with and when I was out for drinks with him at Marina Bay Sands earlier this year, he actually revealed how much he earns - he didn't exactly tell me, but he told me how much his head of sales earns and he said something like, "she makes an insane amount of money through commissions, like that's about four times what I make". So naturally the thing I did was to divide the figure he had given me by 4, to arrive at a figure that told me how much he made a year in US dollars - let's just say that it was pretty similar to what I make a year in here in London. However, with that same income, he lives like a king in Indonesia: he has a a few cars and never ever drives, instead he has two chauffeurs. His wife doesn't have to work but she isn't exactly a housewife either: that word 'housewife' would imply that she is staying at home, taking care of the kids, cooking the meals and cleaning the toilets. Oh no, she merely supervises the maids (note I said maids, plural, not maid, singular) as they do their chores, she instructs the cook to prepare her husbands favourite dishes and she ensures that the nannies are doing a good job taking care of her children whilst she has plenty of free time to see her friends, go to the spa, chill by the pool and go shopping. Most Singaporean families have one maid, his household employs a total of ten staff in his house, including a security guard. Yeah, he would probably look at my house in London and think, oh dear Alex, why are you so poor? Where are your servants? You cook your own meals? You walk home from the local supermarket? I thought you worked in corporate finance?
So let's take a closer look at China's new urban so-called "middle class", according to Investopedia, China's urban middle class accounts for 146 million workers who earn an average annual income of US$11,733. That's hardly middle class by British standards, as it is about £9,216 or just £768 a month - in fact, only people who work part time, say a mother with a baby who does some part-time work in her free time would earn that kind of money as even a waitress or a cleaner would earn more than that. Certainly compared to the middle class in somewhere like Singapore, they are a lot poorer if you were to merely look at the numbers, but nonetheless, as mentioned above: the cost of living in a country like China is considerably lower so they are enjoying a fairly high standard of living there - they will feel the pinch is if they travel to somewhere like Europe or America and realize just how much more expensive things are there. Likewise, if they are buying something like a a pair of shoes, an imported Italian product would be a lot more expensive than a local Chinese brand. But as long as they live in China and spend their money in China on mostly local products and services, then the standard of living for them is by no means any inferior than their counterparts in the West. So whilst I may have more money in the bank if you want to count how many dollars (or pounds, euros or whatever currency you want to use) in the bank, but since I live in London, things are much more expensive here so it works out that I still have about the same standard of living as the middle class in China - quite unlike my rich Indonesian friend!
But then again, there's a fairly large gap between having US$1 million in assets and leading a fancy, middle class lifestyle. Allow me to introduce you to my friend Rita (obviously not her real name) whom I know from work - now Rita is 26 years old and had been working for a few years now. Her parents weren't rich enough to pay for her university degree which was a 4-year programme, so she is saddled with quite a lot student debt. In fact, she told me that she still has about £60,000 in student loans to pay off and there's interest on that to pay as well. That's a pretty typical situation for a lot of young graduates these days! Rita fortunately is well educated, highly skilled and has a good job, but that also means that she earns enough to have to start repaying those loans (the rules in the UK state that those who are unemployed or earning very little can put off repaying their student loans). So for now, she is just paying the minimum every month for her student loan repayments, the rest of her income is spent mostly on rent as it is expensive to live in a place like London along with the essentials like her phone bills, food and travel. Nonetheless, if you follow Rita on Instagram, you can see that she is a beautiful, fashionable young professional in London having a good time - you will see her clothed in the latest designer fashion, going clubbing, chilling out at the spa, dining in the finest restaurants and at least a few times a year, she would go on nice holidays to exotic destinations. If you had no idea about her debts and you only looked at the pictures she posts on Instagram, you would get the impression that she is rich or at least that she is enjoying life here in London.
So is Rita rich or poor? That's not an easy question to answer because if you were to look at the amount Rita is paid by her employers, then it would appear that she is rather rich because she is earning quite a lot of money (hey, that's why you want to work in banking). But if you were to look at her bank account, that's a different story: she is poor because she is in debt. Most of her monthly salary goes on her rent, the essentials and student loan repayments, she then spends what is left over on shopping sprees, trips to the spa and holidays - she has virtually no savings and is often running into overdraft territory towards the end of the month. Given her financial situation, there's no way she can get a mortgage from the bank (not without a sizable deposit to begin with), so she is stuck on the rental market for a long time to come and won't be able to get on the property ladder any time soon. But then again, she makes choices like taking an Uber home from work rather than use public transport - so you can see why she burns through her salary rather quickly. So from that point of view, she is poor - or at least she isn't simply earning enough to sustain the kind of luxury lifestyle she would like to lead. The Chinese phrase 打肿脸充胖子does describe her financial situation very accurately. However, Rita's situation is hardly unique - so when you see a Chinese tourist in a luxury 5-star hotel spending a lot of money, can you assume that 那个中国人很有钱 (that Chinese person is very rich)? No, of course not.
Now the issue is really down to a question of measures you use to define "很有钱" (very rich). So staying with the example of Rita - if you're purely looking at how much she earns, then yes she is rich or at least middle class. If you look at her lifestyle, then oh yes definitely she is rich. But given that I work in banking, the conventional benchmark we use is one's personal net worth (hence the phrase 'high net worth individual' or HNWI to describe a truly rich person). Wealth is always measured by how much we have in assets - now that typically includes money in the bank along with other investments like stocks and shares, bonds, property, even art and fine wine can form part of your portfolio of assets as long as it clearly has value. So if you have a famous painting in your house, would you be able to find a buyer for it easily, a buyer who will be willing to pay you a lot of money for it? Now even though Rita spends a lot on designer handbags, shoes and clothes, there really isn't a market for it - so if she were to sell a pair of her designer Jimmy Choos on eBay, she could at best hope to get 25% of the original price she paid for it - there's just no way she can anything near the original price once it has entered the second hand market especially in the world of fashion, as fashionistas would look at those shoes and think, "oh that's so spring-summer 2017, that's no longer trendy". Some goods like that do depreciate quite quickly, whilst if you were to make wise investments in the property market, you could see a healthy year on year appreciation of your investments. I bought a flat in central London in 2004 for £250,000 and recently, a flat in the same building exchanged hands for £840,000. That's how fast property prices in London rise - can't say the same about Rita's designer handbags, dresses and shoes. But hey, she wants to look fabulous on Instagram for her followers.
Am I being perhaps a bit too harsh on Rita? Yes, after all, she is somehow funding her luxury lifestyle despite being in debt and having no savings. She is still a lot better off than poor people who are genuinely struggling to make ends meet and are suffering in poverty. Whilst Rita clearly isn't poor, she isn't rich either - it is ironic that for a woman who works in banking, her financial situation is in a mess given how she is clearly spending beyond her means with this aspirational lifestyle. I'm just using her as an example to illustrate the point that you can give the impression that you are leading a rich or at least middle class lifestyle without actually being rich at all. I recall a conversation I had with my mother on this issue - she pointed out that people get the impression that the Chinese are very rich today because of the way Chinese tourists are spending a lot of money when they visit somewhere like Singapore. I had to point out to her that a lot of Chinese people spending money like are not necessarily rich - they may be quite similar to Rita: trapped in debt but desperate to enjoy a taste of the high life. So if you want to say something like "现在的中国人肯花很有钱" (the Chinese are now big spenders), yeah that would be a far more accurate reflection of the situation rather than 现在中国人很有钱 (the Chinese are now very rich). You simply cannot look at the way someone spends money and assume that they are rich and the case of Rita clearly illustrates that rather complex relationship between spending and actual wealth.
Furthermore, you have to consider that the cost of living does vary from country to country and I'm merely pointing out that whilst this new Chinese "middle class" is growing but their comfortable lifestyle is hugely dependent on the relatively low cost of living in China. Nonetheless, is this any basis for my father to make a statement like, "现在中国人很有钱"? Well, to answer this question, we have to look a little closer at the elephant in the room: the poor people in China. You see, Singaporeans who go to China tend to do what my sister does: she joins a guided tour and is taken from the airport to her hotel in a nice bus by her guide. When it is time for a meal, she is taken to a nice restaurant by the guide who even orders for the group. She never has to contend with public transport as she is taken everywhere by the guide - that does take a lot of the stress and hassle out of traveling in a country like China. Trying to contend with public transport during rush hour in a city like Shanghai or Tianjin is no joke and so the only time my sister has to ask for directions is when she is looking for the toilets in somewhere like the shopping mall or the museum. Her experience with China is pretty typical of most Singaporeans who do visit China on holiday - my father is so old and frail now that he's stopped taking long haul trips as he walks very slowly, but on his past trips to China, he has done exactly what my sister does. So from the comfort of the tour bus, they gaze out of the window and sees the impressive skyline of cities like Shanghai and Beijing, the shiny skyscrapers and of course, they could be forgiven for thinking "现在中国人很有钱".
When I was on a business trip to Shenzhen earlier this year, I suffered from jet lag. Oh it was awful! I would go to bed at 10 pm as I was exhausted and would wake up around 2 or 3 am, unable to sleep anymore. One morning, as it got light at 5 am, I gave up trying to sleep as I was wide awake and decided to go for a walk whilst it was still rather cool. There weren't too many people awake at that time of the morning, there were the security guards and then there were the construction workers - this is Shenzhen, they're always building yet another skyscraper there and these are labour intensive projects. There were a lot of street vendors as well selling all kinds of delicious looking Chinese breakfast items. The construction workers would buy the breakfast and take it with them to work. The food was incredibly cheap and of course, these construction workers were paid so little, they didn't have much money for breakfast. Of course, these construction workers came from the poorer provinces in the interior of China where there was little work and so many were forced by their poverty to go work on construction sites in cities like Shenzhen. Many were already at work by 5:30 am and I noticed that even as night fell, I could still hear noises from the construction sites - they work incredibly long hours for around. They could be working 12 hours a day for as little as 1000 RMB a month (US$145, S$200, £115) if they are unskilled though that could increase of course if they had some kind of technical skill, for example if they were a welder, plumber or electrician. But to acquire those skills, you need education and training and for many of these migrant workers from the poorer provinces, they just don't have those opportunities.
I wandered aimlessly and ended up in a beautifully sculptured Chinese garden - I decided to take a selfie or two for Instagram when a security guard came up to me and told me that I was on private property. It was a garden that was only for employees of a company and I wasn't supposed to be there - I quickly apologized and put my phone away. He then told me to go ahead and take my photo first, there was no one else around. I smiled and relaxed a little, he then asked me where I was from and I told him 新加坡 (Singapore). We then had a short conversation, he asked me what I was doing in Shenzhen, if it was my first time in China and he was a bit surprised that I could speak Mandarin fluently despite being a 外国人 (foreigner). At that point, I realized that he must be a migrant worker from some far flung, remote corner of China and he probably has no idea where the hell Singapore is, or realize that 74% of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese. I could have started telling him about how so my ancestors had migrated from China to Singapore three generations ago but I thought, why bother? I just thanked him for the compliment - it is rare to receive a compliment for a language I usually struggle with. After all, he was just a security guard - at least he wasn't doing long hours of hard labour on a construction site in Shenzhen, he had a better job that those construction workers but then again, it wasn't a skilled job either and he probably wasn't paid much more than those construction workers. I didn't want to outstay my welcome, so I thanked him again and left. He looked a bit disappointed that I left, he was probably feeling quite lonely being the nightwatchman and liked having someone to chat to.
So the construction workers and the security guards in these rich Chinese cities aren't making a lot of money, in fact they have a pretty hard life - they usually try to spend as little as possible on themselves so they can send most of their earnings back to their families in their hometowns. That income of 1000 RMB a month could be supporting two elderly parents and possible a child as well - such is the nature of urban poverty. These migrant workers often live in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions and suffer from ill-health: they don't get enough rest, they don't have a healthy diet and when they are living in such stressful conditions, many turn to alcohol, drugs and tobacco as a means of escapism which in turn, adversely affect their health. Many don't even have job security and are treated badly at work - there are just so many unskilled migrant workers pouring into the big cities from the impoverished countryside, if you start complaining that you're not treated fairly, you'll simply be sacked and replaced by another migrant worker desperate for the work. So when you look at all these impressive, shiny skyscrapers in China, do spend a moment and think about the labourers who built these buildings and what kind of life they have. In fact, the Hong Kong-Macau bridge has been dubbed 'the bridge of death' because of the high number of deaths and casualties amongst the Chinese labourers who built that bridge. Many of these deaths were preventable but the construction company was more concerned about saving money than providing safety gear for the workers on the bridge: your life is still very cheap in China today if you're poor.
And if you think that life in Chinese cities for the migrant workers is hard, spare a though for those stuck in the remote villages in the countryside - there are very limited education and employment opportunities there and this was epitomized earlier this year by the story of "ice boy" Wang Fuman. The child had to walk over an hour to get to school in sub-zero temperatures in the winter, one particularly cold morning this January, he showed up in school with his hair and eyebrows encased in ice and snow because he was too poor to get a hat to protect his head against the freezing cold. His teacher took a picture of him in that state and his picture went viral, attracting a lot of donations - but the cynics asked, okay so you've managed to help this one boy, but what about the other millions of rural poor in China then? 43 million in China currently still live on less than 2,300 RMB (US$335, S$460 or £263) a year and about 40% of the population (that's a staggering 500 million people) get by on less than 38 RMB a day (about US$5.50, S$7.60 or £4.35). Now that's a lot of very poor people in China living in poverty, compared to the relatively small figure of just 1.6 million millionaires (if we use the US$1 million benchmark) - that's 500 million very poor Chinese people vs 1.6 million very rich Chinese people. Now even by my own admission, I'm not exactly good at mathematics but you don't need to be a statistic expert to figure out that there's far more poor people than rich people in China. In fact there are 3125 times more poor people than rich people in China: so you might want to reconsider that 现在中国人很有钱 claim.
There's another elephant in the room that I simply have to talk about: income inequality. Is China growing? Yes it is but the problem is that the wealth is not spread equally- firstly, there is a huge urban-rural divide. The people living in the big cities tend to have access to much better paid jobs than those left behind in the countryside. Then there is the coastal-inland divide, the provinces like Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangsu are far richer than the inland provinces like Qinghai, Gansu, Guizhou and Xinjiang. So even if China is indeed generating a lot of wealth as the economy is growing strongly, this wealth is in the hands of a very small number of people who have become insane rich - but are they sharing this wealth with their poorer Chinese countrymen? Hell no. China is not a caring society because China has witnessed immense suffering and poverty within the last few decades. Many older Chinese people remember the great famine of 1959 to 1961 when up to 55 million people starved to death as a result of Mao's disastrous 'Great Leap Forward' campaign. Those who survived endured great hardship. It bred the mentality that if you could steal your neighbour's last sweet potato so you could feed your family tonight, you would do that even if you are directly inflicting hunger and suffering on your neighbour - if there's only enough food for some and not all, you'll do everything you can to ensure that you're not the one who ends up starving to death.
But wait, I'm not done yet - it gets worse. China's famous one child policy was only officially ended in 2015: that means a 30 year old man may be supporting his parents in their 60s and four grandparents in their 80s. That's a huge burden placed on a young person who may be just starting in his career and perhaps contemplating starting a family. But with so many people dependent on just his meager income, boy he had better be one of those crazy rich Asians in order to have enough money for everyone in his family. One of the key factors to become rich is to be able to accumulate wealth - I'm very lucky in that my parents are financially comfortable and on top of that, I have two siblings who are equally rich. I have no children and never want any, so every penny I earn is for me, me and oh yes, me. That's why I'm able to make my first million before 30 and have since invested my wealth into a London property portfolio worth several million dollars. But imagine if I had several family members to support - there would be no way I would have any spare cash to invest in something like property, I probably would have any savings as I would be spending every dollar I earn on the people who are financially dependent on me. Given the immense burden that will be placed on China's current working population to support their parents and grandparents, they have the odds stacked against them when it comes to becoming millionaires I'm afraid. So even if China's economy is booming, it is harder than you think for ordinary individuals in China to become very rich if you're not already born into a rich family. So why do people go on having this impression of 现在中国人很有钱?
Nonetheless, the Chinese media constantly focuses on the success stories of China and cue the panning shots of Shanghai's impressive skyline with her gleaming skyscrapers - they want you to focus on the top 1% of China's crazy rich elite and conveniently ignore the other 99% who aren't as successful or rich. Let me give you another example to illustrate this point about making such assumptions based on a tiny sample size: my regular readers will know that I studied at Raffles Institution back in the day, that was (and still is) one of the best secondary schools for students in Singapore. A few weeks into my first year at Raffles, I met the mother of one of my friends (let's call her Auntie Hijau, since I remember she drove a green car) and she asked me which primary school I was from and I told her - she then remarked, "hey, isn't your classmate Ramesh also from that same primary school?" I told her that was correct, I knew Ramesh from our primary school days and he was my good friend. She then said something like, "wow, that must be such a good primary school - the students there must be so smart!" And I was like, yeah right - you looked at the sample size of two boys who got into the top school in Singapore and assumed that all the other student from my primary school are just as smart? Ramesh and I certainly are quite smart indeed, I can't say the same about the other kids from my primary school who had awful PSLE scores and ended up in the neighbourhood secondary schools. Sorry if that sounded elitist, I am just pointing out the major flaw in Auntie Hijau's logic.
So let's look at what is going on here: Ramesh and I were the top two students from our primary school, the two of us achieved the best PSLE results in the school so naturally, we both went to the best school in Singapore. Now there were approximately 200 students in my batch that year from our primary school taking the PSLE so the top two students represent just the top 1%. Now did Auntie Hijau realize that she was looking at the top 1% of the students from my primary school when she made that sweeping statement? Probably not. What would have been more useful statistically would be to look at the average PSLE result for all the students from my school that year - that average would be painfully low as there were plenty of students who did very badly, some failed so atrociously that they decided to spend another year repeating primary 6 and resitting their PSLE since not a single secondary school would take them. Had Auntie Hijau actually looked at the average PSLE score of my primary school, then I can assure you that she would probably say, "aiyoh, what a terrible school, why are the students there so goondu one? Is there something wrong with the teachers or what? And how the hell did you manage to get into such a good secondary school despite coming from that terrible primary school?" The fact is Ramesh and I earned our place in Raffles Institution through our efforts - but instead of giving us credit for having achieved something like that, she chose to give the credit to our primary school teachers which is completely wrong, since loads of other students from that primary school failed their exams.
But why do we like to focus on the top 1%? I remember in my old primary school, there was this notice board with faded photographs carefully preserved in clear plastic of former students who achieved outstanding results at the PSLE, doing the school proud. Yes the school celebrated their top 1% of students and if you're not the top 1%, don't expect to get your photograph up there on the notice board. The school wanted to show the parents, "look at all these brilliant students we have produced, some of them have gone on to get scholarships to some of the world's top universities! Send your kids to our school and they can be just like our most brilliant students!" This creates an image of success which looking at the average would never ever create - if the primary school actually published the annual average PSLE scores instead, then it would paint a picture of mediocrity: a few kids did very well, some kids failed but most of the kids ended up with pretty average scores. It wasn't a particularly good school nor was it a bad one - it was just plain average but even the top few students from any average school would still be impressive Now that's exactly what you would expect from a primary school in Singapore who would admit any student rather than enforce any kind of 'streaming' before the age of 12. Thus in the case of Auntie Hijau, perhaps it was a badly miscalculated off the cuff remark she made without thinking, but isn't that exactly what my father is doing when it comes to the myth that 现在中国人很有钱?
I know exactly why my dad thinks this way. He has this fantasy vision of China becoming the world's new economic superpower, so the Angmohs in the West would bow respectfully the next time a Chinese person walks into their hotel or restaurant because they're so freaking rich. But no, it simply doesn't work like that - nobody in their right mind would make such a ridiculous and stupid assumption and for my dad to actually think that anyone would, well let's just say he's in cloud cuckoo land. The fact is there are poor people in rich countries like Switzerland and Norway, then there are rich people in poor countries like Mozambique and Tajikistan. The wealth is never equally shared in any country in the world, that's why we will always be judged as individuals rather than on the basis of our skin colour or nationality. It is not easy to accumulate wealth, that's why even people like Rita aren't considered rich at all even if she is spending a lot of money to maintain the impression that she is leading a luxury lifestyle. So China certainly has a strong, robust and growing economy, but will the phrase 现在中国人很有钱 ever be true? No, never because that is a sweeping statement that implies that all Chinese people are rich and that's not even true in a rich country like Norway today where there are still poor people. I'm sure China would be a much richer country in 2050, but income inequality will always be an issue for China so that statement 现在中国人很有钱 will never ever become true as there will always be a lot of poor people in China.
So that's it from me on this issue - what do you think? Have you encountered people like Rita who may seem rich but are actually deep in debt? Have you met Chinese chauvinists like my dad who have a very distorted view of reality when it comes to China? Have you encountered the people in China who are truly rich? Have you spent time in China observing the gap between the rich and the poor? Leave you comments below please and many thanks for reading.
That's an article A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。
Fine for article A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。 This time, hopefully can benefit for you all. Well, see you in other article postings.
You are now reading the article A reality check: 现在中国人很有钱。 With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-reality-check.html