'China' point is definitely fair, but they're nowhere near becoming rich in a GDP/capita basis.
China is poorer than Mexico on a nominal and PPP basis.
Poorer than Brazil on a nominal basis.
They're going to have difficulty closing in on Chile, Latvia and Poland there. [1]
On a PPP basis, it's much harder to fathom - they definitely have access to 'cheap goods' so of course their PPP basis is considerably higher, at the same time the quality of most things is very bad, the air is unbreathable in many places, outside major city centres services are problematic and civic dysfunction is still rife.
So the that PPP calculation is tricky, and we know it's also leverage for Brazil just as well.
But also note China does have serious economic 'leaders' that those other countries do not, and, China might treat ethnic and gay minorities poorly, but for women it's not the same. DiDi CEO is a female, and female leadership is normal there.
People often confuse the long history of low-quality imports from China for some essential quality of China. They don't realize or ignore that the quality was determined by what the people who commissioned the products or built the factory--usually not companies or people in China--were willing to pay for their target margins.
There's a scene in Back to the Future where past-Doc is shocked to learn Japan shed its reputation for poor quality once all the good stuff started coming from there in the 1980s. China is experiencing a similar perception shift as more companies inside and out make higher quality stuff there.
One of the most innovative lens manufacturers is a Chinese company (Venus Optics). I'm probably a few months from buying a flash from a Chinese company (Godox) that by all accounts is 90%+ of the quality of the first-party flashes at half the price. I use a Huion tablet which I have to admit is a bit shoddy in construction, but is almost as precise as the Wacom equivalent it competes with at a fraction of the price. If it breaks twice and I replace it each time, I'm still out less than if I went with Wacom.
I don't care for a lot of the policies of the party, but I still have to recognize when the country makes something good.
I'm sorry that you're not aware of the reality of total lack of quality in many products and services in China, which is partly due to a function of lower costing, but also due to a general lack of industrial focus on quality, and particularly a lack of standards.
And then gaslight others for pointing out the facts ...
I work for a company that sells an electrical device, which has considerable standards applied in Europe and North America, and basically none in China. The competitive products to ours in China are essentially dangerous. They will start fires.
We manufacture in China, and depending on the manufacturer, can usually make no assumptions about quality, other than it will be the lowest possible unless there is considerable oversight. Unbelievable, 'shocking' hacks and cutting corners, which we view as a matter of quality, they view as a matter of cost reduction. With the bigger factories that do business with big established brands, that's less of a problem because they're consistently building for markets with higher standards and requirements.
For some thoughts on Food Safety [1][2]
In China, in the year 2000, only 50% of the population had 'basic sanitation' services i.e. toilets. That's changed a lot, but there are still wide swaths of population literally without basic sanitation. The number is effectively 100% in almost every other semi-developed country. [3]. Even in 2015, 5% of the country still does not have access to basic water. [4]
Chinese construction standards are de-facto low (they have regulations, just not very well met), so here are two videos that demonstrate some issues [5][6] - to be fair - this is all anecdotal, and China is a 'very large place'. You're surely going to find crap construction in every country, however, the anecdotes are quite excessive, and they are illustrative. Entire sections of homes, only a few years old completely falling apart, buildings falling down etc..
This affects major projects [7] - there are systematic problems with the quality of concrete that will come home to roost some day.
As far as Air Quality, it's 'Very Bad' - the CEO of DiDi lamented this herself, indicating literally her children had difficulty breathing.
Have a look [8] at the air quality literally at this moment in time. Up to 30% of China is, at this literal moment in time, breathing air that is 'hazardous'.
And of course the political issues, censorship etc. - but those are harder to factor into an economic equation.
So when calculating PPP - the material quality of goods does matter, things like 'air quality' aren't in that calculation but they very well do matter as they are a direct externalization of the system.
China is a large, poor country and derives it's economic power mostly from it's size, not that much else. It's different than Brazil or India (other large, poor countries) in that it does have a number of economic champions.
There's almost a 100% chance that China will soon have the largest economy in the world (by many measure it already does), but almost a 0% chance that we will see GDP/capita, even on a PPP basis, reach that of most modern nations, at least in our lifetimes. That is happening/will happen only for a subset of the population.
I'm sure your experience is valid, but you haven't established that most of what is produced in China is very bad. That's an exaggeration. The very fact that your company manufacture in China means at the very least that the quality of the goods produced there is sufficiently high for your purposes. That you also see bad quality while bottom-scraping the market is not surprising. This very obvious deduction generalises as well, due to the enormous number of western companies that manufacture in China. Their standards are certainly being met, because otherwise they could not outsource their manufacturing to China.
> Chinese construction standards are de-facto low
Compare major cities in China with major cities in the west. Compare road infrastructure (esp. highway infrastructure) and train infrastructure in densely populated areas. Their highway network is an impressive feat. China is surpassing the west, and has already surpassed the west in infrastructure standards in many areas, e.g. by pioneering high-speed railways.
The US is currently making an attempt to improve the dire infrastructure situation, but we'll see how that turns out considering the intrinsic inefficiencies of state / federal infrastructure planning in the US. IMO it's almost surely to be hijacked by capital and the money will thus to a large extent be funnelled away to corrupt and undeserving profiteers.
> but almost a 0% chance that we will see GDP/capita
GDP is not an accurate measure of general economic development in the modern world. The high GDP of the US does not correlate with its failing infrastructure, its inefficient medical and educational system, high amount of poverty, drug addiction and crime etc. The financialisation and de-industrialisation of the US economy decoupled the material standards of the people from the profits of the rich, and thus GDP is largely a fictitious number. So much of GDP is tied up in meaningless activity, like the production of overpriced weaponry, increasing bureaucratization and the prevalence of so-called "bullshit jobs", and in a corrupt and immoral finance / property sector which also poses a direct threat to global economic stability (cf. the financial crisis of 2008). Let's compare living standards, not GDP. China is rapidly surpassing the US in this area. While they still have rural areas which are underdeveloped, they have made major strides this decade and recently eradicated extreme poverty. Their next step is to eradicate poverty altogether.
China is poorer than Mexico on a nominal and PPP basis.
Poorer than Brazil on a nominal basis.
They're going to have difficulty closing in on Chile, Latvia and Poland there. [1]
On a PPP basis, it's much harder to fathom - they definitely have access to 'cheap goods' so of course their PPP basis is considerably higher, at the same time the quality of most things is very bad, the air is unbreathable in many places, outside major city centres services are problematic and civic dysfunction is still rife.
So the that PPP calculation is tricky, and we know it's also leverage for Brazil just as well.
But also note China does have serious economic 'leaders' that those other countries do not, and, China might treat ethnic and gay minorities poorly, but for women it's not the same. DiDi CEO is a female, and female leadership is normal there.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/