Month: June 2024

Living space in China vs. developed countries

According to the China Population Census Yearbook 2020, China has 462 million households, with average area of 111 sqm per household and 41.76 sqm per person. Average room per household is 3.2 and average room per person is 1.2.

Average space per capital of 41.76 sqm is not a small number. 

To compare, I asked ChatGPT for other countries’ numbers – 40-45 is quite the average. Only US, Canada and Australia are meaningfully above that number.

Just to double check in case ChatGPT is wrong, I looked up for German’s average living space, which was 46 sqm per person in 2018.

This number hasn’t changed much in the last decade or so. It was ~42 sqm per person in 2006 already, after decades of improvements (from 19 sqm per person in 1960).

Some further cross -check

Take a look at average home size in Europe, 100 sqm is already quite good.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8073340/pdf/ijerph-18-04278.pdf

Average room per person is 1.6 among EU countries.

 

High wage jobs are bad?

In US, we typically hear about gov officials touting x number of high paying jobs are created.

We don’t hear that in China. Internet and finance jobs are considered high wages, but both sectors faced pressure to cut costs thus a decline in wages.

The first rationale seems to be centered around income inequality, which makes sense. Instability is one of the most feared elements in China. If u can’t increase income for all, you decrease income for some.

The second rationale is that many don’t deserve the that high income – they didn’t earn it. It is partially true, especially if someone gets a job by connection or background, or the firm is not providing much value for customers. Sometimes, the latter part is due to the restrictions – there aren’t much room to innovate if there are too many boundaries. Also, there aren’t much incentives to deliver better services if they can’t earn more. People look around and say oh others do poorly and earn similar so why should I do better. This is partially a result of the first rationale.

Thirdly, consumers don’t deserve high quality products / services and they don’t pay for them. Buyers determine the market; if most accept the subpar quality, then what else should the firm do? This is not a standalone issue; this is tied to the second one. The cycle reinforces itself – low-quality products/services tailored to an “accommodating”taste that is trained by mediocre offerings overtime.