Infographic: The Huge Gap Between Chinese and American Consumers

Your argumentation has a lot of errors.. and in any case I could just ask you why all Chinese dream of running away to USA and Canada if China is so fantastic?

Anyway…

YOU: “Which is why I mentioned even though cars are three to four times more expensive than the US, people are buying it.

FACTS: Singapore has about 4.5 Million adult residents and the number of privately cars on the road is 600 K, which gives a ridiculous ratio of 0.13 cars per adult. And do remember many people buy cars despite their high price because they dont have a choice, I know a few shop owners in such situation.
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/mdsjul12.pdf
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/latestdata.html#12

YOU: “A three bedroom apartment in Singapore has a minimum floor area of 110 square meters.”

FACTS: A 3 bdrm (4 rm) flat built in the past 10 years, has 90 square metres including the area occupied by the walls.
http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10321p.nsf/w/BuyingNewFlat4room?OpenDocument

YOU: housing @ half a million is affordable simply because of the Provident Fund scheme you mentioned”

FACTS: Throughout your working life (e.g. 35 years) a third of your total income (including all contributions) will go into CPF account, meaning that after deflation those savings it will be probably not be enough to last you for the rest of your life (another 15-20 years).
Now assume you dump a large portion of those CPF savings into buying a house, who will then pay for your bills (e.g. medical) in old age?

YOU: In Singapore most couple in the late twenties would already own an apartment.

FACTS:
Requirement #1: you must get married at a very early age
Requirement #2: your income must be very low to buy a new subsidised flat, probably too low to afford a house by yourself.

And you are very wrong, most young couples in Singapore do NOT have their own houses for the simple reason that they do not want to be forced into marriage by the gov and later in life they can no longer afford it because they are not considered poor anymore.
In Westerns countries, youngsters settle down in their houses at a much earlier age than in countries like Singapore in case you don’t know.
Despite your beliefs, housing is still affordable in most of the western world unlike in Singapore or China

YOU: As for the pension scheme, it has worked tremendous well for Singapore.

FACTS: Utter rubbish! How many people do you know in Singapore who are not forced to support their parents because the parents savings are long gone? Inform yourself please.
And it’s getting worse, with inflation eroding the CPF savings at a fast rate for the past 10 years.
If you don’t care about inflation, you should start to.
Take a principal of 10.000 SGD, if real inflation in Singapore’s continued at the current 7% trend for the next 35 years, you would end up with lesser than 800 SGD.. yes a real loss of almost 80% on your principal by the time you retire.

YOU: “Today China stands on the threshold of being a very rich nation”
So your definition of rish nation is one in which the government accumulates reserves and 2 thirds of the population live in poverty in order to subsidise the super-rich minority? Really, exploitation is a good thing?
Any western government could achieve that by simply accumulating taxes instead of reinvesting them back in its own people by providing sound public institutions, rule of law or good schools and hospitals (the kind which does not collapse at the smallest tremor)… and in Europe, in social welfare. Obviously no one in the west wants to live under a cronyism and dictatorship like China, not even Chinese want that as you know it, otherwise they would not be flocking to USA, Canada, Hong Kong and even Singapore.

You still don’t understand that most Europeans and even many Americans look down on ostentatious brand/money worshiping people.

Finally on your report on Singapore GDP, coming from China you should know way to well that GDP without income distribution simply means that a super rich minority is exploiting the overwhelming majority.

Singapore is the perfect example. The governments active policy of importing both PRC billionaires and PRC/India migrant workers is stretching the fabric of society to the limit, with income depreciation and inflation eroding the purchasing power of the middle and lower classes.

GDP only measures the government’s taxable income, not the income of its citizens.

well you have not provided any facts to refute my arguments, so I’ll take it that you are just being stubborn.

As for your origin, referring to Singapore as “little Singapore” is something typical of mainland Chinese, you never see locals using such terminology, perhaps you are one of those new citizens?

“This is one country in the world that BMW and Mercedes are outselling Toyota and Hyundai.”

I know you’re trying to ignore the numbers but I will highlight it to you again: U.S has 6 times the number of cars per capita when compared to Singapore, and do remember, USA has much higher percentage of youngsters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita

Therefore, with the Income gap in Singapore being so huge, the very few people who can afford cars (0.13 of all adults) are usually filthy rich.
Furthermore, with COE reaching 60K of course for the selected few who can afford it obviously it makes no sense to buy an entry level car, if you were sharp enough you would understand that.

As for house affordability in Singapore, you need to be very stubborn/blind to insist on that.
Perhaps 10 years ago that was true, but with the property boom since 2006 only a blind and deaf person would insist on that, even the government already recognized it and is about to flood the market with new flats next year.

But at least you recognise that without old folks selling their houses and moving with their children the money would not last, well so much for your “huge” purchasing power.

On China…

What about the cultural revolution (of their own making)? Have you ever seen any China person complaining about it?
I haven’t, they seem too busy blaming the west and japan for everything bad that happened to them.

“There is a better chance of a Chinese getting into the middle class as it is for an American to”
No it’s not, if you are one of the majority Chinese living outside the metropolitan areas, the best you can do is to go and be exploited in a factory in a city, very little chances you will ever reach middle class and your children will either not attend school or be far away in your home village attending horrible schools with unprepared teachers, doomed for another generation.

On GDP..

As for GDP, as someone said, perhaps you are too ‘daft’ to understand what I meant.

You are trying to relate GDP per capita with purchasing power, and i was trying to explain to you, that GDP is an indirect measure of the wealthiness of the government before taxes.
It says nothing about the well being of the majority.
In fact GDP per capita is an even obsolete measure than overall GDP, take the case of Singapore (highest per capita) and China (second highest gross)
At least gross measures the power of the state in relation to other states, whereas per capita not even that.

“Americans look down on ostentatious brand/money worshiping people. I
put it down to a lack of disposal income except New York or California.I put it down to a lack of disposal income except New York or California. ”
This is the problem with Chinese, mostly mainlanders but also still some in Singapore like you.

You are so buys worshiping money and brands that you don’t even understand that in most western countries most people despise ostentation. You just need to go to Sweden or Norway the countries with highest living standards in the world for the majority to see how ostentation is frowned up.

Unfortunately many Chinese like you will never understand why status and money worshiping is a reflection of one’s lack of substance, character and empathy for your peers.
This is why you see so many charities in the west like Bill Gates foundation and non-profit organizations like Wikipedia in the west while in most of Asia people are too busy worshiping money often at the expense of exploiting or even killing others like in China.

Finally who cares if U.S. is the richest country in the world (which by your GDP measure stil is).
The important is whether the state makes it easier for you to raise a family and live a comfortable, productive and healthy life.

Obviously that not the case in Singapore or China.

And say what you like I will choose not to argue with you.

“Unfortunately many like you will never understand why status and money
worshiping is a reflection of one’s lack of substance, character and
empathy for your peers.”

If you have substance, America will not be in a mess today. A broken down economy, incessant killings of the innocents and chasing every foot steps that China is trying to cover. Last heard, Clinton is in Africa too.

For starters I’m not American.

And once again, do tell me, if the west and U.S in particular are so bad, why is it every single person in China wants to go to U.S starting with the children of most Chinese leaders?
It’s useless to hide your inferiority complex with vague insinuations.

Just because the China government tries its best to hide all the shit that happens in places like Xinjiang, Tibete or inner Mongolia it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Every year there are thousands of riots in China and often they end up with deaths.

Not to mention the thousands of people dying in due to money worshiping like those in the so called cancer villages or the victims of horrible practices like the cases of the fake baby formula, the contaminated milk, the sewage oil, etc etc.

Anyway as mentioned, if i had to name a model country in my opinion that wouldnt be U.S but instead Sweden, with its egalitarian welfare society.
In Sweden where socialism goes and in hand with capitalism to create the less imperfect society on earth.

And
against American conservative beliefs, private initiative prospers and
with a population under 10 million are able to offer the world companies
like Ikea, AstraZeneca, Electrolux, TetraPak, Securitas, H&M, Ericsson, Scania, Volvo, Saab, Husqvarna.
In
any case, I bet the number of killings (due to the insane gun policy in
U.S) is way way lower than the number of murders in China.