My point is that just from .. on the ground "feel" and quality of life .. Hong Kong, Taipei and large Chinese cities are all at rather similar levels (each having their own pluses and minuses). And I don't see them growing at the same rate from here on out.
People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized (at least anywhere close to the degree the experts expected). Just over the period of the pandemic I saw personally a huge amount of development and growth in China, while virtually nothing in Taiwan.
I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.).
Similar to Hong Kong, a key economic driver was their function as a bridge between the West and China - but this has become mostly redundant now.
All good things must come to an end. China will stall eventually too, for instance they're getting incredibly bureaucratic now, but they still have some runway.
I'm living in Singapore, which has the interesting distinction of being (mostly) culturally Chinese, but politically independent. Singapore is one of the richest countries on earth (in terms of GDP per capita), and we are working our way up the list of richest cities, too.
> I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls.
Growth slows down a lot as you hit the global productivity frontier. Taiwan isn't quite there, yet, but it's a lot closer that mainland China.
I'm not sure what word you want to be using. Roughly and pragmatically speaking, you can catch up pretty quickly (with the right policies), but your per capita (non-oil) income can't really go (much) beyond the US.
Once you reach American levels of prosperity, you will also find yourself reduced to roughly American levels of growth.
That's not zero growth, just very slow growth compared to the preceding years of breakneck catchup growth.
Have a look at eg Japan between WW2 and ~1990, and then from ~1990 to now. Naive extrapolation in the 1980s gave us some lovely cyberpunk, but reality looked different.
You are right that Taiwan at about 33k USD per capita is still quite a while away from the US's roughly 76k USD per capita. And I suspect with the right policies, they could catch up more. Just look to Singapore for what's possible. But even our almost mythical city state has slowed down a lot compared to the halcyon days.
> People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized [...]
Just going by official PRC figures, growth has slowed a lot. And that's still compatible with your observation that observed PRC growth was higher than in Taiwan.
> I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.).
Yes, I am glad that Singapore has so far stayed clear of most of these issues. But I'm afraid that eventually, democracy will do us in. Where by 'democracy' I mean giving in to what voters say they want. Protectionism in various disguises is popular with ordinary folks the world over. And so are various measures to weaken work ethics, or to limit migration ('those foreigners are taking our jobs' is a cliched complaint for a reason).
Our Gahmen is far from perfect, but I feel like the strongest policy disagreements I have with them is where against their better judgement they gave in to popular demands.
I just hope that the decline in governance will be gradual enough, that it won't matter for me.
(For comparison, cities like New York or London had pretty poor governance for probably close to a century now (depending on how you look at it) and they are still going strong, even if not as strong as they could have gone.)
I think it's very difficult to compare across countries and using official statistics. Both Tiapei and a place like Chongqing are not at the level of development as Singapore. That's very true. But there are many distorting factors.
For instance on paper the US is very wealthy, but I think this is mostly due to the strength of the currency. An "average" electrical engineer in Taiwan can expect to earn 30K USD a year. That's how much someone without a highschool diploma can make in the USA working in fastfood. I doubt this really functions are a metric of the engineer's productivity. (the US is also not as some natural limit by any stretch of the imagination - it's got absolutely colossal societal issues)
Looking from the outside Singapore seems to have a lot of other challenges. Just due to being a small city state for starters - not to mention the social/cultural factors. I'm not really sure it represents some kind of natural limit. The big Chinese cities are also pooling talent from the vast provinces. While in a city state you're mostly stuck with the talent that's born there
There is also this curious factor that life in Chinese cities is in a sense subsidized by the rural poor. So the middle class quality of life is sustained b/c there are people that are willing to work really hard for very little money. Taking a taxi in Shanghai is infinitely cheaper than taking one in Singapore - b/c there is some guy/girl from the countryside willing to do it for cheap (you have a limited version of that with the Malay and Malaysian Chinese underclass in Singapore). At some point growth will slow as the rural poor become wealthier and life in the cities becomes a bit more expensive
I'm not too familiar with life in Singapore - I've only visited a few times - but it seems to have similar problems to Taiwan with a anemic cultural sphere (growing up people all try to be engineers) and lack of innovation. The only company I know from Singapore is Shoppee - which is basically a low-rent Taobao reseller (without all the innovations of Taobao). Would be curious to hear your thoughts.
I didn't really work intensively professionally in China, but I got the sense there is a lot of experimentation, people just trying stuff out, people starting businesses - at the same time there was a deep appreciation and interest in cultural "things" which was also subsidized extensively by the state. I do wonder how far it can go in a censored environment, but it seems to be flourishing for the moment. I'm sure things will slow down - but I don't feel it's going to slam the breaks and stay at Taiwanese levels of development
And yeah you're right, if it's not the poor getting wealthier then populist measures, regulations and bureaucracy does everyone in eventually :)
I thought Singapore was more like Hong Kong: the real money in a in finance and business, engineering (including programmers) are considered less important and so make a lot less money (they can make more by working in mainland china).
Mainland China definitely seems to value engineers than other Asian countries. They pay better even than Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in many technical fields, which is why I had so many work mates from those countries when I was working at Microsoft in Beijing.
I've worked in both finance and tech in Singapore, and you can make good money in either field. If you look at stats, they also reflect that Singapore's economy is a lot more diversified than Hong Kong's.
Yeah, could be. I might be in a bit of a bubble. The Universities in Singapore seem to be more known for engineering than their business schools - but that could very well just be my ignorance
> (the US is also not as some natural limit by any stretch of the imagination - it's got absolutely colossal societal issues)
Yes, but empirically the US sits close to the global technological frontier.
> The big Chinese cities are also pooling talent from the vast provinces. While in a city state you're mostly stuck with the talent that's born there
Why would that be? People can move to Singapore, just as much as they can move to any other city. The only thing keeping them out are immigration rules that Singapore herself sets. In fact, Singapore has lots and lots of immigrants. I am one of them.
> For instance on paper the US is very wealthy, but I think this is mostly due to the strength of the currency. An "average" electrical engineer in Taiwan can expect to earn 30K USD a year. That's how much someone without a highschool diploma can make in the USA working in fastfood.
Well, and the currency is strong because there's a lot of demand for it.
> (you have a limited version of that with the Malay and Malaysian Chinese underclass in Singapore).
Not really. If you want to point at an underclass here, looking at our foreign domestic workers (ie maids) and the migrant construction labourers would be much more apt. These days, if you have a Singaporean passport, you only really have yourself to blame.
(People with a Malaysian passport also still have it somewhere easier getting a visa to work in Singapore.)
> Would be curious to hear your thoughts.
I think Singaporeans like to complain, and they don't appreciate their own achievements. Did you know that Sound Blaster / Creative Labs is from Singapore?
The Chinese mainland is an enormous market. Market size is a big factor that helps with growth. That's (part of) how the UK industrialised in the first place, and it's also part of why the US got as rich as they are. (Nowadays the UK isn't exactly a big country, but at the time they represented one of the bigger unified markets. Eg across the channel France, even though it was politically united, was plagued by internal tariffs.)
People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized (at least anywhere close to the degree the experts expected). Just over the period of the pandemic I saw personally a huge amount of development and growth in China, while virtually nothing in Taiwan.
I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.).
Similar to Hong Kong, a key economic driver was their function as a bridge between the West and China - but this has become mostly redundant now.
All good things must come to an end. China will stall eventually too, for instance they're getting incredibly bureaucratic now, but they still have some runway.