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China's economy grows by 6.9% in 2017

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I can't read Mandarin. I'm down to about 10 words.

Give me a quick summary and I'll give you my opinion.

Taiwan has high GDP per capital than Mainland, but regular folks' life quality is actually lower.

1. Taiwan GDP counts the numbers from overseas Taiwanese companies;
2. Taiwan GDP per capital was artificially "averaged up" by rich people;
3. Many Taiwanese young people don't own cars;
4. Most Taiwanese people live in self-built homes/sheds, instead of high rise buildings;
5. For regular folks, mainland has better quality of life than that of Taiwan.

etc.
 
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Taiwan has high GDP per capital than Mainland, but regular folks' life quality is actually lower.

1. Taiwan GDP counts the numbers from overseas Taiwanese companies;
2. Taiwan GDP per capital was artificially "averaged up" by rich people;
3. Many Taiwanese young people don't own cars;
4. Most Taiwanese people live in self-built homes/sheds, instead of high rise buildings;
5. For regular folks, mainland has better quality of life than that of Taiwan.

etc.
I think it's true.

If you're a high-tech engineer in Taiwan, you're doing fine.

If you are unskilled in Taiwan then your quality of life is pretty bad.

It's common knowledge among Taiwanese. These issues are constantly discussed on Taiwanese tv talk shows.
 
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Taiwan has high GDP per capital than Mainland, but regular folks' life quality is actually lower.

1. Taiwan GDP counts the numbers from overseas Taiwanese companies;
2. Taiwan GDP per capital was artificially "averaged up" by rich people;
3. Many Taiwanese young people don't own cars;
4. Most Taiwanese people live in self-built homes/sheds, instead of high rise buildings;
5. For regular folks, mainland has better quality of life than that of Taiwan.

etc.

It's a very flawed article.

1. Overseas Taiwanese companies are counted as GNI, not GDP. There's no proof that they count it in their GDP.

2. I remember reading an article institutions like the IMF used 500K population as a cut-off point for their GDP calculations because any figures above 500K onwards is hard to skew.

The article is obviously BS when it says that Guo Tai Ming's company contributed to 30% of Taiwan's GDP per capita. The writer has absolutely zero knowledge of how GDP is calculated.

Beijing has similar population with Taiwan. Taiwan has 33 billionaires, while Beijing has 65. And Beijing attracts many other millionaires and companies headquarters from all over China. Isn't Beijing's figure more skewed? Why Beijing's current GDP per capita is still at $18K, lower than Taiwan's?

An economy's GDP per capita has little to do with the number of billionaires residing, especially if the population is above 1 million.

3, 4, 5. The writer has no hard proof that the average mainlander has a higher standard of living than Taiwan. He used anecdotes for rich in mainland to compare with the lower middle income in Taiwan, really?

He talked about how the mainlanders have gardens in their backyards, own personal carparks, property management etc. Therefore mainlanders has a higher average standard of living than Taiwan. Seriously? Does 1.3 billion people have that standard of living on average? Or is he just cherry picking?



Heck. On a second read, I found out the article originated from a forum post in Tianya. LOL. How did it make into the news in the first place? It's like writing a news article using information from PDF. I'm sure there are many even more 'interesting information' from this forum. :lol:
 
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3. Many Taiwanese young people don't own cars;
4. Most Taiwanese people live in self-built homes/sheds, instead of high rise buildings;
5. For regular folks, mainland has better quality of life than that of Taiwan.

These three points I can attest to.

Most young people in Taiwan still lives on their parents' earnings. Entry level positions for many professions (including cramschool, kindergarten, or high school teachers) pays poorly. Hence, it is impossible for a young person living in Taipei to own a flat. I guess it takes about 30 years for a high school teacher to buy a flat in Taipei. But the teacher needs to save every single yuan.

Lots of young working people, therefore, live in single rooms for many years if they are not lucky enough to be supporter by their parents.

Another problem (most visible in Taipei), is make shift flats. They are basically illegally built on the top of three-five store buildings. These are cheaper but of course more dangerous.

Mainland lifestyle (as have been to the Mainland many many times and regularly) has becoming better especially in terms of affordability and convenience. One interesting observation I can make is that Mainland public places are cleaner, especially parks.

There are ups and down on both sides and it is like two sides of the same coin; the essence does not change -- that Taiwan and Mainland are, in many respects, one and the same.

But, Mainland's catching up and often surpassing Taiwan in many aspects of quality of life is also undeniable. The poor performance of the government (although economy seems to be doing extremely well, people do not feel it. In fact, I feel everything is getting more expensive while my researcher salary has not moved an inch upwards) is one of the reasons for backlash against Mrs. Tsai. By challenging cross-Strait interaction, she endangers the very livelihood of regular people like me.
 
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Heck. On a second read, I found out the article originated from a forum post in Tianya. LOL. How did it make into the news in the first place? It's like writing a news article using information from PDF. I'm sure there are many even more 'interesting information' from this forum. :lol:

The original post was written by a Taiwanese working in mainland. It provides an unique point of view that we don't hear often. I guess this is the reason the post went viral on Tianya.
 
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The original post was written by a Taiwanese working in mainland. It provides an unique point of view that we don't hear often. I guess this is the reason the post went viral on Tianya.

But it's still on a forum written by a anonymous netizen who have zero credibility. It shouldn't be used to write a newspaper article in the first place unless you want to pander to nationalistic sentiments.

It's like using PDF to point out that India will reach the HDI of France in less than a decade because that radio guy said Kerala already did. But of course it's false.
 
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But it's still on a forum written by a anonymous netizen who have zero credibility. It shouldn't be used to write a newspaper article in the first place unless you want to pander to nationalistic sentiments.

It's like using PDF to point out that India will reach the HDI of France in less than a decade because that radio guy said Kerala already did. But of course it's false.

The story first appeared on Taiwan's 联合新闻网. It doesn't hurt to verify a story from different perspective, that's why I wanted to hear from our Taiwanese members. I don't know about others, but this is the way I gather information. I am just curious about life in Taiwan, that's all.

台灣人均高但生活水準比陸低!台商說出最根本原因
2018-01-19 13:12聯合報 記者黃國樑╱即時報導
https://udn.com/news/story/7333/2938892
 
Last edited:
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The story first appeared on Taiwan's 联合新闻网. It doesn't hurt to verify a story from different perspective, that's why I wanted to hear from our Taiwanese members. I don't know about others, but this is the way I gather information. I am just curious about life in Taiwan, that's all.

台灣人均高但生活水準比陸低!台商說出最根本原因
2018-01-19 13:12聯合報 記者黃國樑╱即時報導
https://udn.com/news/story/7333/2938892

Fair enough.

It's true though that real wages in Taiwan are stagnating but housing prices has escalated and got out of reach of the common people. HK faces a similar problem.

Singapore was headed for the same general direction too until the PAP suffered an electoral setback in 2011 and found out that the people are very unhappy with the escalating housing prices.

price-increase-boaml.png
 
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Shanghai needs to lift its GDP over the $1 trillion threshold by 2025 :lol::D

Shanghai's economy up 6.9 pct in 2017

2018-01-20 09:30 Xinhua Editor: Huang Mingrui

Shanghai's economy grew 6.9 percent year in 2017 to 3 trillion yuan (460 billion U.S. dollars) last year, said local statistics bureau Friday.

The growth was achieved through measures to boost the real economy when the property sector cooled, said the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Statistics.

The industrial output of six major industries, including the auto and electronics and information sectors, expanded at 9 percent with much stronger 19.1 percent growth in the auto industry.

New commercial property sales in Shanghai slumped 37.5 percent year on year to 16.9 million square meters in 2017.:o:

Shanghai will not loosen the property control measures this year as it continues to reduce reliance on the sector for economic growth and fiscal revenues, said Tang Huihao, chief economist with the bureau.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2018/01-20/289201.shtml
 
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Shanghai needs to lift its GDP over the $1 trillion threshold by 2025 :lol::D

Shanghai's economy up 6.9 pct in 2017

2018-01-20 09:30 Xinhua Editor: Huang Mingrui

Shanghai's economy grew 6.9 percent year in 2017 to 3 trillion yuan (460 billion U.S. dollars) last year, said local statistics bureau Friday.

The growth was achieved through measures to boost the real economy when the property sector cooled, said the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Statistics.

The industrial output of six major industries, including the auto and electronics and information sectors, expanded at 9 percent with much stronger 19.1 percent growth in the auto industry.

New commercial property sales in Shanghai slumped 37.5 percent year on year to 16.9 million square meters in 2017.:o:

Shanghai will not loosen the property control measures this year as it continues to reduce reliance on the sector for economic growth and fiscal revenues, said Tang Huihao, chief economist with the bureau.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2018/01-20/289201.shtml

Shanghai GDP is now as big as our Taiwan province.
 
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Where is Gordon Chang?? Is he still alive?? We are waiting for his another China collapse prediction...
 
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