What’s ‘Middle Class’ in the US and China?
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According to Pew Research, most Americans feel good about their job security, but not their pay. We take a look at American finances from China. Welcome to The Bridge, enlightening conversations on world cultures, life, and everything in between. Hey everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge.

Hey, everyone. I'm Jason Smith, originally from sunny California, now living in beautiful Beijing. And today with me is Bebe. Hey, Jason. How are you doing? We look at the state of pay in the U.S. and examine the struggle in the U.S. and around the world. According to Pew Research Center, large majority of workers across all family income levels say their pay hasn't kept up.

up with cost of living increases. 54% say a major reason they are dissatisfied is they don't earn enough to pay their bills. Beibei, do you think you and your family will be better off in five years? In five years? Well, I think if I stay put here in Beijing, in China, yeah, why not? I'm not worried about anything in particular. Should I be worried about anything? Like, as long as I stay in China,

Things are going to be OK. I think people these days are more worried about international, like global tension, especially, you know, hot wars, trade wars and just tension in geopolitics in general. And this actually reminds me of a survey that I read a couple of weeks ago.

The survey is called Chinese People's Perspectives on International Security Survey Report 2024. And it was done by Tsinghua University. This isn't just about, you know, how much pay you're going to get. Just in general, you know, how secure Chinese people feel about the world, about their lives. And one of the results from the survey, you know, to the question, is China secure in this world over 70%?

percent of the respondents believe that China is very secure or relatively secure in the international environment. But most people, like over 76 percent, believe that globally, like internationally speaking, the world is becoming less secure. So to the first question of, is the world secure?

About 70%, actually 69.8% of respondents believe that the world today is less secure than it was five years ago. But in contrast to that, when they're asked, is China secure in this world? 76.78, so about 77% of respondents believe that China is very secure or relatively secure currently in the international environment.

Despite the fact that globally speaking, you know, people are worried about hot wars and they're worried about financial crisis, about the trade war. But most people in China feel that China's security situation has actually improved compared to about five years ago. And that's roughly how I feel, too. Like, I know things are going on, but I think, you know.

me and my family, we're going to be okay. It's a common question that's asked by Gallup and Ipsos every single year. They ask people from countries around the world, do you think you and your family would be better off in five years? And less than half of American respondents tend to say yes, but most Chinese families tend to say, yeah, we're going to be doing wonderfully. So it's just, I wanted to ask you personally, because when I post these data, basically,

Bebe on the internet, people say I'm making it up or that they'll say something like this. Chinese people have to say yes or their government will crack down on them. So here we have Bebe, a real Chinese person living here in Beijing. And Bebe says she's going to be better off in five years. Is this because if you don't answer yes, the police are going to come and put you in a camp? Can we like think about this reasonably? Let's say if I sit here inside my apartment,

and say something about, you know, something bad about China or the Chinese government.

Like, do you really think someone is going to come and knock on my door? I mean, how many? There are Americans that will make this claim. OK, who? Like what? The police force? And how many police? Some kind of. How many police personnel will that require for a population of one point four billion? We can, you know, people say things more than half of the population would have to be the be in the police force to make sure that the other half doesn't say anything bad about China or the government.

It doesn't make sense. If that was the situation here in China, where do you think the economic growth is coming from? If people are busy surveying other people, if half the country is busy cracking down on the rest of the country, making sure they don't say crazy things, who is going to be the productive force in the economy? It's ridiculous. I mean, just think about this reasonably. I don't think these people are very reasonable when you give them answers.

They just make up stuff. And at some point when you do finally catch them in an argument that they have no rebuttal for yet because they haven't invented one, they will usually just call you names. I want to add something from the survey that I mentioned earlier. Sure, absolutely. Please do. So in the survey, they asked another question. How do Chinese citizens view other countries? Now, these are questions asked to other Chinese people. The survey, the people surveyed are...

like people from China, Chinese citizens across a pretty wide age range. And one result I want to mention to our listeners is that the respondents, there is some unfavorable sentiments toward the U.S., but respondents' unfavorable sentiments towards the U.S. are primarily directed at the U.S. government rather than its citizens. So to be more precise, about 81.71% of respondents responded

have a neutral or favorable attitude towards ordinary Americans, while 81.4% express somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable views toward the U.S. government. And only a small fraction of respondents, like 1.8%, feels highly unfavorable towards both the U.S. government and ordinary Americans. So the

So that's something I want to share with our listeners, you know, even though internationally speaking, there might be political tension, but the people are still friendly, you

You know, the Chinese people, most Chinese people feel very friendly. I'm doing the math in my head. 1.8% of 1.4 billion people is about 25 million people. Just saying. Well, like the people who are surveyed are only a few thousand. Yeah, yeah. I'm just pulling at the thread at the edge of the sweater. You know what I mean? Yeah, very smart, Jason.

you know, I think, you know, you mentioned their dissatisfaction with the U S government and not the U S people that I think that's most Americans feel the same way. Yeah. Well, but if you keep listening to like mainstream media, I don't know how, uh, that can, how friendly, uh,

how their friendliness can be maintained. But, you know, if you... I think I would even have more faith on personal media, like these personal media platforms, you know, to get a feel of what people's real experiences are. Like, a lot of people travel to China. What do they think? You know, what do they discover when they're actually here? Instead of just listening to what... You know, I get to...

I get to interview them often and they are so positive. Actually, I was surprised by the things that they said. I interviewed some students from Virginia State.

University of Virginia, and they had come out to Beijing. I met them a couple days, but one day they were in the Forbidden City here in Beijing. And they told me they were surprised how many trees, flowers there were in Beijing, and that it was a very beautiful city filled with trees and flowers. I never really saw Beijing like that. I guess maybe...

I'm from the West Coast, and we have a lot of trees and flowers. I didn't realize how barren the East Coast was. Apparently, all these East Coast Americans were like, wow, China is so full of trees and flowers. Wait, my impression of West Coast in the U.S. is dry. The color I remember is the color of dirt. Right.

I'm from the Central Valley, which is like a farming community. And also, my mom and dad, every other weekend, we would drive up to the Sierra Nevadas, which is just like pine tree land. It's just completely, totally forested. And Berkeley is like that too. Berkeley and San Francisco, very treed. So for me, the places that I lived, they were very lush with forests and stuff. See, we all have our own narrow views, right? Based on our...

Very limited experiences. So that's why we need to travel. We need to listen to what other people say about their experiences. You know, if I had just landed in the Gobi Desert, I would tell you, man, China is just sand. Yeah, good point. Yeah. And also because of all these new visa policies. Yeah. China is like, you know, wide open to inviting foreign friends. And.

And give it a try. It even works for Americans now because they have a 10-day transit visa for America, even the U.S. citizens. It benefits a lot of people from other countries more. There's about 70 or 80 countries that can come to China for 30 days visa-free.

But that includes like New Zealand and Australia, by the way, if you're from those countries. For citizens of the United States, you don't have that. But you do have 10-day transit visas. So for our American listeners, this is what you can do. Land in Shanghai. There's only a few cities you can do this in. Land in a city. I know Shanghai, that's why I'm using it as an example. But there are other cities. Now, what you need to do is be able to have...

go to a third party country so japan or thailand or wherever and you say okay i'm landing here and then you walk up to the kiosk in shanghai and you say i'm an american i would like to stay for 10 days and they'll give you a pass and you can stay for 10 days in china before then you have to get on a plane to go to the third party country thailand or japan or wherever it is you're going and so that is a that's a free visa you don't have to go apply for a visa to come to china anymore because

You can literally just land in China. Here's the limitation. Whatever city you land in, you are only allowed to stay in that city. So if you want to visit many cities in China, you still need to go to your local Chinese embassy in the United States and apply for a visa, which is actually a lot easier than it used to be also. Well, you can easily spend 10 days in Shanghai. Yeah, sure. There are more than enough places for you to visit and have a really good time.

Yeah, so, you know, welcome to China, guys. Give it a try. It might be a little cold here in Beijing in the wintertime. So come, you know, with your down jackets. Be prepared for that. Otherwise, no worries. I want people to make a list of all of the misinformation they hear about China before they come and have a pad of paper and go test every one of them out one by one. Because, for example, one of them is if you jaywalk

You can't get into your own hotel or apartment when you get back because your social credit score bans you from entry. So do a little jaywalking and see if you can get back to the hotel. I forgot what jaywalking meant. These things are so made up. What does jaywalking mean again? Oh, jaywalking means when you walk across the street when you're not supposed to. Ah, okay. Yeah. Someone's going to come and attack you. Well, maybe. I don't know. I don't really do that. So...

It's just not safe for your own personal safety. If it's a narrow street and there are no cars there, I'll do whatever I want. No one ever stops. I don't have a social credit score. There's no such thing. Well, see, here's one difference when you have a child or when you don't have a child. When you have a child with you, like even if you want to cross the street when the red is light and you think you're going to be fine because there's like no cars around, like 10 miles around. But you won't because you're, you know, you need to be a good example for your child. Exactly.

If you crossed a road. Thank you for helping remind me why I don't want children. I'm serious because when you have a kid with you, you are always alert in a way that you want to be a good example. You want to help others more. Yeah, because you don't want them to take the risk, right? You want to show them how normal people don't behave.

Hey everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge. You're listening to The Bridge.

So let's talk about the American finances, because you and I have talked about this before many times. And I think the inflation's back down to about 2% or 3%, which is normal-ish. But it is still, the prices don't come down when the inflation is 2% or 3%. They're still high. So did wages come up? Not really. But employment came up. So that means everyone has as many jobs as they want. You can have a job and a half.

You could have a full-time and a part-time, two part-times, whatever. You're working all the time. But are you able to pay your bills? In many cases, the answer is no. Yeah, I have friends who travel to the U.S. recently, and they sent me pictures of their bills from just eating at McDonald's. And they were shocked. One time they got just a burger and a drink, something really basic, maybe with fries or maybe not. And it came down to over $20, I think,

nearly $30. Oh my gosh. And he was like so shocked. He sent me the bills. Like I just ordered something really, really basic. And then, you know, they went for like a bowl of pho noodles or something. It was so expensive. They just like, it didn't taste good anymore. I remember last time I went back, that was a couple of years ago.

And prices were reasonable. Maybe five or six years ago, it was like things were normal. So I guess the change in prices are just mostly for the past two or three years, probably. Eating, like if you're traveling in the U.S., it's a different story now. Don't eat. Well... That's a good... You could just not eat while you're in the United States visiting. Just don't eat. This is a great opportunity to spend two weeks on a fast, starving. Or maybe...

I don't know, go to the supermarket, like make sandwiches for yourself instead of eating most of your meals out in restaurants. Oh, I don't even think that's going to help. I mean, even the grocery store is just insane. You know, actually, I proposed I'm going to do this. I just thought of this while we were talking just now. I'm going to go on to one of my online platforms. I'm going to ask my fans in America to

To send me a grocery store bill of what they bought. It has to have all the items listed and how the quantity of each item and the cost all listed. Send me the full and complete list.

And then I'm going to go to the grocery store, Walmart. Not a high expensive one, not a cheap one. It's just average grocery store. I'm going to buy the exact same things. We're going to put the bills side by side. Yeah. And I think we need to be careful when it comes to what kind of products. Like, let's say pork, because Chinese people eat a lot of, most Chinese people eat a lot of pork as their source of protein. But the prices vary depending on what kind of pork. You know, there is the regular ones. Yeah.

Just general ones, those are pretty affordable. I'm willing to buy the highest end version of everything. Yeah, the highest version. Just to show that way we're being super fair and showing that I'm not trying to bend. I'll say, okay, this pork chop is this much. I'll do a video of buying the stuff to prove that I'm buying the quality stuff. And I'm sure that the bill will still come out like a third higher.

the cost of what it costs in the United States. But the price difference will be pretty big. Let's say if you want to get the same

kind of pork, like from the same part of the pig's body. Wow. But if you get the really good ones, the price can be three times the price of normal pork. Well, we'll take, I'm willing to take that hit. Yeah, that could be a good survey. A huge problem right now is credit cards. And it's not just because people have debt. That's not, I think people misunderstand the problem, especially rich people. They misunderstand the problem of having credit card debt.

When a person of no little means has credit card debt, $10,000, $20,000 of credit card debt, it doesn't just mean, oh, they need to borrow each month.

it means they're paying not 3% interest or 7% interest like a rich person because they have really good credit. They're paying 10, 15% interest on that. Crazy. So every single month, half of their credit card bill that they're paying is just the interest, not just paying back so that at the end of the month, they can use it again. So these people are

trapped in a perpetual cycle of being held underwater by credit card debt. And this is affecting about half of all Americans to have outstanding credit card debt. And you can, it's true, you can declare bankruptcy. But once you declare bankruptcy, you cannot declare bankruptcy again for seven years. So if you're already not able to meet your needs and

Pay your bills. If you declare bankruptcy, you're going to be that same person is very likely to be in horrible debt a year later. But guess what? Then they cannot legally get out of it by any means. See, speaking of using credit, I think culturally it's very different here in China.

In general, Chinese people loathe being in debt. They dislike the feeling of owning money. Mortgage is another thing because it's for your house, right? But a lot more people, most people I think would feel the strong dislike to owe money to buy things that they don't absolutely have to buy.

Like when it comes to buying things like clothing or toys or just or fancy food or even eating out, using borrowed money to do that, it just feels very odd, right? Like Chinese people's willingness to be in debt is very, very, very low. They'd rather live a more frugal life than, you know, just feeling the joy of being able to afford something, you know, when you swipe that card. It's just...

It's just not worth it in our mentality. And I think in general, let's say when we really need money for something,

First, you resort to talking to your family, right? To your parents and your parents-in-law, your relatives. And usually they can pull a decent amount of money, right? Let's say if you need this for, okay, maybe for medical expenses, let's say. That's probably the very few things that, you know, that drive people to such desperate means. And then your family is like sort of a social net for Chinese people. And then...

the idea of saving is kind of in Chinese people's blood. Maybe younger generation are not as crazy about them, but like at least my parents' generation, and they have very, very strong belief in always saving part of your income. So like my parents' generation, I don't think they're, a lot of them are not rich, but they're not in debt. You know what I mean?

So it's shocking to hear that so many people are in debt. And also, why did they get into debt? Some people, if you say like for education, that's one thing, right? For medical reasons, that's one thing. But just for daily expenses, like for eating and drinking and buying things.

For a lot of Chinese people, that's unthinkable. I think there's a misunderstanding in China about American debt. There are people who are the upper middle class, who are an increasingly smaller proportion of American society, who buy video games and stuff. And it was fun to go to the mall and buy a Starbucks coffee or whatever. But the majority of people who have credit card debt are not buying luxury items. They're buying bread and...

and rice and food for their families, grocery shopping to survive and feed the kids. So...

The vast majority of people who have credit card debt are not living the high life. It's not like, oh, I had three nights out a week for the last month and now I have all this horrible credit card debt. It's like they did not earn enough money to pay their bills and they needed to buy beans and bread to be able to eat so they would have the energy to go to work to not meet their bills. So it's a perpetual cycle of

going down, downward in society. Even as pay increases, it doesn't keep up with the cost of living anymore. And you know, there's a way that people like to skew the results of data analysis to make it seem like wages are increasing to keep up with inflation. Because if you look at just the cost of living and just wages for all categories of American citizens,

It looks like they're keeping parity generally. But if you actually look at the income inequality, it's the people in the top 1%, 2%, and 10% whose wages are increasing just amazingly high, all-time highs, and they're making more money than ever before, which skews the result for everyone else and shows that they're actually decreasing against inflation and that the other 90%.

The bottom 90% are actually making less money against the cost of living over the past 20 or 30, 40 years. So there are ways that people can show you data that's real data, and it looks like, oh, everything's fine. But if you look at the details of the way that data is analyzed or analyze it slightly differently, you'll get a completely different outlook. I have a piece of data here.

from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis as graphed by Statista. And it shows that over time,

the bottom 50% has less. This is ridiculous. 1990, the bottom 50% of Americans only had about 4% of all of the wealth of the United States of America as a percentage of the population. But now it's down to about 2% of the wealth. The bottom 50% of Americans has 2% of United States wealth as a percentage. Wow.

Okay. And it's really hard to believe those numbers. Yeah. It's graphed. And it's not just statistics. They graphed this. Other agencies also graphed the same data to show just ridiculous. And here's the kicker. The top 1% own about 80%.

I'm sorry, I got that wrong. The top 1% own about 30% of all wealth in the entire United States. And then you have tiers where it's the next 9%, the next 40%. So there's about half of Americans have about the other 98% of the wealth. But with 1% of the top 1% of Americans control about 30%,

of the wealth of Americans. If we redistributed it, I know people don't like that term, but I do. I do, by the way. By the way, I do. If we redistributed the top 1% wealth among the bottom 50%, basically everyone in the whole United States could be in the middle class. See? Isn't that a beautiful picture? It's just ridiculous that 50% of Americans...

can barely survive. Hey, can I say something? And 1% have two yachts or three yachts or whatever. It's crazy. So we talk about income inequality sometimes uncontrollably over the years. Yeah, it's so bothersome. Here is my impression. So we both know that income inequality can get pretty bad, right? Both in the US and in China and in many other countries. But something different about China is

when compared to, let's say, the U.S., is that as a Chinese person, you know that the Chinese government wants to do something about it and has been doing something about it. And is doing. Yeah. So that is, even though we don't know the details of what's been done, but you have

the strong sense that they're trying and they have been trying to do something about it. And actually, I found this article. It's called Fairer Income Distribution in China. It's published by University of Gothenburg, which is in Sweden. And it just came out in November 4th of this year. And people can find it online titled Fairer Income Distribution in China. So it's done by Professor Bjorn Gustafsson.

I'm probably not saying it correctly. I don't think I would do any better. I would like to share this result of that. Please do. So the study concludes that income distribution in China is influenced by pension, health care and education and birthplace and family background play a lesser role in determining income. And in a bit more detail, in rural China, you've been to rural China, right? You probably have. Oh, many times. Many times. Yeah.

So you understand that a lot of what they need on a daily basis are produced on, let's say, their own land, right, or in the house. So in rural China, a significant part of the household income still comes from self-produced goods for personal consumption. And usually households, they farm a piece of land and consume what they produce.

And they have like houses. So in rural China, people actually live in houses, right? In the city, people live in like cramped apartments. But in rural China, you have farmland, you have house. And the study, a study on the impact of circumstances on household income distribution shows that differences in income between rural and urban residents in China depend

depend more on factors individuals can influence rather than their birthplace and family background. So these factors that you can influence, let's say education, right?

or how determined you are to become better off. And in 2002, 2013, and 2018, Professor Bjorn Gustafsson, in social work at the University of Gothenburg, examined income distribution in China. And together with researchers from Canada and China, the study shows that the significance of external circumstances

such as people's birthplace, gender, age, and family conditions, decreased over the course of the study. So that's from 2002 to 2018. And the researchers say that the decrease is due to various societal measures implemented in the country. For example, the government has, among other things, improved access to health care and education in rural areas. It has removed

tax on agricultural land, and eliminated fees for compulsory education. So that's for the first nine years. And they also introduced social safety nets, including an old age pension. And the purpose of these societal measures has been to reduce income disparity, income inequality between urban and rural areas. Of course, income inequalities have not decreased in the country as a whole.

And they have actually increased over several years in China. But the research shows that income disparities increasingly depended on factors that people could influence.

So Jason, you know the significance of that, right? If how well you do depend only mostly on your birthplace, your gender, how well, you know, your parents do, then there's less incentives for you to work hard. But the result of this study is telling you that how well you will do depends more on factors that you can influence, like your education, right? Like how hard you work.

And so the researchers for this paper argue that family background and birthplace still play a certain role for those living in rural areas, but are decreasing in importance. And the results, they say, from our study...

show that it is possible to reduce income disparity based on factors that individuals cannot control through targeted societal measures. Basically means that if government implement the right societal measures or policies, it can help to reduce income disparity. And this serves as an important insight for other countries which are striving to create a more just society.

So I think this is basically the result from the study by Professor Bjorn Gustafsson from University of Gothenburg. And so whether or not your government wants to do something about it makes a huge difference. Hey, everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge.

You're listening to The Bridge. I would have to say there's another factor here, and that is also that China has four times the population of the United States, even though the United States and China, depending on how you measure it, have roughly the same total population.

I mean, GDP. So the United States and China have similar GDPs, but China has four times the population. And yet China has been able to raise all of its citizens out of absolute poverty, is building homes for people. There is homelessness. There's virtually no homelessness. It's such a low percentage of the population that it's barely...

Whereas in the United States, there's like 700,000 homeless persons. So no matter how you measure that, that is a bad sign for their society. Despite the fact that the United States, because of its population, has four times the population.

per capita, per person to expend, and yet they are not able to solve basic problems like homelessness. So, I mean, there are so many different ways we could analyze why China is doing a better job for caring for its least well-off citizens. Another factor is just homeownership. Like you mentioned rural homes.

People usually inherit those homes from their parents and then they rebuild them or whatever. In the United States, you're on your own because your parents probably mortgaged their home to the bank. And if you don't buy your own home, you don't have one. So most Chinese citizens don't have a mortgage. Most Chinese citizens own a home. Most American citizens don't.

don't own a home. And if they do, it's with the bank. And 50% of all real estate equity in the United States belongs to the banks. That means 50% of all homeowners, homeownership is owned by banks. Whereas in China, by the time you retire, it's almost unthinkable in China for you not to own your home

Right. Whether you live in a city or you live in the countryside. So when you retire, you don't have to worry about paying your real estate bill or your rent or something. You just have a home to live in and you don't have tax on your home. And the United States, if you are 67 years old and you do happen to own your home, which would be a miracle, but you don't pay your property tax, the government will come in and take your home. They will knock on your door. Right.

So it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. People say, oh, but China, in China, you're just leasing your land for 70 years. Yeah, but here's the thing. You can renew that lease with almost no money. It's just an administrative fee after 70 years. It's still yours. You're still going to be living there. In the United States, if you don't pay your property tax every single year, they take it from you. So who is really leasing? I mean, I think...

I think the way that Americans analyze China is sometimes wrong, and mostly it's just out of ignorance. You know, we were talking about the difference between rural and urban communities.

living here in China. I remember a few months ago, some of my relatives from the countryside came for a visit here in Beijing. And they live really chill lives, like as chilled as you can imagine. And I remember one of my cousins, when she was living here, she was like, why are you guys so busy? Why are you always working? Like,

We just like sit in the sun, you know, live in the countryside. That's one thing I found really bizarre about my wife's grandmother lives in the deep countryside. You know what? Exactly what we're talking about. The really, really rural part of China. And when I go out there,

you know, she gets up, she makes breakfast, then she's just sitting there for hours. And it's just like, well, sometimes they do, but the basics, they have the basics. They have a house, right? Like my cousins, my, my, my aunt, my uncles in the countryside, they, they each have their own. If you have a family, if you get married, you have your own house on a plot of land. You spend a little money building the house, but usually it's not too expensive. And

And then some people, they work in certain places. For example, some of my aunts and uncles, they work in local banks and others, I don't know, various jobs. And then the wives, a lot of them stay at home, especially when their kids are young. And then that keeps them busy. And once they're like my cousin, once her two kids are off on their own, she sometimes goes for like hourly work.

or work by pieces. Like sometimes they have workshops that knit hats and they're paid by how many hats you make. But it's very little money. It's like some side income, you know, very little money. And sometimes they make shoes. Like it's, it's not, it's money that so, the wage is so pitiful that I think like maybe just

Just says you should just rest instead of spending hours doing that. But she's like, I'm bored. I rest most of the time. There's my kids are off and I don't have much to do. So why not? Because we did get we get together. Right. We each knit our hats and we chat. So it's a little bit like that.

A fun meeting and you get some money at the end of the day. So sometimes they will get a text say, hey, we have work today. So come and join the factory. And other days it's free. They don't have work and then they just chill. So they live in a very like in a very different pace.

And when they come here, they see us always busy. They're like, oh, are you sure you're enjoying your lives? Why are you still so busy? But I guess, you know, we each enjoy our rhythm in life. Really? I'm not sure I do. I think the Beijing rhythm of life, Shanghai, the big cities, they are right. It's too fast. You know, when you even go to the second or third tier cities in China, you know, like the Qingdao's and the Wuhan's. Actually, those are now first tier cities.

Let me say like Changsha. So you go to one of these kind of, or Lanzhou, right? You go to Lanzhou of a kind of size city in China. People really do walk slower. Yeah.

I believe it. They move for, they get their coffee and they go to sit down slower. They sit there longer and they even take longer to say things like in Beijing. It's like, I got my coffee. You got to sit down. I go, okay, I got, I got seven minutes before I got to go back to wherever, you know, like it's like every minute is accounted for your entire day until you, so I, you know, I, I appreciate that, uh,

rural residents of China are enjoying their lives a lot more. I do want to jump to another piece of data I have. This is from Data Wrapper, Bureau of Labor Statistics in the United States. Just a couple of pieces of data. CPI has increased by 180% from 2000 to 2024. So let me translate. That means everything has become almost twice as expensive

on average, from 2000 to 2024. So over that period of 24 years, things almost doubled in cost, except for a few things, which increased insanely by insane amounts. So during the same period, the cost of going to college plus fees, not including books even, increased by 280%.

Yeah, I see that red line. That's like over the roof. Yeah, that means you're paying more than three times four because it starts at that. Actually, the line starts at 100% on the bottom. I can see now. So it's 280% increase from zero. So things, it's just insane. And also medical care increased over 200%.

But weekly earnings only increased about the same as medical care. So you're paying so much more for college. So that's why you have $2 trillion in student loans, by the way. And not all the... People don't understand student loans. The loans aren't like 0% or 2% or something. Some people are paying as high as 7% interest on their student loans, which is like a bad credit card bill, really. And so they will never get out of it. People who pay...

Borrowed $20,000, owe $100,000 now. The only time that I saw someone with over five credit cards was in college. And one of my friends, he was from China. He actually, he finished high school in China and got into Cornell in the U.S. And then he was paying his tuition because he was an international student. So he actually had to like pay every single dollar. And one time we gathered in his small tiny apartment for fun.

And we were talking about, oh, you know, the tuition. And he just took out like five or six credit cards. I'm like, wow, why do you have so many credit cards? He was like, oh,

oh, you know, I got this one and then I need to pay for this one with another one. And then I need to pay for the second one with a third one. Oh my gosh. He was actually really calm. Maybe he was used to that situation. He was like, oh, you know, I'm close to graduating and then, you know, and then I can get a job and start paying off. He's doing fine, by the way. He's in finance. He's making a lot of money. So I'm sure he's paid off his credit cards debt.

many, many decades ago. We do not recommend normal people do that. Don't do that because later on, like years later, I realized how capable he was, like how calm he was as a 20, maybe he wasn't even 20 years old.

a 20 year old, he must be really smart, you know, to be able to get into a really good university in the U.S. directly from China and to be able to manage his own finances as such an early age. But that was like the only time I saw someone with so many credit cards live, like every single one was being paid on time. So otherwise in China, I don't,

I haven't seen anything like that. And I also wanted to add, I wanted to say something because you mentioned higher education. And the article I just mentioned, fair income distribution in China, reminded me that one of the major reasons why people are able to break the societal barriers to go from the bottom to the middle class and even, you know, to the upper class here in China,

is because we have a really fair education system.

Now, the first nine years are free, right? And then I don't think you barely pay anything for high school. And then for college, we have the famous college entrance exam. Now, no one is saying that this exam is nothing but good because it's so stressful. It kind of changes the way people study because a lot of people, they just study for taking this test. But it makes a huge difference in people's lives. And it's...

As fair as it can get, I think globally speaking,

This college entrance exam, even if you're from... Why don't you tell our listeners about the security around the exam itself? Because I think a lot of Americans would be shocked at the steps that are taken to prevent cheating. Well, I think we'll probably have to do another show to get into the details. But I know that the point is, no matter who you are, like when they grade the test, they don't know who you are, even if you're like the kid of the president, you know?

There's nothing much you can do because they don't know who you are when they're grading the paper. Let me add a couple of things because the tests arrive at the school in an armored car that is escorted by police. Yeah.

And the police themselves, not security officials, the police carry it into the school. The test ground. And the police remove it and put it into an armored car when it leaves the high school. Let me put it this way. So recently I saw a movie. It was a comedy about how stressed kids

Chinese parents now can get about their kids' education because they all want their kids to get really high scores on the college entrance exam. So this super rich couple, they devised this whole scheme around their child's life to make sure that he can learn things every single second of his life and at every opportunity. It's like super exaggerated, but it's really funny. And eventually the kid found out that

He was living in a scheme. And eventually he found out that his parents are actually super, super, super rich. That's also why they can hire all these people, you know, to pretend to be a vegetable seller, but who speaks perfect English. So whenever their child goes to the market, it actually turned out to be like, oh, you want the A?

eggplant this is an eggplant so can you say eggplant yeah eggplant eggplant and ran and um part of the scheme was that uh his grandpa his grandma died and then in her place they hired someone like an educational specialist to be his uh grandma and he was too little to remember much anyway

So that's, you know, the whole scheme. What is the name of this movie? I have to watch it. It's called Dra Wawa. It's really funny. I think your wife will know it. It's hilarious. But so he found out right before he was to take the college entrance exam that it was a whole scheme because he's discovered in his parents wardrobe, like the closet. So behind the closet is an elevator where his parents actually change into their, you know, normal lives. They don't.

pretend to be poor anymore. And they go down to their office and all that. So he discovered this whole scheme. But he can't escape from this whole plan because it's everywhere. There's surveillance everywhere for this poor child to make sure that he grow up to be a frugal and a child with really good qualities all around. The only time he could escape from the scheme, guess when? During the Gaokao itself. Exactly! So...

The only time, only slot he knew that he could escape from this whole scheme was when he went off to take the college entrance exam.

So after he walked into the Gaokao place, he just threw away his backpack. Well, maybe a little bit. He didn't even take the test. And he just ran away and started his own scheme to kind of fight back his parents. But it just reminded me of that because, as you mentioned, security around the Gaokao to make sure that nobody can, you know, fake their answers, can copy answers from other places. And I think even in the test ground,

Everything on the walls are covered up so that people won't read off answers from the wall or something like that. But this is one of the reasons why people from lower classes can still have a chance of climbing up the social ladder. And another reason I think is really important is that college education is a lot more affordable. The tuition that people pay in the U.S. is unthinkable. It's unthinkable in a lot of other countries.

I mean, here, college tuition, maybe it would still seem to be expensive for people from, I don't know, from like deep in the mountains who just depend on rural products for their income. But then they can apply for scholarship.

But in general, like normal families don't worry about college tuition. Like it's just barely something to worry about. And that helps a lot. But if you have to pay your college tuition with like six or seven credit cards, that's a different story. A lot of people just give up. You know, here's the problem with this in the United States. And the United States has it worse than anywhere else. The problem is that the university is supposed to be a way for people from a blue collar background to

to go to college because they got good grades and they studied hard and then move on and come and become middle class, at least possibly upper middle class and escape the cycle of poverty. That is the, that is the American promise. It's, it's not the American dream is the American promise of it. If you get educated, you're supposed to be able to get a better life. And so, you know,

It doesn't work because you get out and your student debt is so great that the people who did not go to college, in fact, probably have a better chance of becoming more successful because they're not burdened with a lifetime of debt. But I do want to really quickly, because we're already running out of time and never even got to the research that started us off on this. This is from Pew Research. Most Americans feel good about their job security, but not their pay.

It's just a couple really quick statistics. This is on page two. Falling behind cost of living increases top raising of workers' dissatisfaction with pay. The question is among employed adults who are not too at all satisfied with their pay, percent saying each of is the following. 54% say they do not.

earn enough to pay their bills. So there's a consider those people who feel that they're not being paid well, they say it's because they can't actually pay their bills. That does not mean a total of 54% of Americans. This is 54% of people who are in the part. Yeah. Well, there's this, they broke that survey down. These are the part of the people who are somewhat satisfied, not too at all satisfied. So it's a 50%. So it's 54%.

percent of those 50%. So it's about 25% of Americans saying, hey, I can't pay my bills. That's 25% of all Americans saying they are not... How can you survive if you cannot pay your bills? That creates...

the conditions for eventually falling through the cracks. If you can... That's the problem with rent and things like that right now in America. If you can't pay your rent, guess what happens? You're out on the street. You don't have a place to stay. You're sleeping in your car. You're sleeping at your mom's. You're sleeping with a friend or possibly you're joining the 700,000 people who are living on the streets of America. That should be the last choice. I mean, like, yeah, if that happens in China, you probably go find...

one of your relatives to stay with, like at least your parents. Yeah. This reminds me, you know, the other day, my, what do you call it? Like hourly help for housework.

She's not my nanny, my auntie. How do you say auntie in Chinese? Housekeeper. But we don't have housekeepers unless you're very rich in the United States. It's a different phenomenon. But she only comes for two hours a day and I pay her about $7 an hour. If I was living in America and someone showed up at my house even once a month to clean, people would say I was rich. Really? Well, she comes...

Two hours a day. We don't have that. We don't have that. So she was chatting with us just a few days ago. You know, it's the end of the year and she's getting ready to go back to her...

hometown, right, for the spring festival and all that. And she was really happy that she says she's been able to save about $20,000 this year from her own work. She saved $20,000. And that means she's, you know, she made a lot more. That's pretty amazing, right? I mean, for Chinese living standards. She does domestic work. You know, she cooks and clean and just, you know, whatever we need help with around the house.

And she works hard though. She works seven days a week sometimes for special occasions. She would take some time off and she, she only was in school for like four years. She hates studying. So basically she escaped school illegally when she was little, but she works hard and she's very honest and she's very dedicated to her work. And that's why she, you know, she doesn't run out of work. Um,

And her work has been... She works for, I think, four or five families in this neighborhood. May I ask, does she work for a consortium, like a company that distributes her labor? Or does she work for herself? I think there is some kind of work structure at the very beginning. Maybe they help you introduce her work. As far as I know, she has been working with...

for the same four or five families in this particular neighborhood for the past, like, over a decade, maybe a decade or two. Wow. And she has, like, social insurance. She has medical insurance. Maybe the medical insurance is for, like, the country in general, not with a certain workplace. And she has, like, pension. Like, all that basic stuff, she has them all. Wow, she has pension. That's fantastic. Yeah, she has a house back in Xi'an. That's her...

Well, she actually lives in a town maybe an hour away from Xi'an City, but they bought a house in Xi'an. And they bought it for their son because, you know, just for her son to get married in the future, they need a house. That's their way of thinking, like an apartment.

So she's like all set. You know what I mean? And she only had four years of education. And her husband worked for years. Is Xi'an also called Chang'an? Back in the days, yeah. Because I heard someone ask someone in a conversation recently, have you been to Chang'an? And I was thinking, what? Well, that's ancient. But yeah, it's the same city. So what I'm saying is, even for someone who's working, well, for her job, it's, you know, at the pretty bottom of the social ladder, right? But she's...

She's probably saved more than I did this year. Wow. Cut her pay. Her husband used to work as a security guard in the neighborhood. But then because of his own efforts, like he loves to study. So I think he spent years getting some side training.

about like neighborhood safety or something. And he was able to find a better job. He's probably changed jobs two or three times over the years. And now he's getting a much better pay. So there are, you know, a happy couple whose lives have improved dramatically over the past decade or more. And their son is in college. They have a house back in their hometown and they're able to save so much money every year. So this goes to tell you that there are ways.

right? They work hard, that's for sure. But they're pretty happy with what they created with their own lives. By comparison to the analogies we've been making, I actually think a couple of different things. I think number one, I think probably, I've just realistically that most Americans don't know how well they have it. And actually, life is probably really great. But I do also think that the problem for America is that

In the 1980s, America was dominant in the world and American lifestyles were really good. You could have one person in the family working and supporting the entire family. And so I think as China has become more wealthy and they've been able to do a lot more with less, I think Americans are increasingly doing a lot worse than they were before. I think that the Chinese system has been...

showing its strengths in a way that the American economy can learn from. My feeling as an American living in China is there is so much we in the United States of America can learn from how China is able to take care of its people. And we need to start borrowing some of those ideas ourselves. The thing is, Jason, what

What I feel is like, is the government willing to work for its people? Like in China, I feel strongly that the government wants their people, the people to have better lives. And the government dedicate itself to making that happen.

I think both governments know how. But deep down, do you really want to do that? Like you think? That's a great question for our listeners to answer. We're out of time. Listeners, if you want to answer Bebe's very thoughtful question, please email us at welovethebridge at gmail.com. Thank you so much for your time. Listeners, thank you so much for your time, Bebe. Thank you, Jason. And we'll see you guys next time. Bye. Bye.