Cankles-McJeggings Only the CBDs of the major cities could be described as first world. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou have comparable median incomes to rich countries. The rest of the country is indeed very poor. The Chinese aren’t really under any illusions about this.
However, in some ways, the CBDs of places like Beijing seem more advanced in some ways than Western cities - they don’t have the stench of urban decay, failing infrastructure (because it’s all new, rather than it being well-maintained) and rising crime. Electronic payment systems and QR codes for everything. Convenient delivery networks and so on. In some regards, these cities function better than London (although I wouldn’t suggest they are ‘better’ - they don’t have things like such organic, interesting culture, music and artistic scenes and so on).
