The torrid pace of change in China

You’ve heard of dog years. The old rule-of-thumb says one dog year equals seven years of human life. That means a 10-year-old dog has aged as much as a 70-year-old human.

So let me introduce you to “China years.” Change comes faster in China than elsewhere. Anyone who lives in a China knows what I mean. High-rises fly up. Wrecking balls raze entire neighborhoods, giving way to new shopping centers. Restaurants come and go at hyper-speed. I look out my 14th floor office and a speeded-up movie appears before my eyes. In this morphing urban landscape, at least 13 high-rises have sprouted within three blocks of my balcony since mid-2003. Directly across the street, workers have now built 18 floors of a new high-rise. How many more floors will be added on? In China, who knows?

This might all seem like subjective blather. It’s not. As one of my siblings likes to say, “There’s proof.” A global investment bank, Standard Chartered, issued a research report this morning called “China Years: How many are you living?” The report gives a sense of how the scorching pace of change in China compares to change elsewhere.

A year in China is equivalent to four years in the United States or Britain, it says.

Anyone who visited China in the past, then comes back, always exclaims breathlessly at the change.

“BMWs vie with Audis, alongside the occasional Humvee, in traffic jams along streets that twenty years ago were barely even lit at night. Each new high-end restaurant out-does its predecessors in glitz, champagne and fancy chefs, while in the early 1980s going out to eat was a rare and definitely ‘capitalist’ experience.” 

If the changes are dizzying for foreigners, they are even more so for Chinese.

“Imagine the unbelievable salaries your twenty-something kids suddenly have, the dizzying pace at which they shift jobs (and relationships), the skyscrapers sitting on the bull-dozed tenements in which you grew up, the extraordinary travel that some of your neighbors now do, and the pain that others face as they get ill and find the local hospital wants unimaginable amounts of cash on deposit before it even looks at them. Imagine, suddenly, all those strange folks on the streets, themselves also looking slightly bewildered.”

For amusement, the economists at Standard Chartered decided to put a metric to the change, choosing per capita economic output in China over the period 1980-2007 and comparing it to 60 or so other countries. Here’s some of what they came up with.

“According to our calculations, one American year is equivalent to one quarter of a China year, or 2.8 months. One British year is equivalent to 3.1 China months. In other words, an American or a Brit will experience as much change in China in the space of three months as he or she would at home in a year. Life here really is four times quicker.”

So an American who lives in China 2½ years will see as much change around him that he would have to wait 10 years to see at home.

For fellow Asians, “China years” aren’t quite as impressive. One Singaporean year is equivalent to six months in China. One Korean year is equivalent to eight China months.

At the other extreme, take Malawi in Africa, which has seen almost no economic growth in recent decades. One year in Malawi is like seven hours in China, the study reports.

“Our ‘China years’ are only meant as a bit of fun, but we hope they help put a number to the sense of dizziness you may be experiencing after having moved to China. Or for those who have spent their lives here, they might give you a taste of what life is like for those still living in the slow lanes of life elsewhere.”

Here are some other calculations. The period of time in parentheses is how long in ‘China time’ for one year in the mentioned country: Brazil (24 days), Philippines (one month), Mexico (five or six weeks), Colombia (two months), Germany (2.3 months), Israel (2.5 months), Japan (2.8 months), Norway (3.4 months), Indonesia (4.4 months), Ireland (5.8 months) and Vietnam (7.2 months).

Comments

[chriswaugh_bj]

Back in 1999, newly arrived in China and looking around in amazement at my 6-year-old school, I realised things tend to age quickly in China. Now I have an explanation. Cool.

[cat]

So you're telling me I'm nearly half way to being a dog?

[jeffer]

It's never easy for a common people to survive in China. Such fast pace of economic revolution sacrifices the basic human rights of ordinary people, but who decide it? we common Chinese never vote for such a thing.

"Imagine the pain that others face as they get ill and find the local hospital wants unimaginable amounts of cash on deposit before it even looks at them."

During the change, we are backing to ancient period, fighting tooth and nail only for living, without knowing why.

[Say Keng LEE]

In terms of life experiences, yours is really a facinating article about the Shanghai Dragon. It reminds me of the Jumping Jesus Phenomenon, articulated by Robert Anton Wilson in the early nineties, in terms of the rate of change in knowledge experiences. Thank you.

[Dani]

Great article!

I´m very interested in knowing more about that report by Standard Chartered. Do you know where I can find it?

Thank you very much.