I believe it so as well. I was just reinforcing that I don't believe conventional war can occur without a major technological innovation in missile defense. It all comes down to sociology-economics, which is in turn downstream of culture. Neither the USA or China have close to optimal culture, but even accounting for western propaganda, the United States is a much happier place.
Source: I met many Chinese people in college. Many of them were striving for success with such fervor because they wanted to stay in America.
Not attacking, I am genuinely curious about what you think. From the outside looking in, it seems like people are overworked, overcrowded and rather unequal. Also they have a lot of pollution in many areas.
I would still rather live in the US, as an American, but I don't think this is how to think about the original statement. It's all relative, right? In absolute terms you can say they're overworked and overcrowded, but they can still be happier than us because they reference their past experience and they see the progress the country has made. We see a lot of dissatisfaction in the US today, despite having higher QoL than China, because things have not improved for large swathes of the population. I'd honestly be surprised if the average Chinese citizen were less happy than the average American.
I also appreciate the Chinese faith in their government and their sense of national purpose. People talk ad nauseam about our political polarity, but another issue is that it's basically American culture to question government competence now. I don't think people fully realize how damaging that is for society. Pollution and inequality are problems, but the sense of most Chinese is that the government is working to fix them. What do you think they see if they look at us? Probably theatrics and gridlock, that's what Americans feel after all
Corruption in its forms – bribes, nepotism, scams perpetrated by officials, selective law enforcement, exploitation of socialised resources and capital for personal gain by officials, arbitrate rule changes without prior notice – are experienced by the populace on a daily basis from their local-level government. It creates magnitudes stronger problems than theatrics and gridlock. There is no one who is content with the work and quality of the local-level government. The people can only bitch in private because they know that public petitions are ignored and protests/demonstrations/riots are swiftly cracked down.
The effects of the high-level government OTOH usually cannot be seen or felt directly. A constructed image of the effects is disseminated by the propaganda arm of the party through newspapers, tv and radio, internet. People do like these success stories, but they are not accurate w.r.t. reality.
This perspective is not useful. You have to put yourself into the shoes of an abroad student, and then you will understand why the majority of them chooses to return home after getting the degree. Attraction factors are generally more important than the detraction factors you enumerated (overcrowding isn't even an objective one): these people want to be with their network of family and acquaintances, be part of a culture and speak the language they understand, and exploit their new knowledge to become wealthy without additional hurdles.
Source: I met many Chinese people in college. Many of them were striving for success with such fervor because they wanted to stay in America.