How the CCP Lies About Living Standards to Promote the “Chinese Dream”

Democrats have done a lot to help the Chinese become wealthy. However, since Trump’s first term and the start of the U.S.-China trade war, China’s economy has steadily declined. Photo courtesy of ECNS

Xi Jinping has promised a “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation, greater prosperity and a powerful, modern China by midcentury. Yet the CCP’s presentation of living standards obscures how far ordinary Chinese remain from American prosperity.

Housing figures include shared building areas, headline unemployment statistics omit rural joblessness, and Beijing suspended youth unemployment reporting before introducing a revised measure that excludes students. These practices can make progress toward Xi’s promise appear greater than the underlying conditions justify.

This year, U.S. nominal GDP per capita is projected to reach $94,430, more than six times China’s projected $14,870. Assuming annual growth in nominal dollar GDP per capita of 5% in China and 2% in the United States, China would need about 64 years to catch up, let alone surpass the United States.

In the meantime, the Chinese Communist Party needs people to believe they are becoming rich. Housing statistics help create that impression: official figures suggest the average American home is only 54% larger than its Chinese counterpart, at 1,845 square feet versus 1,197 square feet.

But these figures seem counterintuitive when the vast majority of people in China live in one- or two-bedroom apartments, while about 62% of U.S. households live in freestanding, single-family houses, which might be four or more times the size of the average Chinese home.

The CCP creates this impression by measuring homes differently than the United States does. China reports housing size in gross building area, which includes each unit’s share of hallways, stairwells, elevator shafts, and lobbies, while U.S. figures count only the space inside the home. Shared areas typically account for 15% to 25% of a Chinese apartment’s listed size and can reach 30% or more.

According to People’s Daily, urban residents had 36.6 m² of building area per person in 2017 but only 25.7 m² of indoor space, meaning about 30% of the reported area was not living space.

Adjusting China’s official housing figures using that ratio and comparing them with U.S. EIA data, the average American home is roughly 2.3 to 2.6 times the size of the average urban Chinese home, and Americans have about 2.4 to 2.8 times as much indoor space per person.

China lags so far behind in vehicle ownership that even the CCP does not try to spin the numbers. Instead, it touts high-speed rail and criticizes America for having so many cars, while China vies to export cars to the United States.

The United States had 288.3 million registered cars, trucks, and buses in 2024 for a population of 340.1 million, or about 848 vehicles per 1,000 people. China had 366 million automobiles at the end of 2025 for a population of 1.405 billion, or about 261 per 1,000. Americans have about 3.3 times as many vehicles per person.

Unemployment is also higher in China, but Beijing has two statistical workarounds: it redefined youth unemployment, and its urban unemployment figures omit migrant workers who lose their factory jobs and return to the countryside.

The U.S. unemployment rate was 4.2% in September 2026, compared with China’s surveyed urban rate of 5.3% in August. U.S. figures include rural areas, while China publishes no rural unemployment rate. Its closest available measure covers rural-registered migrant workers still living in cities, whose unemployment rate was 4.8% in June 2026.

China changed its youth unemployment measure after the rate reached a record 21.3% in June 2023. Two months later, the National Bureau of Statistics suspended publication, saying it needed to review its methodology. When the series returned, it excluded students, who accounted for more than 65 million of China’s 96 million urban 16-to-24-year-olds in 2022.

Under the revised measure, China’s youth unemployment rate was 14.9% in June 2026, down from 18.9% in August 2025. The U.S. teenage unemployment rate was 14.5% in September 2026, but the figures are not directly comparable: China counts nonstudents aged 16 to 24, while the U.S. figure covers ages 16 to 19 and includes students looking for work.

Even before the methodology changed, Peking University economist Zhang Dandan estimated that including 16 million young people who had stopped looking for work would put youth unemployment at 46.5% in March 2023, compared with the official 19.7%. Her article in Caixin was removed.

Another gap concerns migrant workers. China’s urban survey counts them while they live in cities, but those who lose their jobs and return to their registered rural homes fall outside its coverage. During the first quarter of 2020, China’s migrant workforce fell by about 50 million, yet those workers were not counted as unemployed.

The trade war has severely damaged China’s economy and lowered living standards. In April 2025, when U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods reached 145%, Goldman Sachs estimated that 16 million Chinese jobs depended on exports to the United States. Natixis economist Alicia Garcia-Herrero estimated that the tariffs could cost 6 million to 9 million jobs. After the additional tariff rate was reduced to 30% in May, she said the impact could still go unrecorded in unemployment figures because employers put workers on unpaid leave or reduced their hours instead of laying them off.

This creates underemployment: employers can divide the remaining work between two workers rather than dismissing one, keeping both officially employed but earning less.

China’s own migrant worker survey shows further strain. Average monthly income among its 301 million migrant workers rose just 2.3% in 2025, the smallest increase in a decade, while migrant employment in construction fell by more than 14 million between 2021 and 2025.

Consumer spending also provides a gauge of economic health and living standards. Goods sales by larger retailers fell 4.0%, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Retail sales had shrunk 0.6% in May, while fixed-asset investment fell 7.2% in the first eight months of 2026. These figures suggest weak consumer demand and declining investment, offering little sign of a strong recovery in jobs.

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