I mean, I would have said that about Japan after my last visit. Inner city Tokyo is immaculate. Downtown Sapporo is beautiful. But… I wasn’t exactly slumming it during that trip.

Riding the rail, I passed through plenty of communities that I would suspect were low income. But they were, in some cases very literally, fly-over country. The communities were very small. There were no major stops nearby. There was no real opportunity to interrogate quality of life, because I was just passing through at high speed.

From what I understand about QoL in China, there’s a relatively big gap between urban living and rural living. That gap has shrunk considerable, but its still obvious enough that the country struggles to meet demand for urban migrants. Thus, I suspect you will find slums at the edges of major cities based largely on populations that aren’t licensed to be there.

But, as the article notes, there does appear to be some general policy aimed at housing and governing these migrant cohorts. That’s in stark contrast to Western states where people have the “freedom” to move throughout the country, absent any social services or support networks.