Saw this line in an article about a school in Yunnan province, S.W.China, that I stumbled across while searching for something else:
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As of 2019, the annual disposable income of residents of the county 27,291 yuan (￡3,151) per person.
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(https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/china-yunnan-school-free-piglets-b1990692.html)
It never fails to amaze me why people are still doing this: giving a Western equivalent of the amount of money cited without any indication of the significance of that sum of money in the local context, e.g., what local wages are, what the cost of living is (against their income), etc.
What I mean is: to the London reader, £3,000 / year may not sound like a lot of money, but ￥27,000 might be quite ample for a small rural place in S.W.China (vs Shanghai or Beijing, say). It's no good presenting the figures to the reader without providing some context to what the purchasing power of those figures is (in S.W.China in this case).
An American academic who'd freshly arrived in London around 1987 said to me one day how gobsmacked he was at prices in the UK. He cited the cost of a train ticket from London Victoria to Gatwick Airport, saying, "£5 for a half-hour journey! In China [where he'd lived for a bit], people can go on a 36-hour train journey for that price!"
Background: the exchange rate at that time was around ￡1 : ￥10. So, ￡5 would've been 50 yuan. I argue, however, that one can't just convert the money from one currency to another as a figure all by itself. One needs a fuller context for it.
At a superficial glance, it does look like this academic (academic, note, and American as well -- supposed to be more worldly wise than a lot of people, given that America is a global superpower) had a point.
Surely, however, I'd like to posit here, the other factors should be considered, e.g., what percentage is £5 of a UK worker's pay, vs ￥50 of a Chinese worker's wages. A mainland Chinese friend told me in 1987 that it was ￥75/month, so ￥50 would be quite a big whack of the average Chinese worker's pay packet. You can see from the data (below) that I've found from googling that £5 wouldn't make such a big hole in the UK worker's salary.
(from googling)
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In 1987, average weekly earnings for full-time adult employees in Great Britain were around ￡182 for men and ￡128 for women, but London wages were generally higher, with an estimated average annual income of about ￡7,200 for 1987-88, translating roughly to ￡138-￡140 per week when considering overall averages and regional uplift. Specific London data from 1987 isn't easily found in snippets, but UK averages suggest a range from ￡100-￡180 weekly depending on gender and role, with London leading.
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The other problem is gauging the cost of living just going by the conversion rate. For example, I grew up in the 60s with £1 being worth S$8. By 1980, it was £1 : S$4. So, if we were to look at cost of living using conversion figures alone, a Singaporean spending in London in the 60s would've found things twice as expensive for them as in 1980.
Neat conversion is not the way to look at it, I feel -- but I have no head for money matters, so I'd love to hear your (the readers') comments on this.
