> Speaking as charitably as possible, comments like these indicate to me that the poster has never been to China and has no idea about the actual conditions there.

Ah yes, start off by constructing a straw man.

> If you just step outside the select few favored economic zones you will see a very different, much lower, standard of living that accounts for the vast majority of the land area.

and here we go. OP was talking about students specifically, and I explicitly pointed out from what kind of background they come, and how that makes them perceive the west. It seems you got personally offended by that reality.

> Granted the last time I was there was about eight years ago

Eight years is an eternity in China. I've been there almost every year since 2009 and did a lot of traveling and boy do things change.

> I rode through villages that didn't even have electricity. People were carrying jugs of water on their heads and walking barefoot through dirt roads like it's 1200 BCE. I doubt much has changed for those people in eight years.

Of course that still exists all across China. You don't turn a country of a billion into a first world country over night. But what even the guy in the most remote village sees is progress being made. They see what life in the big cities is like and want to live there; not in the west, because it seems on par at best.

> Even in the cities, is it safe to drink the water yet or use ice cubes?

It's funny how you try to invalidate my post with specific anecdotes that you think prove China is inferior to your home country. But I'll play along: No, tap water isn't drinkable anywhere in China. But it doesn't seem to bother them too much since apparently it had been like this forever and it seems possible to get used to buying bottled water or just boiling it. I'd go as far as saying there are far more important things China has to fix internally.

> Or are we still having a refreshing cup of boiling hot tea at lunchtime on muggy 35 degree summer days?

Ah yes, the superior western way of drinking cold beverages during summer. Not that it actually makes you sweat more...

> Is there toilet paper in the public restrooms yet in the tourist districts in Nanjing?
Please let me know if things have changed so I can update my image of China that's informed by direct first hand experiences.

The way I read your whole comment, I think it's more comfortable for you the way it currently is.

> It's absurd to suggest that everything is just hunky dory in China

Which brings us back to our straw man. I never said that!

> or attempt to establish an equivalence between living conditions in China and the United States, or any developed Western nation

Which I didn't do either; again this was from the perspective of a middle-class-or-higher student from a tier 1 or 2 city.

> so much is obvious to anyone who has spent even one day in a representative median location in both.

You can't just go to China for a couple days and think you've seen it all. And you should talk to locals, which is already hard in the cities if you don't speak Chinese. Again younger people with higher education background are your best bet for English. For the rural parts, travel with a native speaker. If you don't understand what makes people tick you can easily brush everything off as stupid/wrong/backwards.

> When videos depicting the real situation are easily available to view on Youtube

Sure you can selectively pick the stuff that floats your boat and make a judgement about how a nation of one billion people feels about the state of their country. That perfectly closes the loop to my initial post about Chinese media portraying the west in a very biased and filtered way, and vice versa. Obviously you can choose to do so yourself on YouTube. There's channels depicting China as the worst communist gulag possible as well as ones that make it out to be paradise. If you feel like it you can subscribe to one side and call it a day.

> it crosses the line into irresponsibility and maybe even propagandism.

Should be deleted as fake news. At least it's not censorship then.