>hostile take

Indeed. Not directed at you (no intention to offend), but author. Article reflects BJPalmer's pattern of why XYZ quality/phenomenon tyical developing countries including China is CCP fault because party afraid of people/liberal values and not mere appropriate reflection on material conditions commiserate with economic realities. Having followed western China Watchers like him for a while, he's either eloquent dunning kruger who writes gud but missing the big picture, or crafty propagandist that knows exactly the narrative he wants to manufacture. Personally weighing towards latter since he managed to become deputy editor at Foreign Policy with his hot takes.

> trapped", without any realistic possibility

Most skilled labour class workers who do well arbituage tier1/2 wages and build big houses back home in tier 3/4/countryside where purchase power stretches much further. Granted there's more hukou reforms ongoing, but moving/diffusing/redistributing wealth from coastal to interior provinces to build out mid/low tier cities is the overarching PRC urbanism strategy. Some jobs like construction/trades was never going to pay enough to make living in tier1/2 cities feasible, massive excess labour means there wasn't realistic scenario where CCP will allow say, unionized elevator repairman to self regulate membership to point of holding society hostage and charge muchos rmb like in west and deny 100s of thousands others job opportunities.

But the major omission/evasion/manipulation Palmer commits in this 2016 article, for which he should know better, especially if he choose to insist on lazy openning of the tofudreg construction chabuduo posterchild is balance picture with acknowledgement that PRC labours are also responsible for some of the most spectacular construction projects undertaken in recent memory. Having worked in the field on PRC projects, the amount of bullshit starchitect designs or ambitious infra projects that Chinese labours manage to build on time and have so far maintained - projects that central gov wants done right - is staggering and beyond capabilities of most western developers/builders. Meaning PRC excels at both end of the quality continuum, with caveat that even on the chabuduo end they can at least do cheap and fast versus many countries who would be lucky if they can only manage cheap. Other stupid reaching quips like "some art have survived" because new gen obviously want to make tradition lutes instead of focusing on new media modes like in western countries where many traditions are similarly fading, or how Chinese tech was an innovative exception but still chabuduos sloppy code / advertised quack meds as if that's not also customary in silicon valley.

Broader point being, yes most of PRC nessicarily chabuduos, both by material limitation and by design. But PRC/CCP can also focus energy to to undertake world class efforts, a gear most countries, even most developed ones don't have. Palmer (deliberately) confuses ubiquious carelessness with developing country who is capable of targetted exceptionalism, which is more significant factor to understanding why PRC is doing things many developed countries can't do. In that sense PRC is not like Thailand or India, really it's on a seperate tier just below USA but above almost all other developed countries in terms of indigenous capabilities. Yet his conclusion is maybe "close enough is good enough", when good enough is "not enough" to explain host of indigenous Chinese accomplishments which require more than chabuduo mindset. IMO he misses the point badly fixating on chabuduo, but being familiar with his writing, I'm not sure if that wasn't the point.