County town wages are two or three thousand, but mahjong parlors are full of people: who is supporting their comfort?

If you have ever lived in an ordinary non-coastal county town, or returned home for a few days during holidays, you must have had such a soul-searching question:

Clearly, the average wage in the county is only two or three thousand, jobs are scarce, and there are only a few decent companies, so why are Mercedes-Benz and BMWs everywhere on the street? Why are high-end tea houses and private restaurants always full? Why do those who seem to never have to work live more comfortably than you?

And you, working yourself to death in the big city 996 schedule, working overtime until you doubt life, hesitating for a long time over whether to use a coupon when ordering a milk tea.

Who is keeping their peaceful days intact? And what force is maintaining this false prosperity in the county that severely mismatches income?

To understand the county town, you first need to throw away the mindset of big cities.

1. From “self-sustaining” to “transferring”: the first pot of gold in the county isn’t earned by itself

The logic of big cities is simple: with industry, there is employment, income, and consumption. Shenzhen has Tencent and Huawei, Hangzhou has Alibaba, Suzhou has industrial parks. They make money by selling products and services to people nationwide and even worldwide, supporting the entire city.

But in central and western county towns—especially those without ports, large industries, or tourism resources—you can hardly find physical industries that earn “outsider money.” Yet, there are dual carriageway asphalt roads, majestic government centers, wetlands parks worth hundreds of millions of yuan, and brand-new but empty high-speed rail stations.

Where does this money come from? The answer is only four characters: transfer payments.

You can imagine the entire country as a huge corporate group. Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and the Pearl River Delta are core profit departments, responsible for earning money and sending it to headquarters. Meanwhile, central and western county towns serve as the “ballast stone” of the country—food security, ecological protection, grassroots stability, and the reproduction of low-cost labor. These functions don’t directly generate GDP, but without them, the whole country would face big problems. So, the central government’s finances continuously transfer money to the counties.

Hospitals, schools, teachers’ salaries, and civil servant bonuses in the county are not earned from local taxes but are precisely “dripped” from above. In other words, the prosperity of the county is fundamentally redistributed, not created.

2. The system is the engine, mahjong parlors are the terminus

So the question is: how does the money transferred to county finances flow into mahjong parlors and turn into local folks buying luxury cars?

The answer is the system-internal groups—civil servants, teachers, doctors, state-owned enterprise employees. They are the absolute engines of consumption in the county.

A deputy director of a county hospital earns just over ten thousand yuan a month, with job security. He spends his money at the mall buying coats for his wife, the mall owner makes money and then treats guests at a restaurant; the restaurant owner profits and sends his kids to a two-wan-yuan piano class; the piano teacher earns money and on weekends goes to the mahjong parlor with cash to “relax.” See, a fixed salary circulates through the market for a few rounds, becoming GDP. The stable income within the system is the “never-drying outlet” of the county’s economy.

All the smart businesspeople in the county are essentially earning the “difference” from catering to the purchasing power overflow of the system-internal groups. Restaurant owners target school teachers’ gatherings; tea sellers rely on official gift procurement; renovation contractors focus on civil servants’ new homes. Those who don’t work but have spending power are either family members of the system or beneficiaries of overflowed business from within the system.

3. Why do they dare to spend money? Even borrow to show off?

The most incomprehensible thing is: why do those who clearly have no stable job dare to buy luxury cars with a mortgage? Why do they gamble away a month’s salary in one night at the card table?

Because you’re not in the “bureau” of the county. Sociologist Fei Xiaotong proposed a concept in “From the Soil of China”—the differential pattern. Simply put: in big cities, your credit depends on income flow, property certificates, and credit reports; in county towns, your credit depends on relatives, acquaintances, and neighbors’ reputation. In a society of familiarity, there’s no absolute privacy, and consumption quickly becomes the fastest credit endorsement.

Let me tell you a real case. A small boss doing landscaping has only two workers, and his annual income is just a few hundred thousand. A few years ago, he drove a ten-wan-yuan Japanese car to negotiate business, but the material supplier looked down on his poverty and demanded cash on delivery, no credit. Later, he grit his teeth and borrowed 800,000 to buy a second-hand Porsche. Guess what? The material supplier started giving him half-year credit terms, a credit officer approved several million in business loans, and even the client looked at him more favorably.

He’s not vain; he’s “expanding his balance sheet”—using visible “prestige” to leverage his business credit. In the county, you can’t let people see you’re poor. Because once you’re labeled as “not doing well,” all avenues to make money close off: relatives won’t include you, friends won’t cooperate, banks won’t lend to you. So, those driving luxury cars, smoking good cigarettes, and wearing designer brands may not be truly rich, but they must make you think “he’s got money.” This isn’t consumption; it’s investment. It’s their entry fee to maintain social status.

4. The biggest card: land finance and local government investment trusts

Relying solely on system-internal consumption and private entrepreneurs’ social credit can’t support the grand infrastructure of the county. What really caused the rapid expansion of counties over the past decade is a bigger card—land finance and local government investment companies.

Local governments sell land to developers, who build and sell to residents; residents pull out their six wallets to buy homes; the government uses land sale proceeds to build roads, parks, and development zones; city investment companies use these as collateral to continue financing, cycling repeatedly, growing larger and larger. This is a “borrow future money to create present wealth” extreme operation. Many first pots of gold for luxury car owners in the county come from this chain—contractors, building material suppliers, demolition households, speculators.

But the magic’s cost will eventually come due. When residents’ six wallets are emptied, and the county’s houses outnumber the people, this game can’t go on. That’s why now everywhere is desperately “debt-forgiveness”—because the machine is stalling.

5. The cruelest truth: money just passes through, it doesn’t stay

The county looks like a treasure trove, but do you think wealth will stay here honestly? No.

The cruelest economic law is: core cities always siphon off the county. Those contractors who make money will go to provincial capitals to buy houses; retired teachers who saved for decades will go to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Shenzhen to make down payments for their children; the director of a county hospital’s department has already bought a vacation home in Sanya or Chengdu. Because people always move upward. Better healthcare, better education, assets that hold value—these are things the county can’t provide.

The wealth accumulated through leverage, transfer payments, land finance in the county, after the first round of distribution and accumulation, is ruthlessly drained along the real estate and high-quality resource channels. What’s left are empty new districts, a seriously aging population of left-behind people, and a mountain of debt that’s not paid off.

6. Understanding the rules is to better choose yourself

All this isn’t to make you look down on the county, nor to envy it. What I want to say is: we seem to live in the same era, but in fact, we operate under two completely different underlying logics.

The city’s logic is incremental creation—you create value, you earn money. The rules are relatively transparent, relationships are relatively simple, but competition is fierce, and tolerance for mistakes is low. The county’s logic is stock redistribution and debt overdraft—you embed yourself in the distribution chain, and you take a share. The rules aren’t written on paper but in human relationships and face. As long as you know how to play, life can be comfortable, but the ceiling is low.

No path is inherently nobler; the key is to understand what you’re choosing. If you’re good at handling relationships, can accept that everything depends on connections, circles, and showmanship, then the county might be your paradise. If you can’t or won’t do that, then fighting in the big city, using professional skills and market rules to carve out a space for yourself, is also a good path.

The only fear is: if you neither have the resolve nor the ability to fight in the big city, nor are willing to bow in the county, ending up stuck in the middle, neither side leaning on you.

May every decision you make be based on a clear understanding of the world’s rules, rather than blind following.