# Why Young People Can't Afford 10,000 Yuan But Think 1 Million is Nothing

Because they don't understand the difference between cash flow and asset current value.

Are Chinese people really wealthy?
Obviously not.

Many people think everyone is rich because they're counting home values.

Someone with 5,000 yuan monthly income, 50,000 yuan savings, but a house worth 6 million yuan. So this person has over 6 million yuan in assets.

Let me give you some direct data:

National M2 total is 231 trillion yuan
1.4 billion people, 165,000 yuan per capita
Per capita housing area is 40 square meters

If we collected all the money and divided it equally:
Each person gets 165,000 yuan

If you convert this 165,000 yuan all into houses, what's the price per square meter?
You do the math yourself.

Plus government investment, industry, commerce, enterprises, circulation cash—these are where the real money is. How much do ordinary residents actually have in their hands?

Everyone being rich is an illusion created by the real estate bubble.

Take a residential complex example:

100 units total. 50 units bought at 200,000 yuan.
Later resold: 10 units at 400,000, 10 units at 600,000, 10 units at 1 million, 10 units at 1.5 million, 10 units at 2 million.

Total actual money spent: 65 million yuan

But officially the complex's price is 2 million, total value 200 million yuan, per capita assets 2 million yuan.

Actually only 65 million yuan appeared in circulation, yet it created 200 million yuan in paper assets for 100 households.

These 100 units cannot possibly cash out for 200 million yuan.

That's why you see those jokes:
"Per capita assets in Shanghai and Beijing reach millions"
"If you sold all Shanghai houses you could buy America"

Paper assets and actual money you can access are two different things.

The reason is simple: society doesn't have that much money.

Say you're selling bottled water at school. 100 bottles total, but all students and teachers only have 200 yuan combined. Water sells maximum 2 yuan per bottle. Even if everyone was dying of thirst, you couldn't sell more than 200 yuan worth, because that's all the money that exists.

The feeling that everyone was rich before was because banks were fueling it.

Banks can credit expansion—basically printing money. Once banks stop, house prices immediately stop trading or crash.

Individual people can get rich off real estate. It's impossible for everyone to get rich off real estate.

For every person who gets rich off real estate, there's a bag holder who goes broke.

There's a magical phenomenon in secondary financial markets:

1,000 people each with 2 million yuan in assets
One person can cash out 2 million yuan
But 1,000 people cannot cash out 2 billion yuan

This theory applies to all secondary markets—stocks, Bitcoin, all the same.

In 2021, lending restrictions and bank lending freezes happened. Many people wanted to buy homes but literally had no money for transactions. Not because they're poor, but because society doesn't actually have that much money.

Beijing and Shanghai seem rich because outsiders are buying in.
Second-tier cities seem rich because county people are buying in.
The unluckiest are small counties and rural areas—no one buys from them, they have to be bag holders for others.

So earning 10,000 yuan monthly in China is genuinely high income, because it's real money and purchasing power, not paper value like real estate.

For ordinary people, hundreds of thousands is serious money.

All the money in the nation divided equally gives each person 165,000 yuan.

You see a house worth several million, but you can't actually cash it out for several million, because of lending restrictions. People who want to buy don't have money. Not because they're poor, but because society genuinely doesn't have that much money.

Also, a large portion of the nation's money is debt—borrowed from banks that must be repaid. Many people's so-called assets are spending tomorrow's money.

So when I see discussions about:
Rural weddings casually demanding hundreds of thousands in betrothal gifts
Or saying a 300,000 yuan car doesn't even count as a car

These people must be living in a dream.

Asset bubbles massively inflate people's desires. It's totally normal now for people to not treat millions as money.

The most ridiculous types are these:
"Your monthly salary is only 50,000 yuan? I can sell one house and earn what you make in a lifetime. You call 1 million money?"

Anyone running a business knows cash flow matters far more than assets.

Same in life.

1 million yuan cash is serious money anywhere.
50,000 yuan monthly income, even renting, that's a truly wealthy person.

High income, strong cash flow—that's being truly rich.

Those who earn tens of thousands monthly but took second-hand mortgages and went broke overnight? Financially they traded future cash flow for assets.

In plain language, they're bag holders for people who got rich off real estate. They'll spend their working years paying them back.

Take all the money in China and divide it equally: each person gets 165,000 yuan.

If you earn 3,000 yuan monthly with a million-yuan self-occupied family home, you basically have nothing to do with the term "wealthy."

China has one bizarre phenomenon:
People sitting on million-yuan assets with monthly cash flow under 10,000 yuan.

Looking worldwide, it's genuinely bizarre.