When I am abroad, I am deeply shocked by the huge difference in living standard between different countries. Westerns think the life expenditure here is low, so they enjoy their lives as much as they like. However, we Chinese can’t do. The high expenditure always forces me to care too much about everything only in order to save my little money.

What’s the reason of such a disparity? This may be due to the difference in countries’ productivity. It is common that people from developed countries usually enjoy high standard lives because these countries have high abilities to produce goods and services. There is also a wonder about Korea since it now becomes so modern and rich that even Korean people could not expect just a few years ago. To see why this great change happens, the answer is quite simple. It only spends 10 years for Korea’s productivity to double itself, and as a result, Korean people’s income consequently improves a lot at a high rate.

It is said that China also has a big potential to improve its economy since its GDP increases very fast and more and more foreign companies are taking more attention to this once ever poor country. Some just impute their unrichness on the huge population of China. However, this may not be true. In my opinion, China’s growing up, in most proportions, does depend on its huge population and therefore the huge market it makes. It does not rely on the improvement of productivity, which it may never lead to the essential high standard of life. Suppose if there is not a big population in China one day, what else can attract these foreign countries to invest and why should they continue to make so many efforts to enter this market?

Everyday we just think tall of ourselves without realizing how big gap there is between modern countries and ours, even though we perform low before others. Only when there is a chance for us to see the real world, can we find that there are really a lot of things we should do. Among them, to improve the productivity may be one of the most important and that is also why we talk so much about innovation today.