My monthly income never changes. I find rent and utilities cheap, eating out isn't expensive , even in better restaurants. I can eat well on street food for 10Y. I've stayed in hotels that were 150 and were Ok, 240 is better but also 5 star hotels in Beijing etc when travelling, don't remember what I paid, but they were nice.

 I find China way cheaper than home except for clothing and electronics etc. 

 I like more things in China than not, I like my life style better in China. I actually hate my life in Canada and I'm pretty well off, cars, house is paid for, steady income. I have a nice big house on 4 acres over looking a lake. I hate mowing the lawn, shovelling snow and there isn't much to do or see. China is like a big circus.

I think you've got a bad guide book royce. 

If I was living on a teachers wages in China ,the cost would be the same as any other part of the world. If I lived in China on Australian wages I would be saving like crazy.                                                                                                                 edit when i read your title of the post I thought it was about the cost of human life being cheap in China .

Yes, you need to find the good local food. I've had a bowl or two of "Find The Chicken! Hahaha" stew myself.

Yes, about the same salary as home with no rent, no car, and cheaper food. I simply save more here. 

Everyone has their one point of view about life and china but for italians, spaniards china is expensive specially big towns like beijing or Shanghai, rent, food. If you are spanierd or italian and want to settle down in china, marry, etc with around 15.000 yuans for sure is not the place. You also have to pay taxes in europe fofr welfare when you get retired, health insurance, it is really difficult to save money.

Right now i have broken even , especially after getting married. but overall life has been cheaper in china.

when i first got here it was very cheap.  i was eating street food, bumming it in cheap hotels, etc.  now, street food terrifies me and im willing to pay much more for quality hotels.  but my income has also raised drastically.  all in all, life is much cheaper here for me than california ever was. 

To me, life in China is quite cheaper. Housing and food represent about 10% of my income. In Europe, it was 40%. That said, I always lived frugally, both in Europe and China : I cook at home, local food only, no air-con or heating, no new gadgets every year, simple clothes, I commute by bike, I travel in guest houses, bus and train. You find decent hotels for 200 to 300 RMB, I eat well for 15 to 25 RMB. If I was trying to live as closely as possible as I was in Europe, Europe would be cheaper, however.

i would say it can be both, just depending on your lifestyle.

we all know western products in china are much more expensive, the chinese products on the other hand are much cheaper.

rent is equal - but quality way worse in china

street food is very cheap, restaurants have equal prices

hotels can be top or flop, but i rarely need one

all in all china becomes much more expensive thse days

China is more expensive for me, or at least the same as the UK in terms of food etc. I use Western brand toiletries and am not really a fan of cheap Chinese food. Housing is cheaper, but in that the quality is cheaper too. No heat and no insulation? No thanks! So I end up paying the same more or less after huge heating bills.

China isn't cheap at all, at least not in terms of providing a good value inexpensively. You can spend very little here but you're making huge compromises in your living standards. If having the same quality is important to you it is almost always more expensive.

People's expectations are lower here...you can live pretty bummy here and still have it better than most, but that's nothing to be proud of.

I find it much much much cheaper.  The housing is crazy, maybe 7% of my income,  and my wife cooks daily. Maybe 300 a week on food.  Gas is around the same, but car insurance, in 20% of the price. Utilities i pay is...... i forget, its that low.

This of course isnt any choice of mine, although shenzhen is expensive, i live in a poop farm town near my factory, so i love my new apartment, but still only 2500 for a one bedroom, but its really comfy. No western pubs or restaurants anywhere close, and i dont like chinese food. The wifey has found what i like and cooks exactly how i like it.... so, that means meat with no fat or bones. 

On weekends we drive into town and blow all our cash on real food and stuff we need.

People just need to find a system,  the fact is, if you live completely like a foreigner, and must have foreigner apartment, in the city center, and only eat western food, and only buy imported products, of course it will be more expensive.   And when you compare it to home, really, how many of you had a luxery apartment right in the city center of say New York? that would be tooo expensive for anyone, yet you manage it here, so of course its cheaper.

I do not think is cheaper here than back home. The food price is similar, and if you compare 0,7Euro in Czech to 3Euro here for 1 loaf of bread, you get your numbers. Housing may be cheaper here, but the medical care is something uncomparable with the almost free care if you pay insurance. In czech we pay taxes and so on, but it is outweighted with the medical care and retirement paychecks and all that sh1t, almost every village have local trains, easy going to anywhere.

Some years ago, Germans come to Czech for cheap gasoline, some foods in restaurants and so on. Now is changed and Czechs are going to Germany for saving money and get better stuff for the earned money. While here, you havbe to pay 3-4-5 fold more than you pay back home for same stuff, even you can get here relatively cheap lunch, you can compare it to what you get back home with the quality for the price ...

I think salaries have alot to do with it as well. While shanghai or beijing is more expensive for apartments, the food prices are almost a wash  between all cities, especially for western food. Yet the salary gap between foreigners in China, is waaaay bigger than any housing price gap.

For a University teacher in sichuan or something making 6 or 7 a month, its not so cheap. But for a teacher in a training center in a large city for example making 15-20, they find it much cheaper and easier to save.

If you want a quality of life roughly equivalent to whatever developed country in a tier 1 city, then costs will be more or less the same.

But in such a huge country, ifs can really change many things from a situation to another, so it's hard to determine. The false impression that China is a cheap country comes from the fact that the absence of properly enforced norms enables people to dig really really deep to cut the costs if they are willing to sacrifice their quality of life.

Average quality food is more expensive than any other country.

Everything is relative really, isn't it? You get a lower salary here than you would back home but hey, how many hours are you working? On my salary I couldn't survive in Beijing or Shanghai but then again if I was living there they would be paying me a bigger salary right?

I save 70% of my salary monthly and I live pretty well and in a nice apartment. I cook 85% of my own food, western style. I eat out whenever I like but it's winter, so I don't muck about outside too much in -20C,

Every 6 months I travel to another country. I can't remember EVER doing that when i was back home working.

I download and watch whatever I like in the way of movies and I can watch my Aussie Rules for $150AUD a season on live stream. The cost of those two bits of entertainment alone in Australia would be about $250 a month with internet download costs and having Foxtel!!

While I agree that there are some things difficult to put up with here, in the end you make it what you want it to be. A lifestyle, an adventure, an experience, a money saver or a travel stop. But whichever you choose you need to at least enjoy it most of the time. And yes, I find it enormously cheaper.

I think China is such a place of extreme where for example dinner can range from 5RMB - 500RMB. 

Take a beer for example. In Beijing you'll pay around 4RMB for a Yanjing at a small barbecue spot but go to a foreign/decent bar on the same street and you can pay up to 80RMB a beer.

I guess it boils down to what you do and where you want to go but if you want to live the 'expat life' it ain't cheap.

It's cheap to survive in China. It's very expensive to live. (that's relative to income) I wouldn't dare imagining what a quality apartment would cost in China. The cheap crap available here is on par with many European bigger cities. 

There will be BIG regional differences in the perception of cost of living.

I wonder if the Big Mac index has ever been done for different provinces/cities in China

the point is:

why do you come to china to live an expat life?

its pretty stupid to live an expat life in another country, then it would be just easier to go back home

Life in China by a minimum western standard is as expensive as the same living standard in my home country (North Italy). Which makes it stupidly expensive considering you get most of the time, for the same amount of money, no quality and no service.

Living in China on a bowl of rice with a spoon of veggies every day is cheap. So it is  living in Italy on a bowl of spaghetti.

Then put pollution on top, which it should be rightly considered as another economic factor in the equation.

Fact for me: I did like living in China much more 6-7-8 years ago than today even if many things were not available back then, but everything was REALLY cheap, so much easier to cope with the environment.

Today: same shit, 3 times the price.

Scandi reminds me one thing.

When I came to China, I have paid 8rmb for my Doublecheese in McDonalds. some time passed and I paid 9,5, than 10. Last friday I was freaked out when they asked 14rmb for the very same doublecheese... hot chocolate i used to pay 6rmb, now is 10...

For me personally, it's not bad. I'm from Melbourne, Australia and there housing (buying or renting) prices went beyond a joke nearly a decade ago and never came back to sane levels. Prices for pretty much everything else are fierce too.

Here, the base salary might not seem impressive, but once you include the apartment (a pretty reasonable one, in my opinion) and the bills that are all paid for (as long as you don't use enough electricity to be running a hydroponic dope farm) + bonuses, the ledger starts squaring up reasonably well. Also, I work a lot less hours to get that income package than I did in Melbourne and still get reasonable holidays (roughly 6-7 weeks a year in total).

Up here in Harbin, there are enough western goods to tend to the homesick, but of course they're not cheap. In any case, I'm largely fine with Chinese style food and can cook it myself so my food spending isn't too much. My main single expense would be Chinese lessons (800/month) and after food and other groceries I don't tend to go shopping much. I can save enough to fly to Australia or Ireland every six months or so and still have a month or two's salary in the bank.

Basically, I could save at least half of my income without even trying. I could probably save three quarters if I went full on tightarse, but there's no real need. If I moved to Shanghai/Beijing/et al I would save more since my lifestyle and spending habits wouldn't change much. By and large, this is the most important part. If you move here with an open mind and are willing to get into Chinese things such as food (if you don't trust the restaurants, then learn to cook yourself!), then you can save a reasonable if not amazing amount of money. But if you just try to transplant your home country life to China, of course things are going to look expensive. And anyone looking for the proverbial soup van at the end of the month on a typical English teacher's wage is an innumerate idiot.

Life isn't less expensive, but it is cheaper (lower quality).  It's hard to compare to the west.  I can't buy a comparable house (quality wise) no matter how much money I spend.  They don't exist in China.  It goes the same for city services or even a decent roll of toilet paper.  I've almost forgotten what 3-ply means or how it feels.   On the other hand, I have seen things that break the cheapness scale and can't even be imagined in my home country.  China is China and the western countries have their own lifestyle.  Comparing them is like comparing apples to oranges.  You can spend much less money here to live, but that will come with a commensurate drop in quality.

I personally think life is a bit cheap but how cheap is cheap matters looking at it from different perspective for instance if you cook for yourself the better, rent not bad, clothing a bit expensive, above all average life not bad.

No you have to pay at least double or triple for what you would the same quality back home.