I included Tianjin because it has significant autonomy and ability to gain funds thanks to being a Provincial Level city. Not having to deal with the overhead of provincial politics helps! Imo Guangzhou and Shenzhen are anomalies due to how closely integrated Guangdong has been to HK (and thus able to get much more FDI and build a stronger economy than Nanjing for example).

Generally speaking, the median Thai person does tend to have a better life than the median Chinese person, simply because poverty eradication has been a pretty significant plank of both the Junta and the elected politicans, plus the massive amount of FDI coming in from SK+Japan after the whole 2013-2017 trade war.

But then again, comparing a Billion+ country that gives significant administrative autonomy to provinces with a unitary country with a population comparable of Zhejiang might be unfair. At least on a developmental and economic level, Thailand would be comparable to Jiangsu or Zhejiang.