the west still has the best job opportunities

Not sure the people of Spain or Greece would agree with you on that one ( 1in 4 unemployed), Europe as a whole with 12% unemployment and the US with 8% unemployment.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=teilm020&tableSelection=1&plugin=1

any of the safest western neighborhoods trumps the safest chinese neighborhoods hands down

Yet you're far more likely to be murdered walking down an American street than a Chinese one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Any investment with international credibility that goes into a 3rd world country starts in the west.

When are the Americans going to wake up and realize that in the last decade china has taken a large slice of Africa, Asia and South American while the yanks have been invested in a personal vendetta against the Arab world. Of course the Chinese have managed to do all this without going to war!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/23/china-africa-trade-record-transform

I would NOT be proud about telling my kid that his/her country is the "cheap labor" factory of the world.

Is that what you think chinese parents go home to tell their kids? Even if it were true, is being the factory of the world that bad a thing? It was only 200 hundred years ago that Britain manufactured vast amounts of cotton products to be sold around the globe. It's economy has developed since as has china's. there is no 'bottom line', only change!

You don't have to love China and hate the West to see what you write is very biased. Perhaps you are suffering yet again from the 'grass is greener' syndrome that you admit to of having had prior to arriving in china, only this time you're looking back at the other side of the valley!