China's Collapse Is Not Imminent In my previous blog, Well-being and Immiseration in Contemporary China, I reviewed a spectrum of quantitative proxies for well-being (and it’s opposite, immiseration), including economic, biological, and psychological variables. It is impressive how much agreement there is between these indicators. And that they all show dramatic improvements in the quality of life in China since 1978 (when Deng Xiaoping assumed supreme power).