[jmh42]

> Why should Mahathir get to call his country "poor" relative to China...?

A simple answer may be aggregates matter when it comes to country-to-country comparisons. A country's companies and government get 'strength' from the aggregate first.

[fspeech]

I understand the aggregate perspective. However this is not the standard usage of the word "poor".

[jimmydef]

This doesn't make sense at all. So are you saying that India or China is more developed than Singapore because their aggregate "strength" whatever that means is greater than Singapore?

[dang]

This comment breaks the site guidelines in at least a couple ways. If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

[jmh42]

I didn't even use the word 'developed'. Nice try. ;)

I simply mean if you are comparing countries, you need to look at aggregate figures, such as total GDP or market size or population. If one country has lower GDP than another, you could say it is "poor" on that basis, even if per capita GDP (a dis-aggregated figure) were higher.

Taking your example, simply by population size and aggregate GDP and therefore ability to spend on military, India and China ARE stronger than Singapore.