Starting to go off a tangent from this thread, but I do have a genuine question. It's a popular argument to say poverty and wealth distribution causes crimes. But over in China, even Hong Kong to some extent, poverty has been a problem for generations( and China is only doing better in the past decade). There isn't nearly as much of the type of crime that happens in the US that puts you in personal danger, in China. There could be a lot of petty theft, or even actually stealing from you, but not much of the armed robbery/assault (knife or gun) that is so common in America.
I immigrated from Hong Kong to the US while in high school in the 90s. There is such a stark cultural differences in things like 1) Discipline -- people feel like they can do anything here (both good and bad), and that unfortunately includes the crime side of things. Young kids are much more "daring", as in they're not afraid to assault and rob people. In HK/China, even kids in gangs think of even just stealing a wallet from someone a big deal, much less direct assault. 2) On that topic, gang culture. High school kids here have such a glorified view of the gang life, whereas that sort of thing is really suppressed even among the notorious schools and students in HK/China.
In fact, it's not just an "Asia thing". Travel to Europe, most of the safety and crime issues you have to watch out for are pickpockets and scammers. In America, on Bart, you actually worry about armed assault. I feel like there's something about America culture, and it's not just inequality and poverty that's causing the sort of crime I only see here.