During my lunch break, I took the opportunity to create a table using publicly available data to compare the number of civil servants and GDP figures in Foshan with those in some other regions.

Here are some points to note:

1. The population data is based on the publicly available resident population figures from 2013-2014.
2. The number of civil servants in China is based on data from the 12th Five-Year Plan for Talent Development, specifically from 2014-2015. For foreign countries, the data is sourced from Wikipedia for the years 2013-2015.
3. The GDP figures for China are from 2014, while for foreign countries, the GDP in US dollars was converted to RMB using an exchange rate of 6.12, as per Wikipedia.
4. There is a significant difference in how the number of civil servants is calculated in countries like the United States and Japan compared to China. In the US, the number of civil servants is close to 24 million, including anyone whose salary is funded by the government. In China, only those with official civil servant status under the Civil Servant Law are counted, totaling about 7.3 million in 2014.
5. The definition of civil servants in the UK is very similar to that in China. From the data, it appears that some areas in Foshan and cities like Shenzhen have already reached a similar ratio. In fact, considering GDP per capita, it might only take two to three decades for some leading Chinese cities to catch up to the average levels of the UK and the US.