As in, if you were in Chang'an in 600 and Suzhou in 1600 you would immediately know that Ming China was far richer and far more economically and technologically developed than Tang China.
I would say that the same goes for, say, Rome at its height and 17th-century Paris or Constantinople; sure, Rome might be bigger than both in sheer scale, but any observant traveler could easily see that France and the Ottomans were much more advanced and made more effective use of their smaller territories than Rome ever did.
Was this the same in preconquest Mexico? If you were in Tenochtitlan in 1518 could you see from the technology and the wealth that a thousand years of development had passed?
Or was technology and economic development largely stagnant in the Pre-Columbian Americas?