China's wealth gap the widest since economic reforms began

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China's wealth gap the widest since economic reforms began
China has recorded its widest wealth gap since economic reforms began in 1978, a split that is a "serious threat to social stability", the government has said.
 

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
Published: 9:09AM GMT 02 Mar 2010

The average annual income in China's cities stood at 17,175 yuan (£1,685) last year, more than three times the average income of 5,153 yuan in the countryside, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

China Daily, the government-run newspaper, said this was the widest disparity for more than three decades.
 
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The increasing split between China's prosperous cities and its vast interior is a "serious threat to social stability", according to the government, which has linked a spate of public protests to perceptions of social inequality.

"There has been an increasing number of mass disturbances occurring in recent years related to the yawning gap between the rich and the poor," said Yan Ye, a professor at the North China Institute of Science and Technology, to the state media.

He said more than half of China's population lives in rural areas, but they share under 12 per cent of the country's wealth. He added that there is no province that meets international minimum wage standards, but that many managers in state-owned companies have enormous incomes.

The government is working to provide universal healthcare in the Chinese countryside and to build more infrastructure inland to create jobs and spur industry.

Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, said at the weekend that it was "unfair if a society's wealth is only in the hands of a few people." He added: "In that case, the society is doomed to instability."

However, researchers told the China Daily they felt the wealth gap would keep growing. "I am afraid the income gap will continue to expand as the country focuses its efforts on urban sprawl, rather than rural development," said Song Hongyuan, the director of the Research Centre for the Rural Economy in the Ministry of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, Zhang Dongsheng, director of the Income Distribution Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, told the newspaper that the government had "said more than it has done" to reduce the disparity.

The news comes just ahead of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp parliament, in Beijing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... began.html