This is the kind of disparity that is most worrying to the Party. Unless it gets the support of the majority, including the poor, its mandate is suspect.
SCMP: “The chasm between China’s rich and poor has widened to alarming levels, according to survey results released by the Survey and Research Centre for China Household Finance.
The survey, released on Sunday, reported a rise in China’s Gini coefficient, a key yardstick of income or wealth inequality, to 0.61 in 2010, the latest year for which there is data on China.
That number is significantly higher than the global average of 0.44 and 50 per cent above the “risk level” for social unrest, the Beijing Times reported.
The figure was 0.56 for urban households and 0.60 for rural households.
Measured on a scale of 0 to 1, a Gini coefficient of 0 represents perfect equality in which everyone has the same income, and 1 represents maximal inequality in which just one person holds all the wealth.
Since China first published data on the Gini-coefficient in 2000, the official figure has stayed level at 0.412. In 2005, the World Bank data put the figure at 0.425, the last year it published a Gini index for the country.
Li Shi, executive dean of Beijing Normal University’s China Institute of Income Distribution, who compiled his own Gini survey in 2007, told Bloomberg News in September that a poll of 20,000 households gave an index of 0.48.
“A high Gini coefficient is a common phenomenon in the process of rapid economic development. It is the natural result of the market allocating resources efficiently,” said Gan Li, the director of the research centre, at a briefing in Beijing.
“Relying on market forces alone can’t narrow the gap so China must change the structure of income distribution and rely on massive fiscal transfers to narrow the yawning disparity.””
via China wealth gap continues to widen, survey finds | South China Morning Post.
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