First the talking – now the walking.
Reuters: “China unveiled sweeping tax reforms on Tuesday to make wealthy state-owned firms, property speculators and the rich pay more to narrow a yawning gap between an urban elite and hundreds of millions of rural poor.
The plans approved by the State Council – China’s cabinet – also included commitments to push forward market-oriented interest rate reforms to give savers a better return and more security.
Chief among the reforms is a requirement to raise the percentage of profits contributed by state-owned firms to the government by about 5 percentage points by 2015.
Together with measures to raise wages and improve households’ return on assets, the reforms signal an attempt to shift economic growth towards increased consumption and away from the current reliance on investment spending.
“The State Council is not just talking about the gap between rich and poor, they’re talking about the whole economy and how income is distributed among various actors – the households, the corporations and the government,” said Andrew Batson, research director of GK Dragonomics, an economic consultancy in Beijing.
“It’s about changing the entire flow of income around the national economy.””
via China OKs sweeping tax reforms to tackle inequality | Reuters.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/12/10/china-wealth-gap-continues-to-widen-survey-finds/
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