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CCP meeting faces up to growing wealth gap

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opened a major four-day economic meeting in Beijing yesterday, with efforts to narrow the widening divide between rich and poor likely to dominate the agenda.

The plenary session of the party's central committee will "discuss suggestions" on the 2006-2010 five-year economic development plan, with a view toward "building a harmonious society," the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Against a background of widespread corruption and growing income disparities between rich and poor, President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) has been emphasizing the "harmonious society" theme over the past year.

Last month, state media cited a government study as saying the most affluent one-fifth of China's population earns 50 percent of total income, with the bottom one-fifth taking home only 4.7 percent.

Reforms launched in 1978 have fueled decades of enormous economic development that have transformed Chinese society. Its economy grew by a blistering 9.5 percent in 2003 and last year.

But its rural population -- about 800 million people -- has for the most part been left out of the boom, and many in that group have been protesting widespread graft, industrial pollution and illegal seizures of land for development.

The protests have been growing in regularity and aggression.

Clashes between police and citizens are becoming more violence as thousands -- sometimes tens of thousands -- of unhappy laborers or farmers demonstrate to air their frustration.

Officers often beat and jail protesters, who are also growing bolder in their retaliation against authorities.

Last year, the government logged 74,000 major protests nationwide, a stunning figure in a country so determined to curb potential unrest that it puts dissidents under house arrest around sensitive political anniversaries and tightly watches Internet content.

The closed-door plenum at the Soviet-era Jingxi Hotel in Beijing will be a test of whether Hu, 62, has fully consolidated power after replacing Jiang Zemin (江澤民), 79, as Party chief in 2002, state president in 2003 and military chief last year.

It is Hu's first plenum without his influential predecessor holding some form of office, although Jiang has stacked the Party's upper echelons with his allies.

One focus will be on whether Hu can manoeuvre protege Li Keqiang (李克強), 50, who cut his teeth in Hu's power base, the China Youth League, into the decision-making Politburo, which currently has 24 full members and one alternate.
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