China’s rural inequality is nearing “danger” levels as hundreds of millions of people shun farming for better paid city work, causing a widening wealth gap, a report said yesterday.
The state-linked Center for Chinese Rural Studies said inequality within rural areas was growing given the difference in incomes between those who farmed and those who flocked to cities as migrant workers.
Although the majority of migrant workers live in cities for most of the year, they are officially registered as rural residents.
“The difference in rural residents’ income is getting bigger and pressure on living expenses is increasing,” Xinhua news agency reported the center as saying.
China’s growing wealth gap is a major concern for authorities keen to avoid public discontent that could lead to social unrest in the rapidly developing country of 1.3 billion people.
The center estimated the Gini coefficient — a commonly used measure of inequality — was 0.3949 for rural residents last year, nearing what it called the “danger” level of 0.40, the statement said.
The Gini coefficient measure varies between 0, reflecting complete equality, and 1, which indicates complete inequality.
The release marked the first time the center had compiled an estimate, so no comparative figure was available.
China has not released a Gini coefficient for the country as a whole for more than a decade, putting the figure at 0.412 in 2000, amid worries over the widening income gap.
An official said in January that data on high income groups was incomplete to explain why the government had again failed to issue the statistic for last year.
Rural residents who work as migrant laborers in cities earn twice as much as those who farm for a living, Xinhua news agency quoted the center as saying, but gave no figures.
As a result, incomes as a whole for rural households were rising sharply, with average cash income jumping more than 14 percent to about 38,894 yuan (US$6,174) last year, Xinhua said.
Deng Dacai (鄧大才), deputy head of the center, said the Gini coefficient for all of China was likely “well above” 0.40, Xinhua reported. The authors of the study could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated China’s Gini coefficient at nearly 0.47 in 2005.
“China should already have the statistical foundation to issue the nationwide Gini coefficient,” said Wang Jianmao (王建鉚), an economics professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai. “The key is whether it’s willing to issue it.”
The UN Industrial Development Organization, referring to the 0.47 level and lagging rural incomes, has said: “At this level of disparity, many would argue that China is in danger of serious social instability.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema