- BEIJING -- After 50 years
of Communism China now has the biggest divide between urban rich and rural
poor in the world, according to the government's own researchers.
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- A report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one
of the Communist Party's leading research schools, compared the country
gloomily with Zimbabwe.
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- It said the earnings of urban residents were now more
than three times those of residents of rural areas. If non-cash factors
were taken into account - such as the fact that only urban residents receive
health care and social security benefits - the difference could be six
times.
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- "When comparing with other countries, Zimbabwe's
income disparity may be slightly higher than that for China if we only
considered nominal income," the report concluded. "But if non-currency
factors are taken into consideration, China's rural-urban income gap is
the highest in the world."
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- The report, and its publication in state media, is the
latest sign of the government's concern that the country's rapid economic
reforms have left most of its population behind, and may even become a
threat to social stability.
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- It is torn between the knowledge that only continuing
the current rates of growth - more than nine per cent last year - can cure
poverty, and the fact that they still rest on former leader Deng Xiaoping's
dictum "Let some get rich first".
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- In line with this, the booming cities on and near China's
coast have had preferential investment treatment, their populations protected
from socially dangerous mass migration to the cities by a strict resident
permit system.
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- The survey found almost half the wealth gap in China
was accounted for by the urban-rural divide. But there was also a growing
gap within urban areas, between the ordinary working class and the new
middle and super-rich classes.
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- The top five and 10 per cent of earners in China accounted
for 19.8 per cent and 31.9 per cent of the country's revenue in 2002, the
report found.
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- According to Li Shi, the economist who wrote the report,
a programme of tax reduction for rural areas could alone increase farmers'
incomes by five per cent.
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- The government should also cover educational, health
and social security costs in the countryside, he said. The government is
already attempting this, though critics say that they are unlikely to succeed
unless they dramatically reduce the number and powers of local officials.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/27/
wchina27.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/27/ixworld.html
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