China Speakers Bureau: Income gap widening

Zhang Juwei by Fantake via Flickr

The gap between rich and poor in China is widening, say experts in the China Daily. Among them Zhang Juwei, professor and director of the labor and social security research center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.According to Zhang Juwei, the income gap in his country is becoming dramatic, fearing that figures on the so-called Gini coefficient might go past a critical threshold.
The China Daily:

The Gini coefficient - a measure of income inequality commonly used by economists and institutions - reached 0.47 in China in 2005, overtaking the recognized warning level of 0.4, according to the World Bank...."When the Gini coefficient reaches around 0.5, it means the inequality problem is extremely severe and needs immediate action to bring it down," Zhang said.

While no new figures have been released, the article in the China Daily suggests that those figures will be released soon, and it worrying the central leadership.

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