Swell the middle-income olive

Overcoming vested interests is the key to the success of wealth distribution reforms to address gap between rich and poor

After 35 years of reform and opening-up, China is now on track for reforms to address its yawning wealth gap. The key to their success lies in whether the ongoing reforms take steps toward balancing wealth distribution. This is a continuance of the country's reform launched in 1979, which made an early breakthrough in knocking down the barriers of egalitarian distribution of wealth that enabled the country to garner extensive social support and cohesiveness.

That the Chinese terms, fuerdai, the second generation of the rich, and pinerdai, the second generation of the poor, are so often cited in everyday discussions illustrates how pressing the problem of intergenerational poverty is, and the difficulty the underprivileged have in moving up the social ladder.