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Opinion: CPPCC gives voice to poverty-stricken
They do not make the decisions. But as they concluded their annual session yesterday in Beijing, members of the CPPCC left us much to think about. Chances are, as in the past few years, almost all of their questions and proposals will have been answered when they meet again next year. We would be more than glad to see overnight changes in matters of public concern. But there are simply too many questions needing to be straightened out. And in the case of others, they require a long-term commitment, coupled with immediate initial action. Among them is poverty. Widening income gaps were much to the fore at the just-concluded CPPCC session, rightly described as one of the biggest stumbling blocks on our nation's path towards societal harmony. Two widely quoted scholarly studies put the country's Gini coefficient at 0.465 in 2004. That means the income gap is too wide to be reasonable. More troubling, however, is the Mathew Effect in income distribution - the rich get richer, while the poor poorer. There is no denying the government has worked hard and achieved a lot in terms of poverty alleviation. In official papers, the number of people living in abject poverty had dropped from 250 million in 1978 to 26 million in 2004. But the scope of poverty is far beyond the account book figures. For one thing, the gauge of poverty in use today was a product of the 1980s. We find it embarrassing to declare a household earning 680 yuan (US$82) per capita a year no longer poor. That amount was only enough for a person to feed and clothe him/herself in the early or mid-1980s. But not anymore. A huge poor population might be embarrassing for a big country like ours, especially when we are increasingly treated as a major world power. Our difficulty in the crusade against poverty is the very price of being big. After all, we are still a developing economy, which is nothing to be ashamed of. But, we will not have an easy conscience as long as we declare the elimination of abject poverty using an out-dated standard. It would be sad if the country's admirable gains in gross domestic product and national income do not translate into noticeable improvements, even slight, in the lives of our compatriots struggling to make ends meet beyond the public gaze. So, rather than being told that millions more have crossed the current poverty line, we prefer to see our official definition of poverty modified, and strategies of poverty alleviation redefined. Raising the official poverty line will inevitably result in a larger scope of poverty and subsequently stronger financial commitment. But our society will gain more than it may lose if poverty, as a clear and present threat to social equity and hence stability, is better weighed in decision-making. In a sense, no investment can generate more lasting benefits than that of poverty elimination. We endorse the call of some CPPCC members for the government to disburse more generously. At the same time, we urge the decision-makers to think beyond the box when determining how the money should be spent. |
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