Editorials

Bigger cake, bigger share

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-11 07:51

If a justifiable wealth distribution system epitomizes social justice and fairness, the government has much to do to improve the system.

The investigation and research that Chairman Wu Bangguo of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee promised Tuesday for this year indicates that reform to income distribution will be carried out in the 12th Five-Year-Plan period (2011-15) to benefit low-income residents.

More than 72 percent of surveyed residents believe the current wealth distribution is unfair, according to the All China Federation of Trade Unions. More than 60 percent said that the exceedingly low incomes of laborers are the most prominent of issues.

The proportion of laborers' income in the country's gross domestic product (GDP) has been declining from 51.4 percent in 1995 to 39.7 percent in 2007.

So the first problem is how to make the cake bigger, which is the very prerequisite for the increase of incomes for residents.

However, as statistics show, the income gap has been widening in recent years. The Gini coefficient, a measure for the inequality of wealth, is said to be 0.46, and that means 10 percent of urban families enjoy 45 percent of the total urban wealth.

With the diminishing proportion of total income for residents in the total GDP and the ever-widening income gap, it is inevitable that those workers at the bottom of the income ladder will see a lower-than-expected increase in their incomes.

Hopefully, the NPC investigation and research will provide enough facts for a shift in the central government's policy, which could make the wealth distribution system more fair and just.

(China Daily 03/11/2010 page9)