Gini coefficient release highlights China's resolve to bridge wealth gap (4)

GOVERNMENT TAKES ACTION

The official release of the Gini coefficient not only met the public appeal, but also will serve as evaluation criteria for income distribution reforms that are in the offing.

Bai Jingming, deputy director of the Research Institute for Fiscal Science, said the inequality index provides an objective statistical account for evaluating the complicated social issue, and it will serve as a foundation for the government's policymaking.

With the rapid economic growth since the reform and opening-up policy was adopted, the widening wealth gap between urban and rural areas and among different regions and social stratas has increasingly become an outstanding social problem.

And what's worse, behind the yawning gap are inequality in education, employment and public services and the unfair and illegal ways to become rich such as corruption and monopoly.

Aware of these pressing problems, China has vowed to double the country's 2010 gross domestic output (GDP) and per capita income for both urban and rural residents by 2020, according to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November.

But Ma said that only doubling the GDP and per capita income is not enough. "China should make endeavors to better distribute the cake of its economic growth while trying to make it bigger, and strive to make the incomes of low- and middle-income residents grow faster."

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