On May 28, Prime Minister Li Keqiang declared that China now has 600 million people with a monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan (about US $ 140).
"This amount is only enough to pay the monthly rent in a mid-sized city in China," Li said.
The statements made by Prime Minister Li Keqiang further reinforce the argument that China is essentially a relatively poor country, as more than 40% of the 1.4 billion people currently living on a daily income have not arrived. 5 USD.
However, the statements of Ning Jizhe, head of China National Bureau of Statistics NBS, said on Sunday that contrary to Mr. Li.
Mr. Ning said that China had accumulated a massive 1,300 trillion yuan ($ 182 trillion) worth of infrastructure in the form of infrastructure by the end of 2019 and could understand that the average Chinese citizen owns the bloc. Infrastructure assets of nearly 1 million yuan.
The statement was then widely mocked across the country because a large number of Chinese in rural areas were still in poverty.
In April, the People’s Bank of China also caused a big controversy when it released a survey that showed Chinese urban households own an average of 3.2 assets. million yuan / individual by the end of 2019, including both financial and nonfinancial assets. The survey, which was conducted with more than 30,000 households, has been criticized by the public because of the "unrealistic" figure, so the magazine published the survey - China Finance had to remove the article immediately. there.
All of the aforementioned debates reflect a situation in China that income is not equally distributed. Photo: Pinterest
In fact, China is a middle-income country with about 10,000 USD per person per year and is also the country with the largest gap between rich and poor in the world.
The highlight here is that the income distribution is largely dependent on the state, resulting in a situation commonly known as "rich government, poor people."
The Gini coefficient - a measure of wealth inequality in China’s economy has risen sharply to 0.4670 since 2017, reflecting severe income inequality. In the last two years, the Chinese government has stopped publishing this coefficient.
Income disparities between rural and urban residents further complicate China’s economic picture.
"A lot of foreign tourists visit Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou and exclaim in surprise because China seems to be richer than the US or other countries in Europe," a social media account said. Niutanqin, which is affiliated with the Xinhua News Agency, recently said.
“However, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou represent only a part of China. There is another China in another hidden corner. "
According to the Chinese data analysis center, China’s per capita disposable income in 2019 was 30,733 yuan ($ 4,300), up 5.8% over the same period in 2018.
Meanwhile, per capita income in rural areas is only 16,021 yuan, equivalent to 1,335 yuan per month.
Low wages in rural areas, an area that accounts for about 40% of China’s population, are hindering Beijing’s efforts to shift the focus of the national economic model to domestic demand, with few depend on the international market.
Obviously, China’s billion-dollar market has great potential for driving economic growth, but its purchasing power and spending compared with Western countries still have many things that have not been achieved. standard ”.
Last year, Li Xunlei, an economist at Zhongtai Securities in Shanghai, estimated that up to 1 billion Chinese could never have boarded the plane.
