Inequality in distribution has become an issue of public concern in China. Incomes of the Chinese people have grown year after year ever since the reform and opening era began in the late 1970s. Meanwhile, the income ...Inequality in distribution has become an issue of public concern in China. Incomes of the Chinese people have grown year after year ever since the reform and opening era began in the late 1970s. Meanwhile, the income gap between urban and rural residents has widened constantly, from 1.8:1 in the mid-1980s to 3.2:1 in 2003. In a report entitled Analysis and Forecast of China's Social Conditions 2004-2005, experts with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences listed the widening income gaps as the second most serious of the six problems China is facing. The report notes that such gaps have kept widening not only between individual workers in the same profession but also between workers in different industries and regions. In view of this, the national economic work conference held in early January called for effort to improve the order of income distribution and readjust the distribution of national wealth in an appropriate manner. How to view the problem of inequality in distribution as we see now? How the divide of the rich and the poor affects the improvement of human rights? What should be done to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor? We have dis- cussed these questions with two leading social scientists in China, Sun Guohua, pro- fessor of law at the Renmin University of China and Prof. Hu Angang of Qinghua University, a noted expert in study of the conditions in China.展开更多
文摘Inequality in distribution has become an issue of public concern in China. Incomes of the Chinese people have grown year after year ever since the reform and opening era began in the late 1970s. Meanwhile, the income gap between urban and rural residents has widened constantly, from 1.8:1 in the mid-1980s to 3.2:1 in 2003. In a report entitled Analysis and Forecast of China's Social Conditions 2004-2005, experts with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences listed the widening income gaps as the second most serious of the six problems China is facing. The report notes that such gaps have kept widening not only between individual workers in the same profession but also between workers in different industries and regions. In view of this, the national economic work conference held in early January called for effort to improve the order of income distribution and readjust the distribution of national wealth in an appropriate manner. How to view the problem of inequality in distribution as we see now? How the divide of the rich and the poor affects the improvement of human rights? What should be done to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor? We have dis- cussed these questions with two leading social scientists in China, Sun Guohua, pro- fessor of law at the Renmin University of China and Prof. Hu Angang of Qinghua University, a noted expert in study of the conditions in China.
