The Sixth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China (CPC) opened in Beijing on Sunday
morning.
A major item of the agenda is to study the issue of building a
harmonious socialist society and deliberate a draft containing the
CPC Central Committee's resolutions thereon.
The resolutions are expected to become guidelines for building
such a society, defined as a democratic society under the rule of
law, a society based on equality and justice, on honesty and
caring, a stable, vigorous and orderly society in which humans live
in harmony with nature.
Aware of the theory that problems may surface in large amounts
when a nation's per capita GDP enters the US$1,000-3,000 stage, the
Party's policy makers have realized improper handling of this
complicated situation will lead to economic stagnation and social
instability.
China's per capita GDP surpassed US$1,000 in 2003 and reached
US$1,714 in 2005.
More attention to lives of low-income citizens
Some Beijing analysts believe the plenary session of the CPC
Central Committee beginning Sunday will focus on how to improve
living standards for the country's low-income citizens.
Analysts said the meeting may spawn research on safeguarding
social equality, narrowing the yawning wealth gap and expanding
employment, and may decide to carry out a series of important
reforms in sectors like health care, education and social security,
in order to increases low-income groups' access to new facets of
the country's reform and development.
Yan Shuhan, director of? CPC Central Committee Party School
scientific socialism department, said a key item on the CPC Central
Committee agenda is to counter the impact of disharmonious
factors.
He said that, in the future, the Chinese government will not
only encourage citizens to get rich by diligent work and through
legal channels, but also step up protection of low-income and
poverty-stricken groups.
Over the past 20 years, China's income gap has widened
dramatically. In 2005, the per capita income ratio between urban
citizens and rural residents was 3.22 to 1.
The country's Gini coefficient, an international measurement of
income disparity, is estimated to have exceeded the danger level of
0.4. The country's richest 10 percent of families possess more than
40 percent of the nation's wealth, while the poorest 10 percent
hold only two percent.
The regional income gap is also yawning, with the per capita GDP
of the country's most wealthy province over 10 times greater than
that of the poorest province.
"The excessive wealth gap is one of the principal disharmonious
factors in Chinese society. To build a harmonious socialist
society, we must pay more attention to low-income citizens and poor
populations," said Ding Yuanzhu, research fellow of the Academy of
Macroeconomic Research.
Some analysts have hinted that China's rapid establishment of a
social security system will widen coverage to farmers coupled with
a new rural cooperative medical system.
At the same time, urban community construction will be pushed
forward. Urban poor families may receive subsidies for their
children's education and for health care while water, electricity,
gas and transportation charges could be reduced.
China's abject poor, whose per capita annual income is less than
US$85, a poverty line set by government, shrank from 125 million to
23.65 million in the 1985 to 2005 period. Most of them live in
rural areas and a large proportion of them are disabled, ill or
live in adverse conditions. However, some experts have said the
current poverty line fails to reflect the true need of the poor in
China by omitting many who still struggle to survive in hazardous
conditions.
"These 23 million needy people are in great need of direct
government assistance. Promoting the cause of rural social welfare
will inevitably be a topic for the plenary session of the CPC
Central Committee," said Ding.
While China has an impressive record of pulling people out of
poverty, another issue that needs to be tackled is reducing
inequality of opportunity. An efficient way to promote equality of
opportunity is to invest more in education, said an economist with
the Asian Development Bank.
Currently, China's investment in education accounts for three
percent of its GDP, lower than the world average level of five
percent GDP.
(Xinhua News Agency October 8, 2006)