Social explosive. Around half of the Chinese live on the edge of poverty. The rich are getting richer
This week in Beijing in the National People's Congress, the economic program of the new five-year plan will be discussed. An important point: fighting poverty and the gap between urban and rural areas.
Last Friday, President Xi Jinping announced a new propaganda message: The victory over poverty. Xi announced this with pathetic words: “99 million poor people in rural regions could be lifted out of poverty. We were able to remove all affected administrative districts and villages from the poverty list. The arduous task of eradicating absolute poverty is done. That is a historical miracle. ”
China's ruler Xi Jinping
1.25 euros per day
The Politburo in China also defines a limit for this “miracle”. Those who have more than 1.25 euros per day are living above the poverty line. However, the World Bank sets the poverty line higher than the Chinese government: an average of 4.50 euros per day is necessary in China in order not to be considered poor. In the 1980s, China ended the experiment of “real existing socialism” and proclaimed the “socialist market economy”. Before Xi took office in 2013, the big cities were the focus of Chinese economic policy. Xi put the focus on poverty reduction in rural areas.
That means: microloans for building a house or starting a business. Plus training programs for adults, school fees for children and roads to remote areas. Jörg Wuttke, President of the European Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, analyzed Xi's announcement last Friday on the German ARD: “In China, Spanish conditions already prevail in the cities.” But there are still around 600 million people (from around 1.4 million . Residents) who would live on the edge of poverty.
Poverty in China
Wealth increases
At the same time, however, China's empires are getting richer. More than that: never before have China's super-rich got so much richer as quickly as in the Corona year. This was only recently shown by the Hurun Report – the annual list of the Chinese money nobility. Not determined by government agencies, but by the Briton Rupert Hoogewerf, who has lived in China for a long time. Conclusion: Corona has not affected China's money nobility. The wealth of the 878 dollar billionaires living in China in October of the previous year rose by a staggering one and a half trillion dollars in the Corona year.
The rich did not suffer during the crisis – on the contrary
The rulers seem to make no secret of the fact that this is a problem. The Social Science Institute at the University of Beijing has publicly calculated that one percent of the population now owns a third of China's total wealth, while the lowest-income quarter has to share a meager percent of the wealth. Only in South Africa and Brazil is the gap between poverty and wealth widening faster and wider.
The government has long been concerned about the social consequences of the situation. Beijing tried to counter this as early as 2013: with a higher minimum wage for the poor and a luxury tax for the rich. And the current five-year plan aims at state-paid education for all and an affordable health system.
