China's wealth distribution is almost as fair as the United States. At least that's what China's official data says. The Chinese National Bureau of Statistic, or NBS, released the Gini coefficient for 2012 last Friday. It was 0.474. It's above the warning level of 0.4 set by the United Nations. The United States', for comparison, was 0.469 in 2010. The Gini coefficient is on a scale of zero to one. Zero means wealth is distributed perfectly, and one is where all the wealth belongs to one person. Neither scenario exists in reality, but a level between 0.3 to 0.4 indicates a reasonable distribution of wealth. [Professor Frank Tian Xie, University of South Carolina Aiken]: "When everyone sees that the wealth gap in China is growing larger, but the Gini coefficient is lowering, it's easy to tell the latest official is fake, and intentionally faked." That skepticism was shared on the Chinese Internet. Economist Xu Xiaonian said on his Sina Weibo the official figure was "fake data". The latest figure also contradicts one put out in December by the Southwestern University of Finance in the city of Chengdu. That survey put the Gini coefficient at 0.61 for 2010—a much worse wealth scenario than officially claimed. The last time Chinese authorities released this information was back in 2000. Authorities previously said it was too hard to compile the data, because they couldn't track the income of wealthy individuals. For some reason, that changed—though the NBS did not say how the latest data was compiled. It's in the Chinese regime's interest to show a reasonable wealth gap. It has been hit with a series of scandals of officials flouting wealth that are way above their pay grade. Just last week, state-run media reported a city-level official in Shaanxi province owns a property portfolio worth more than 16 million US dollars. For 2011, the average urban income in China was less than 4,000 US dollars. For more news and videos visit ☛ http://ntd.tv Follow us on Twitter ☛ http://twitter.com/NTDTelevision Add us on Facebook ☛ http://on.fb.me/s5KV2C

• published: 21 Jan 2013
• views: 530