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)