Wealth and wealth inequality in China
Business & Technology
Top business and technology news for February 15, 2017. Part of the daily The China Project news roundup "A surprise win for the Trump brand in China."
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On inequality in China / Thomas Piketty’s Blog
Thomas Piketty, author of the best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, comments that despite China’s tremendous accumulation of wealth, “the growth in income of the poorest 50% of the Chinese population has only been half the average [in China].” Some academic research has further indicated that China’s true level of wealth inequality may have surpassed the United States over a decade ago, and that government policy on regional development and urbanization have exacerbated the problem.
The accumulation and expression of wealth in China have increasingly resembled that of the United States and other advanced capitalist economies. Bloomberg yesterday published an article on the city of Yuhuang Shannan, an enclave outside of Shanghai specifically for wealthy hedge fund managers (a new phenomenon in China, where hedge funds weren’t recognized by the government until 2012) much like Greenwich, Connecticut, is the center for New York hedge funders.
