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When Bo Xilai , the rising Chinese Communist Party official who was purged inMarch, gave his last public comments before disappearing into detention, he was wrong about a lot ofthings. That bit about not being under investigation, for instance.But one line he uttered has the clear ring of truth, and it poses aserious issue for China s leadership as it attempts to navigate this year'spolitical transition, the economic slowdown and the ripples loosedby Bo's removal. Bo revealed that China's Gini coefficient a statistic that measuresthe gap between rich and poor had entered into worryingterritory. He described the number, which hasn't been madepublic in over a decade , as over 0.46. Anything higher than 0.4 is considered dangerouslyhigh and capable of fueling unrest. In Chongqing, where Bo was Communist Party secretary for 4 years, he made building economic protections like subsidizedhousing for the megacity's poorest residents one of thetenets of his "Chongqing model." The wholesalecorruption he and his family have been accused of may have steeredthe wealth gap in the wrong direction, but Bo understood thepolitical importance of appearing to care about the problem, justas he knew the appeal of cracking down on crime and revivingMao-era culture. It's a point that many other officials seem to have missed,mindful perhaps of Deng Xiaoping s declaration that "some will get rich first," butforgetting the coda that their prosperity would then spread to all.China's growth in recent decades has been astonishing andsurveys like the Pew Research Center's Global AttitudesProject have found high levels of satisfaction and optimism in China. But there ismore to those numbers. A deeper examination of Chinesecitizens' levels of satisfaction indicates that while thecountry's richest are increasingly content, the poor aregrowing more and more unhappy. ( PHOTOS: City on Fire: A Look Inside Changsha in China ) That's one of the conclusions of a new paper by a team from the University of Southern California headed byeconomist Richard Easterlin and published in the latest issue ofthe Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PDF copy here ). The group looked at several surveys of personal happiness inChina dating back to 1990 and found that overall there was littlechange and perhaps even a decline when the past two decades areconsidered as a whole. The 1990s in particular saw a significantdecline, which the authors say mirrors the unemployment rate asstate-owned enterprises laid off huge numbers of workers as part ofeconomic reforms. Following a 2000 2005 trough, happiness numbersrebounded to somewhere at or below early 1990s levels. They write: Despite an unprecedented rate of economic growth, China s lifesatisfaction over the past two decades has largely followed thetrajectory seen in the central- and eastern-European transitioncountries a decline followed by a recovery, with no change or adeclining trend over the period as a whole. There is no evidence ofa marked increase in life satisfaction in China of the magnitudethat might have been expected based on the fourfold increase in thelevel of per capita consumption during that period. In itstransition, China has shifted from one of the most egalitariancountries in terms of distribution of life satisfaction to one ofthe least egalitarian. Life satisfaction has declined markedly inthe lowest-income and least-educated segments of the population,while rising somewhat in the upper (socioeconomic status) stratum. While China's poorest are increasingly unhappy, it'sunlikely that the country will see Arab Spring like unrest andrevolt. The problems are too diffuse and the state security organs,too adept at clamping down on acts of dissent that have thepotential for wider appeal. But on a local level, protest iswidespread, averaging about 500 a day nationwide, according toeconomist Niu Wenyuan, an adviser to China s State Council. Lastweek, a suicide bombing tore through a government office in the southern province ofYunnan, killing four. The culprit and the motivation behind theattack have been subject to widespread debate online, but thetarget a bureau where residents received compensation fordemolished housing has fueled the belief that the attack wasdriven by anger over forced relocation. China may be getting richerby the day, but there is plenty of anger too. MORE: Murder, Lies, Abuse of Power and Other Crimes of the ChineseCentury. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as China Teeth Whitening Systems , IPL Beauty Equipment, and more. For more , please visit IPL Beauty Equipment today!
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