2014-06-10    China: 1% of population has 70% of wealth

When I recorded the Ming Pao editorial for June 5, I was struck by one piece of information I had never heard of before: corruption among Mainland officials is worse than during any dynasty in China's history. In other words, China's Communist Party is the most corrupt government China has ever had.

In fact of course, very few people in China are genuine Communists or Marxists. The tens of millions who pay party fees each year do so only in order to keep their jobs in education, business and government. It sounds strange, but China is capitalist rather than Communist. Google "China more capitalist than US" for lots of articles on this theme.

China's capitalism is nowhere more evident than in its wealth distribution: 1% of the population has 70% of the private wealth. Communism is just a theory, a name, by which one small group of people stay rich and keep control of wealth, while the majority of the population struggles to avoid poverty.

Recent articles about the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident remind us that one of the main concerns which prompted the 1989 protests was corruption. If the Communist Party leadership wishes to avoid repeats of June 4, it urgently needs to address the intertwined issues of corruption and wealth inequality.