The real income of the poorest 10% of China's 1.3 billion people fell by 2.4% in the two years to 2003, an analysis by World Bank economists has found. Meanwhile, average incomes for China's richest decile rose by more than 16%.The findings challenge the basis of government policies aimed at narrowing the country's politically sensitive wealth gap, which President Hu Jintao has made a centerpiece of his administration's economic policies, the <i>Financial Times</i> reported. Yasheng Huang, of the MIT Sloan School of Management, said the Chinese understated the extent of poverty by defining it as roughly US$83 in annual income, equal to about 5% of average per capita income. The US definition of poverty is 12% of average per capita income.
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