Survey shows wider income gap in China

A measure of China’s income inequality rose to a dangerously high level in 2010, showing that the wealth gap has widened and may triger protests, Bloomberg reported. China’s Gini coefficient rose to 0.61 up from 0.412 in 2000, when China last released an official figure, according to the Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance, which is backed in part by China’s central bank. The coefficient, measured on a scale of 0 to 1, indicates that the spoils of strong economic growth were not equally distributed during the last decade. The figure compares with World Bank’s estimate of 0.4248 as of 2005 and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences measure of 0.54 in 2008. Analysts often look at the coefficient above 0.4 when judging the potential for unrest.