The China house of cards - Part II

1. the wealthy;
2. the government officials;
3. the middle class;
4. the urban; and
5. the rural.

Some farmers in the rural sector are now in the middle class, but their numbers are negligible.

An internal report on family assets and wages of local officials revealed that the leaders of local CCP committees and the high-ranking officials are part of the privileged strata of Chinese society. Local officials had an average annual income eight to 25 times that of urbanites, and 25 to 85 times that of farmers and peasants.

Low income earners

Construction and rural workers are on the bottom rung of the wages ladder. Construction workers average US$85 a month while the rural worker earns up to US$125 a month, when work is available.

In China's poorer regions however, rural villagers are only earning between the equivalent of US$1 and US$2.50 a day.

China's statistics confirm 800 million are classified as peasants, with the income gap having the potential to "destabilise social harmony".

A review of China's savings

Only a percentage of China's 1.32 billion people contributed to amassing the private savings treasure chest.

The official working age in China is 15 to 59. The 0 to 15 and the 60s to over 85s are classified as non-working. Child labour "does not exist". This suggests that 894 million workers support China's total population of 1.321 billion.

This changes when factoring in the official urban rural population differential of 42 per cent to 58 per cent in which the 378 million urban workers earn three times that earned by the 516 million rural workers. Then factor in the real numbers of unemployed, underemployed, mentally and physically impaired, non-working married women, and children. Official numbers exclude several other sectors.

The rural sector suffers further by a side effect of the single child policy.

The single child policy's “1-2-4 problem”

This policy created a major financial load on low-income families throughout China.

The “1-2-4 problem” translates as, one worker supporting two parents and four grandparents.