LI Xunlei, chief economist of Guotai Junan Securities Co, China's largest brokerage house, wrote an article earlier this year that appeared on the Wall Street Journal's Chinese website.

It was an analysis of the development of high-speed rail in China, but unlike so many other articles on the same subject, this one focused on migrant workers, whose contributions to this country's economic progress have earned them the nickname "the factories without smoke."

Li's article left readers with one question: will the building of the super-fast train system be a blessing to the millions of migrants who line up for days to get tickets home for the annual Lunar New Year festival?

It is a bit startling to see a respected, high-profile economist bothering to pay any attention to people largely ignored by most Chinese urban dwellers.

Li, who's also a member of the Finance & Economy Committee of Shanghai's People's Congress, finds nothing incongruous about it at all.

"Every man has his rights and should thus be respected equally," he said. "That's my ideal and my belief."

Vulnerable groups

Li's identification with what he described as "vulnerable groups" and his willingness to speak out on their behalf are probably rooted in his origins.

He was brought up the son of an ordinary family in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, and came to Shanghai to attend university in 1981 with no money, no connections and a regional accent that marked him as an out-of-towner.

He saw how it was to be treated with traces of disdain because he couldn't speak Shanghai dialect when buying a pair of shoes.

"At that time, most Shanghainese thought there were only two kinds of human beings on this planet: Shanghainese and rural countrymen," Li recalled.

That part of his life still lurks within him even as he sits in VIP lounges, with a first-class ticket, waiting to board a flight to some foreign capital on business. His economist's eye prowls the scene for clues of a changing society.

"VIP rooms in Chinese airports now are always overcrowded, despite the fact that price for first class ticket has almost doubled in recent years," the 48-year-old Li noted on his Sina Weibo microblog.

He added, "Shouldn't the government think about imposing heavier taxes on the rich to help those poor kids and give them some glimmer of hope?"

Li said he considers the widening wealth gap the biggest threat to China's economic development. China has become the world's second-largest economy, and in the process, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have stayed poor. Migrants flood into prosperous cities to work for a pittance to support families back home.

China now has about 200 million people whose annual income is below 1,500 yuan (US$230), Li said. The number of people living in poverty is equivalent to the combined populations of the United Kingdom, France and Australia.

Average monthly income in China is only about 2,000 yuan despite double-digit growth for decades, he noted.

"Being the second-biggest economy means nothing," Li said, "because if you look at per-capita gross domestic product, China ranks far behind in the world - only a 10th of that of Japan."

The Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of wealth inequality, reached 0.47 in China last year, according to the National Development and Reform Commission. Since 2000, the figure has been above 0.4, which is considered to be the level that could trigger social unrest.

Why aren't more alarm bells going off?

Li said he believes that in a lot of places, the interest of governments and public officials are entangled with those of the rich.

"It's really not important what the monthly personal income tax threshold is," he said, referring to the current national debate about tax relief for lower-income people. "The key thing is how the government can effectively impose taxes on the wealthy and make sure there's no way they can evade their responsibilities."

Hidden income

Income hidden from taxes in China may have reached 9.3 trillion yuan, or 30 percent of the country's GDP, last year, according to a report by Professor Wang Xiaolu of the China Reform Foundation.

About 63 percent of the grey economy is in the hands of the top 10 percent of urban households, said the report, which was also sponsored by Credit Suisse.

"This is why some people can get richer and richer, and that's where the unfairness really lies," Li said.

China's property market probably is another good place to look for inequality. Although the central government has been coming up with ever tighter measures aimed at reining in housing prices, the cost of buying a home remains stubbornly high.

In Shanghai, 13,400 existing properties were sold last month, an increase of 3.7 percent from March. The average price gained 5.6 percent to 16,200 yuan per square meter, according to Century 21 China Real Estate.

"The government should go beyond imposing a property tax on newly purchased extra houses," Li said. "If they really want to bring down the prices, the best way is to levy property taxes on all second, third and more homes, no matter when they were purchased."

The chances of that are slim, he conceded, because some public officials might be among those who would be caught in the net.

That's why the government needs to be more open to public scrutiny and more transparent in revealing how taxpayers' money is spent, Li said.

Public money

Premier Wen Jiabao this year ordered central government-level departments to reveal for the first time how much public money they spend on cars, banquets, overseas travel and other perks of office.

Local governments may be forced to follow suit.

"This could be a good start, but still has a long way to go," Li commented. "As long as they have to make their budgets public, governments will feel the pressure and automatically find it necessary to spend taxpayers' money more carefully."

He added, "A well-functioned country should be built on a small government and a big society. Governments are not supposed to think out of self-interest but rather on behalf of the interests of the society at large."

Li wrote an article calling on the Shanghai government to relax its tireless pursuit of gross domestic product, often used as the sole measure of its success. He said the achievements GDP tracks often come at the expense of ordinary people.

Li said he knows his advice will be disregarded but he feels the need to speak his mind as both a city lawmaker and a man who values honesty.

"As an individual, there's not really much I can do to improve the world we are living in now," he said. "But that doesn't mean you can do nothing at all. Even a little effort means something."

On his microblog he wrote: "No matter how weak or strong your voice, you need to speak the truth."

That no doubt comes as music to the ears of many of his 680,000 microblog followers.

"My ideal world is a place where every one can be treated equally and where things are played according to rules rather than social connections," Li said. "I guess I am an idealist to the core."


Biography

A master's degree holder from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Li Xunlei is head of the financing committee of Jiu San Society, one of the democratic parties on the patriotic united front led by the Communist Party of China.

The JSS comprises of senior and middle-level intellectuals engaged in science and technology.

He is also a councilman of the Shanghai International Finance Institute, chief economist of Guotai Junan Securities Co, member of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai People's Congress and deputy director of the Analyst Committee in the Securities Association of China.

Having worked in the country's financial industry for more than 20 years, Li has witnessed the development of China's financial market. He is one of the most experienced directors among all the financial research institutions in China.