City aiming for income growth above average
By Wang Yanlin |
January 29, 2013, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
Shanghai will try to raise people's incomes at a rate quicker than the national average and those on low incomes will see their salaries grow even faster, Shanghai Party Secretary Han Zheng said yesterday during the annual session of the Shanghai People's Congress.
"How to distribute income fairly, allowing people to benefit from the economic growth on an equal footing, is a topic that attracts most people's attention at the moment," Han said during a group discussion with local lawmakers during the ongoing session of the Shanghai People's Congress.
China is reportedly going to announce a scheme on income distribution reform in the next two months, possibly during the National People's Congress. Han said Shanghai should do a better job in this regard than the national average.
"We need to honor the target set by the Party's 18th National Congress to double people's incomes by 2020 from the level in 2010, and help low-income earners have a faster salary growth," Han said. "Above all, Shanghai should play a leading role and fulfill that target in advance."
With an average disposable income of 40,188 yuan (US$6,379) last year, Shanghai urban residents continued to lead other provinces and cities in income ranking on the Chinese mainland.
But that is offset by higher living costs, faster inflation and slower economic growth. In addition, Shanghai's disposable income rose 10.9 percent from a year earlier in 2012, slower than the national average increase of 12.6 percent.
In a report on Sunday, Acting Mayor Yang Xiong said Shanghai would actively promote employment with the creation of 500,000 jobs this year, give more support to start-ups and help college graduates, migrant workers and urban residents who had difficulty finding jobs.
Shanghai has yet to release its Gini coefficient, a measure of the income gap between rich and poor on a scale of 0 to 1. China's Gini coefficient, announced earlier this month, was 0.474 in 2012, down from a high of 0.491 in 2008 but still indicating an urgent need to narrow the gap.
On Shanghai's income distribution, Han said there were two basic facts.
"One is that people are generally happy about their rising income in the past three decades after China carried out the policy of opening up.
"The other is that people, at the same time, are unhappy about the yawning gap between the rich and the poor, and they demand a better system to make income distribution fair."
A current hot topic online concerns year-end bonuses, with many Internet users complaining that while some employees at state-owned enterprises pocket hundreds of thousands of yuan, workers elsewhere, including migrant workers, may get nothing.
Han also urged faster reforms to cater for an aging Shanghai population, and said a better health care system should be established to address the current problem of too many patients and too few good hospitals.
He also said that Shanghai would stick to restrictive property policies to prevent prices rebounding.
He added that the affordable housing program in the city would be strengthened to meet "people's reasonable demand for living in a better home."
"How to distribute income fairly, allowing people to benefit from the economic growth on an equal footing, is a topic that attracts most people's attention at the moment," Han said during a group discussion with local lawmakers during the ongoing session of the Shanghai People's Congress.
China is reportedly going to announce a scheme on income distribution reform in the next two months, possibly during the National People's Congress. Han said Shanghai should do a better job in this regard than the national average.
"We need to honor the target set by the Party's 18th National Congress to double people's incomes by 2020 from the level in 2010, and help low-income earners have a faster salary growth," Han said. "Above all, Shanghai should play a leading role and fulfill that target in advance."
With an average disposable income of 40,188 yuan (US$6,379) last year, Shanghai urban residents continued to lead other provinces and cities in income ranking on the Chinese mainland.
But that is offset by higher living costs, faster inflation and slower economic growth. In addition, Shanghai's disposable income rose 10.9 percent from a year earlier in 2012, slower than the national average increase of 12.6 percent.
In a report on Sunday, Acting Mayor Yang Xiong said Shanghai would actively promote employment with the creation of 500,000 jobs this year, give more support to start-ups and help college graduates, migrant workers and urban residents who had difficulty finding jobs.
Shanghai has yet to release its Gini coefficient, a measure of the income gap between rich and poor on a scale of 0 to 1. China's Gini coefficient, announced earlier this month, was 0.474 in 2012, down from a high of 0.491 in 2008 but still indicating an urgent need to narrow the gap.
On Shanghai's income distribution, Han said there were two basic facts.
"One is that people are generally happy about their rising income in the past three decades after China carried out the policy of opening up.
"The other is that people, at the same time, are unhappy about the yawning gap between the rich and the poor, and they demand a better system to make income distribution fair."
A current hot topic online concerns year-end bonuses, with many Internet users complaining that while some employees at state-owned enterprises pocket hundreds of thousands of yuan, workers elsewhere, including migrant workers, may get nothing.
Han also urged faster reforms to cater for an aging Shanghai population, and said a better health care system should be established to address the current problem of too many patients and too few good hospitals.
He also said that Shanghai would stick to restrictive property policies to prevent prices rebounding.
He added that the affordable housing program in the city would be strengthened to meet "people's reasonable demand for living in a better home."
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