Economic inequality and social protests in China have become a frequent topic in the Western press. The startling figure of 74,000 protests across China in 2004, up from 58,000 the previous year, has popped up in many newspapers, as has China’s most recent Gini coefficient of 0.45, suggesting that economic inequality in China has in fact surpassed that of the US and UK with their allegedly cold-blooded “Anglo-Saxon” model of capitalism…
Eyeing such statistics, one might be tempted to think that Chinese society is falling apart, and indeed, various books and articles have appeared suggesting exactly that. However, as with many things in China, first impressions can be misleading.