China’s food safety has been a world-wide discussion. Gaoming Jiang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Botany, suggests a solution to solve the problem: “if we use market forces, so that the consumption of the rich actually benefits the poor, we can not only protect the environment but also realise social harmony.” From Chinadialogue:
…The total assets of high-income families in Beijing currently stand at 23.56 billion yuan (US$3.1 billion), with fixed assets accounting for two-thirds of this figure and financial assets accounting for the other third. There are between 150,000 and 200,000 yuan-millionaires in the capital. They are the people that Deng Xiaoping said would “get rich first”, and the vast majority of them live in China’s largest cities; in the end we must accept their existence, regardless of any doubts we may have about how they acquired their wealth.
But look at some other figures, and you will notice that China still has 200 million people living in poverty, a figure second only to India. The population of China that does not have adequate food and shelter numbers 23.65 million….[Full Text]
[Image from Chinadialogue]
