Asia Pacific: Sinosphere

By Chris Buckley

The New York Times

January 27/2016.

Chinese office workers in Beijing. While incomes have risen, research points

to rising inequality in wealth and access to education, health care and other

social benefits. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times

BEIJING — President Xi Jinping calls it his “China Dream” — a vision of a cohesive, equal society, increasingly wealthy and healthy, and happily wedded to Communist Party rule, ardent patriotism and traditional values. That vision, splashed on television and billboards everywhere here, has driven Mr. Xi’s vow that under his administration, Chinese society will become more equal and just.

But two new studies from institutes in Beijing suggest that while Chinese people remain wedded, though not always blissfully, to the status quo, Mr. Xi confronts a persistent undercurrent of discontent with inequality in incomes, schooling opportunities and health care. That social strain could become troublesome, especially if the economy continues to falter.

“In the future, Chinese society will face a series of stern challenges,” said the China Family Panel Studies 2015 report, produced by the Institute of Social Science Survey at Peking University.

“At the same time that our nation’s total wealth has rapidly grown, there are increasingly pronounced imbalances in Chinese society,” it said. “This is reflected not only in the polarization of incomes and wealth, but also in plainly observable disparities in education, health and other social protections.”

Mr. Xi and his prime minister, Li Keqiang, have said that overcoming these social imbalances is a priority. But the report, drawing on the results of an annual survey covering more than 35,000 adults and 13,000 families, warns that more needs to be done.

“These problems demand effective solutions,” the report said. “Otherwise, it is very possible that they will threaten social stability and become a bottleneck in social and economic development.”

The study has created waves, with news reports citing its conclusion that the top 1 percent of Chinese households possess one-third of the country’s domestic wealth, while the bottom quarter of households holds 1 percent. But, in fact, that finding had already been reported in last year’s study, and the bulk of this year’s report focuses on access to housing, education and health care.

The study shows that, as in all societies, family background plays a powerful role in determining people’s level of schooling, especially parents’ educational attainment. But in China, political privilege is also an important factor. Whether your father is a member of the Communist Party — almost mandatory for government officials — is a powerful determinant of educational attainment, even, the study found, for Chinese born after 1980 under the market-oriented policies of Deng Xiaoping.

“Having a father who is a party member also has a clear, positive effect on an individual’s years of schooling,” the study said. (A mother’s party membership status has no discernible impact, it also found.)

Discrimination against girls has weakened, but it remains a powerful factor in the opportunity for schooling, the study also found. On average, boys receive 1.5 more years of schooling than girls.

Unequal access to health care has also been a source of dissatisfaction for many Chinese, especially residents of the countryside and small towns where medical insurance has been less widely available and where there are fewer doctors and hospitals.

Some visitors at the Shenyang Imperial Palace wearing masks on Sunday

as they walked through heavy smog.Credit Chinafotopress, via Getty Images

The survey found that the Chinese government’s efforts to spread health insurance had made a difference. Growing numbers of rural residents have some, though it is usually not as generous as policies held by many city dwellers. And women also do worse than men.

“Females, rural residents and low-income groups all enjoy fewer health care subsidies and pay a higher proportion by themselves,” the study said.

The professionals, managers, white-collar workers and business owners who make up China’s middle class are a source of hope and anxiety for the nation’s leaders. If its numbers, incomes and satisfaction grow, this middle class could remain a stabilizing pillar of Communist Party governance. But if this wealthier, educated urban stratum becomes unhappy, then the party’s grip could weaken.

For now, most members of the Chinese middle class appear attached, for the most part, to the status quo, the Peking University study suggests. The notion that wealthier urbanites are poised to challenge party rule appears unfounded, even taking into account that many people in China may be reluctant to criticize the government, even in surveys.

The study found that about 60 percent of respondents who identified as belonging to the “upper middle stratum” of society had a positive view of their local government’s performance. By contrast, 48 percent of those who put themselves in the lowest stratum held a positive view.

“Compared to the working class, and especially workers in the state sector, China’s middle class has a more positive assessment of perceptions of the rich-poor gap, trustworthiness of officials and government performance,” the study said. “The middle class has the potential to become a social stabilizer.”

That could change. A separate survey of more than 3,000 people published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that middle-class Chinese are more politically engaged than other members of society.

The survey, conducted across 12 months from late 2014 and published in the academy’s 2016 “blue book” of social issues, found that 42.6 percent of middle-class respondents in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou said they discussed politics with those around them. Just 27.7 percent of people not in the middle class said they did so.

Chris Buckley

Chris Buckley is a correspondent for The New York Times who was forced to leave mainland China in late December 2012 after the authorities declined to issue him a visa for 2013.

Mr. Buckley, an Australian who had worked as a correspondent in China since 2000, rejoined The Times in September after working for Reuters. The Times applied for Mr. Buckley to be accredited, but the authorities did not act before the end of the year, despite numerous requests.

Normally, requests to transfer visas are processed in a matter of weeks or a couple of months.

The Times is also waiting for its new Beijing bureau chief, Philip P. Pan, to be accredited. Mr. Pan applied in March, but his visa has not been processed.

The visa troubles come amid government pressure on the foreign news media over investigations into the finances of senior Chinese leaders, a delicate subject. Corruption is widely reported in China, but top leaders are considered off limits.

On the day that The Times published a long investigation into the riches of the family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, both its English-language Web site and its new Chinese-language site were blocked within China, and they remain so.

In June, the authorities blocked the English-language site of Bloomberg News after it published a detailed investigation into the family riches of China’s new top leader, Xi Jinping. Chinese financial institutions said they were instructed by officials not to buy Bloomberg’s computer terminals, a lucrative source of income for the company.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on Mr. Buckley’s forced departure. Ministry officials have not said if Mr. Buckley’s visa renewal or Mr. Pan’s press accreditation are linked to the newspaper’scoverage of China. In a statement, The Times urged the authorities to process Mr. Buckley’s visa as quickly as possible so that he and his family could return to Beijing.

The Times has six other accredited correspondents in China, and their visas were renewed for 2013 in a timely manner. David Barboza, the Shanghai bureau chief, who wrote the articles about Mr. Wen’s family, was among those whose visas were renewed.  (From The New York Times).

Christopher Taylor Buckley (born September 28, 1952) is an American political satirist and the author of novels including God Is My Broker, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, The White House Mess, No Way to Treat a First Lady, Wet Work, Florence of Arabia, Boomsday, Supreme Courtship, Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir and, most recently, The Relic Master: A Novel. He is the son of writer William F. Buckley Jr. and socialite Patricia Buckley.

After a classical education at the Portsmouth Abbey School,[3] Buckley graduated from Yale University in 1975. He was a member of Skull and Bones like his father, living at Jonathan Edwards College. He became managing editor of Esquire.

In 1981, he moved to Washington, D.C., to work as chief speechwriter for Vice President George H. W. Bush. This experience led to his novel The White House Mess, a satire on White House office politics and political memoirs. (The title refers to the White House lunchroom, which is known as the "mess" because the Navy operates it.)

Buckley's Thank You for Smoking is another satire, its protagonist a lobbyist for the tobacco industry, Nick Naylor. He followed that with more humor about Washington in the form of Little Green Men, about the government agency investigating UFO sightings. His No Way To Treat A First Lady has the president's wife on trial for assassinating her husband and Florence of Arabia is about a do-gooding State Department bureaucrat in the Middle East. His one serious novel, Wet Work, is about a billionaire businessman avenging his granddaughter's death from drugs.

Thank You for Smoking was adapted into a movie written and directed by Jason Reitman, and starring Aaron Eckhart. It was released on 17 March 2006.

Buckley also wrote the non-fiction Steaming To Bamboola, about the merchant marine, as well as contributed to an oral history of Milford, Connecticut, and is an editor at Forbes magazine. Buckley has written for many national newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, The Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, US News & World Report, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Conde Nast Traveler and numerous humorous essays in The New Yorker. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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