BEIJING (AFP) — The income gap between rural and urban areas is widening in China, government data published Friday showed, despite years of efforts from the top echelons of government to bridge the divide.
Last year, the average Chinese city dweller earned 3.28 times as much as his fellow citizen in the countryside, up from 3.21 times in 2004, according to figures published on the agriculture ministry's website.
"Although farmers' income has been growing quite fast in recent years, the pace is still slower than the growth rate of urban residents' income," Vice Minister of Agriculture Ying Chengjie said in comments on the website.
"An effective long-term institution for the steady growth of farmers' income has not yet been established and the task of boosting farmers' income remains tough."
The China Daily newspaper said in an editorial that the widening gap should trigger alarm bells.
"We still have a long way to go in order to make substantial progress in narrowing the gap between rural and urban areas," the editorial said.
China's ruling Communist Party has for the past five years placed making life in the countryside easier a pillar of its political and economic programme.
As late as in his annual "state of the union" address in March, Premier Wen Jiabao identified income distribution as a priority area, saying his government would raise rural incomes "through a variety of channels."
"Agriculture, the base of the economy, remains weak, and it is now more difficult than ever to steadily increase grain production and keep rural incomes growing," Wen said then.
President Hu Jintao has also repeatedly identified the widening wealth gap as a key problem in his long-term objective of building a "harmonious society."
Farmers are actually getting prosperous at a rate not seen since the mid-1980s, with average rural incomes increasing by six percent annually for three consecutive years.
The government has also scrapped agriculture-related taxes worth more than 120 billion yuan (16 billion dollars) annually as part of efforts to boost farmers' income, according to Ying.
"The cake is much bigger now. (The farmers) still get more than before in terms of revenues," Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China expert at Hong Kong Baptist University, told AFP.
"Of course the gap is increasing. But it doesn't mean ...they are not richer than before."
But the rural and urban income gap is unlikely to narrow in the next decade as cities were still the powerhouse of China's economic growth, Qi Jingmei, a researcher at the State Information Centre, a government think tank, said.
Meanwhile, costs are rising for people in the countryside, as evidenced by the surge in the price of pork -- the staple meat for most Chinese -- over the past year.
The fact that people in the cities are getting richer at a faster pace has fuelled fears that anger over economic injustices could erupt into open expressions of discontent.
"It is a battle we cannot afford to lose," the China Daily warned. "How this task is fulfilled is believed to bear an impact on the overall strength of the country."
The widening wealth gap has mixed in with endemic corruption throughout society, widespread loss of land for farmers and other injustices to form a potent mix of anger in the countryside.
As such, protests and other "mass incidents" have skyrocketed in recent years.
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