The Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China (CPC)
is scheduled to open in Beijing on Saturday.
The four-day event, which will include discussions
on national economic and social development in the next five years,
is expected to focus on narrowing the income gap between the rich
and the poor, observers said.
Tang Min, chief economist of the Asian Development
Bank's China Office was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying on
Friday that the event is a crucial moment as China tries to narrow
the gap between rich and poor, urban and rural.
Lu Zhongyuan, a researcher at the State Council’s
Development Research Centre told Xinhua that in the next five
years, the central government might adjust income distribution and
fiscal expenditure structure to help the poor.
More economic input will go into agriculture to
give support and protection for farmers and expenditure in the
agricultural sector will increase more than in any other sector, Lu
predicted.
The average income of the rich was 2.5 times that
of the poor in 1995, while in 2003 that number had grown to 3.23,
said Hu Angang, an economic professor at the Beijing-based Tsinghua
University, in a research report.
(Xinhua News Agency October 8, 2005)