China’s Wealth Disparity Between City and Country and the Government’s Policies Toward It

This essay presents an investigation on the continuously growing wealth disparity in China between people living in cities and the vast peasant population in the countryside. As China continues its miraculous economic growth, it is apparent that coastal regions and other major metropolitan and industrial areas have reaped the benefit of the “Open Door Policy ” in a more significant fashion than the western part of the country, where poor geographical conditions and the lack of basic infrastructure have kept it mainly agricultural and grossly underdeveloped. If measures are not immediately taken to narrow this gap, it will likely become the most significant roadblock to China’s social stability and its emergence as a world power. This paper will look at the phenomenon of wealth disparity, prove that it exists and why it is a problem. It will then discuss the unique conditions of China that have made the wealth disparity such a hard problem to overcome. Lastly, this paper will look at the government initiatives currently taken to confront this problem, and what long-term strategies the government should take in the future. The year 2005 proved to be another banner year for China’s economy